For Kathy McLean, every day is painful and confusing.

"She has to be helped in and out of bed, her memory has gone, she has sore feet and gets sore legs so in the middle of the night she's got to get up and go for a walk," husband Lex McLean said.

"We've lived in this house for 25 years and if she wants to go to the toilet, she has to ask me where it is."

Mrs McLean has Alzheimer's and Parkinson's as well as a condition known as Lewy body, a form of dementia that causes anxiety attacks and is terminal.

Her husband, who is also her full-time carer, has tried everything to relieve her pain and anxiety, and believes medicinal cannabis is the only solution.

The Federal Government legalised medicinal cannabis use in 2016 and yesterday Health Minister Greg Hunt announced plans to allow the export of medicinal cannabis products.

Mr Hunt said he hoped Australia will become the world's top medicinal cannabis supplier.

But Australians like Mrs McLean are still having trouble accessing the drug here at home.

The couple has managed to source a small amount of medical hemp oil which showed promising improvements in Mrs McLean's symptoms.

Her application to NSW Health to join a medicinal cannabis program has been rejected twice, despite her having support from two leading Australian specialists and approval from the Therapeutic Drugs Administration.

"They're just closing the doors and everywhere we go there's closed doors," Mr McLean said.

Patients in regional locations face bias

The couple lives in Tumut in southern New South Wales and their regional location was identified as a major reason for their application being rejected as their specialists are Sydney-based.

"Country people can't be discriminated against," Mr McLean said.

"I can get from Wagga to Sydney in an hour, you can't even get across Sydney in that time.

"I could hop in the car right now if someone rang and be there tonight."

The chief health officer for NSW Health, Dr Kerry Chant, has stressed that access to medicinal cannabis clinical trials are limited to patients who have tried all other avenues of treatment and pain relief.

"In providing advice to doctors dealing with palliative care, patients' standard medications must be optimised," Dr Chant said.

"Before adding cannabis, it's important to make sure you've got therapeutic levels of other pain relief."

Dr Chant also believes use of medicinal cannabis can only increase once stronger evidence of its benefits is available.

"One of the challenges is that many of the studies that have been done have been small and done without appropriate controls, or have not been compared to current Australian standards," she said.

"High quality evidence is what we need."

But Mr McLean asks: "How are you going to get clinical evidence if you don't include people who are prepared to try it?"

The next step towards achieving Dr Chant's goal came recently when the State Government announced $6 million to go towards more research and a statewide advisory hotline for doctors seeking more information and guidance.

Dr Rodney Kurtzer, a general practitioner in the NSW Riverina town of Temora, welcomes the move.

He said he believed there was a knowledge gap that needs to be filled, especially with more scientific evidence.

"A good medical practice is based on knowledge and a soundness of what you're doing," Dr Kurtzer said.

"Like all GPs, we are constantly referring, going back and looking things up, and if you had an information source at your fingertips, particularly in such a controversial area, it would be a great help."

Time is of the essence, though, for patients like Mrs McLean.

"It wasn't so long ago that Kath could shower herself, dress herself and feed herself," Mr McLean said.

"Now, every morning I have got to do those things for her. What she's got is terminal. How long, we don't know."

What Mr McLean also does not know is how much time medicinal cannabis will give his wife.

But he believed it was well worth a shot.

"We've got to try something better than what we're on," Mr McLean said.