Global Speakers

Dr Sandeep Reddy is a medical informatician with Rebus Services. He has a medical and healthcare management background in addition to having completed Artificial Intelligence and machine learning training through several sources. He is currently engaged in the development of machine learning models to treat type 2 diabetes and is involved in a start-up focused on artificial intelligence driven tele-healthcare. Also, he has authored several articles about the use of artificial intelligence in Medicine including a book chapter about this topic.

A graduate of medicine from the University of Western Australia, Alexius worked at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital for his early clinical years.

 Alexius was appointed as a Clinical Lead in ICT for the Fiona Stanley Hospital commissioning team where he served as a liaison between clinical staff and IT technical staff, coordinating clinical feedback and representing the views of fellow clinicians. He was concurrently appointed as a Medical Leadership Advisor at the Health Department’s Institute for Health Leadership where he focused on embedding leadership and service improvement methodology into medical school curricula.

 Currently, Alexius serves as the Chief Medical Information Officer for St John of God Health Care, helping to determine IT strategy for the Group’s 17 hospitals. Alexius provides the link between the technical IT delivery teams at SJGHC and the clinicians at the coal-face; liaising between both, to ensure requirements are understood, needs are met and clinical workflows make sense. He leads the innovation function which is currently piloting a number of initiatives which aim to deliver benefits to Divisions and the Group, as well as test concepts from the digital strategy.

 Alexius is also a member of the board for Child and Adolescent Health Service. His passion for leadership, service improvement and technology serve him well in these roles.

Andrew Saunders is an independent Board Director for Eastern Health, Dental Health Services Victoria and HiMSS Asia Pacifid, as well as Director of Digital Health Advisory. This followis his extensive role as the Health Sector Chief Information Officer and Director of Digital Health at the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services. There, he led the development and implementation of the Digitising Health Strategy and was also responsible for driving the development and implementation of a state-wide health ICT framework. Andrew is an accomplished business executive with a successful track record of leading complex transformational change across the health, financial services and government sectors. His expertise ranges across strategy, planning, change management, program delivery, digital health, risk management, financial governance, enterprise architecture and service management.

Previous roles have included Transition Director for Wesfarmers Industrial and Safety, Chief Executive of WorkSafe and Transport Accident Commission IT Shared Solutions, Executive General Manager of Projects and Technology for the Transport Accident Commission, Chief Information Officer to the Government Superannuation Office and Head of ICT Strategy and Planning for Colonial Australian Financial Services. Andrew has also been a non-Executive Director of Alfred Health, and chaired the ICT Board committee and was a member of the Risk and Audit Committee.

Dr Byrne has approximately 20 years’ experience as a rural GP throughout Queensland and joined the Darling Downs Hospital and Health Service (DDHHS) in 2013 as the Director, Clinical Governance.

He was Medical Superintendent at Mitchell Hospital for five years, before commencing as Director of Medical Services in Roma and the Executive Director Medical Services for South West Queensland.

Dr Byrne is currently acting as both the Executive Director Medical Services and Executive Director Rural. In these roles Dr Byrne is responsible for providing professional leadership for medical services across the DDHHS and single point accountability for the Rural
Services Division and Residential Aged Care Facilities.

Martin has a passion for compassionate patient care and is currently the Executive Sponsor for Indigenous Health. He and his wife, have three sporting children plus a working farming property on the Darling Downs.

Professor Rajesh Vasa currently leads the innovation efforts at Deakin Software and Technology Innovation Lab. He has over 2 decades of experience spanning both industry and academia with deep skills in data science, artificial intelligence and complex software systems design.  His career spans roles in development, operations and executive leadership in projects and organisations across the world.  Recent work included building intelligent homes for aged care, reducing traffic congestion, improving health care using artificial intelligence, and automating the process of innovation. Notable work in the field of health involves use of low-cost sensors in aged care, improving decision support in trauma care, and detecting epileptic seizures using recent advances in machine learning.

Dr Sudanthi Wijewickrema is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Surgery (Otolaryngology), University of Melbourne. She is a Computer Scientist and holds a PhD in Computer Vision from Monash University (2004-2008).  For the first 5 years of her post-doctoral career, Sudanthi worked as a Research and Development Engineer in the fields of Computer Vision, Image Processing, and Machine Learning. Since 2012, at the University of Melbourne, she has been working in Surgical Simulation, where Virtual Reality, Haptics, and Machine Learning technologies are integrated to create self-directed training solutions for surgeons.

Adjunct Associate Professor Tam Nguyen is a senior executive of research at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne responsible for research strategy, research business development and research administration. Tam leads a dynamic team dedicated to providing innovative solutions to facilitate health and medical research, which includes the Research Valet® Service, St Vincent’s Bridge™ program linking clinicians and industry. His team leads the sector initiative in building the Victorian Clinical Trials Gateway™ web portal with the support of the Victorian government aiming to attract new clinical trials to the state.

Tam is a qualified Bioengineer with a PhD in Biomechanics and an MBA in general management with honorary appointments at RMIT University and Melbourne Medical School.

Earl is a professional information technology strategist and project manager with 15+ years of healthcare IT experience, with special expertise in managing relationships and priorities among competing stakeholders. He has demonstrated excellence in taking complex projects smoothly from concept through go-live, with strengths in cost control and on-time delivery. Other than being an insightful troubleshooter and problem solver, Earl also has strong cross-cultural communication skills with the proven ability to thrive in a global marketplace

In the late 90’s Scott began his career via a volunteer role, assisting people in need choose donated Christmas presents for their family through the Port Adelaide Central Mission. Since then, Scott has completed studies in Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs, and also holds a Bachelor of Psychological Science with Honours.  Scott spent his 20’s working in recreation with institutionalised youth affected by schizophrenia, intellectual disability, and other mental health concerns. Five years ago, Scott took a left hand turn, and moved from working with youth, to working in aged care for people affected by homelessness, via the Wintringham organisation. In this role, Scott has worked broadly within the recreation team, running recreation programs across multiple Wintringham sites, coordinating recreation activities for Wintringham clients living independently and also running Wintringham’s regional volunteer program.

Stephen Canaris is the Director of the Data & Analytics Service for Metro South Health – Australia’s first fully Digital Health Service.  With over 12 years’ experience in the Digital Healthcare environment, Stephen currently leads the delivery of Analytic Services and products for five hospitals – specialising in real-time and strategic visualisation and transformative use of clinical and operational data.

Professor David Gillatt is a leading prostate and bladder cancer surgeon with more than 25 years’ experience who currently holds the position of Director of Medical Services and Professor of Urological Oncology and Robotics at MQ Health/Macquarie University Hospital, Sydney. Prof Gillatt is also recognised as one of world’s foremost robotic surgeon in the treatment of both prostate and bladder cancers having performed more than 2000 major resections in his career. He specialises in urology and nephrology and is well known for introducing the Enhance Recovery program for cystectomy, which was the first of its kind globally.

For the last 15 years he has concentrated on urological cancer surgery. As a result, he has one of the largest experiences of pelvic cancer surgery in the UK and Europe.  In 2008 Professor Gillatt introduced a robotically assisted surgery program and has performed approximately 1000+ cases. He introduced and designed a systematic method of training for both established surgeons and trainees on the robot console.   

Before joining Macquarie University Hospital, Professor Gillatt was Clinical Director of Urology at Southmead Hospital; and Medical Director of the Bristol Urological Institute, where he established the Prostate Cancer Care and Research Centre. The centre has gained a national reputation as one of the foremost research organisations for urology in the UK.

His research interests are both in clinical trials and basic science and for 16 years was the Bristol Chief investigator for the national Protect study. David has expertise in the discovery and optimisation of biomarkers for early prostate cancer diagnosis and prognosis, and in the effect of ketamine abuse on bladder function.

A key focus of David’s current role is strengthening the Macquarie University Hospital’s multidisciplinary team approach to prostate cancer care that already sees coordinated services engage all relevant specialities with the aim of delivering outstanding patient car. Professor Gillatt welcomes new patients in his room at Macquarie University Clinic.

Jane works with organisations, including Public Hospitals in Australia, to shape the services they deliver as well as their workforce culture and capability. A key aspect is consumer engagement – leading to patient centred care ad best outcome. Kairos Now uses and teaches Human Centred Design techniques, tools and culture elements. 
 
Her projects typically involve consumer engagement within the healthcare system and how organisations can provide products, IT and services that address the needs of the consumer at the heart. This involves developers and digital platform designers to be able to reframe the problems their platform will solve for and WITH the consumer. 
 
Jane is the Founder/CEO of Kairos Now Pty Ltd. Kairos Now is a boutique Design Thinking Consultancy that assists organisations to differentiate themselves by reframing problems and creating real value with customers, consumers and their families. We look at how your organisation runs. We understand the problems and strategic challenges you have. We provide a framework and work with you to solve these problems.

With over 20 years in the technology industry, Eric has worked in diverse areas of information technology from document management to manufacturing, online marketing and digital security.

In the past five years Eric has focused his professional life on digital health technology.

 As the Digital Health Manager at the Sydney North Primary Health Network, he is leading a broad range of digital programs. These are aiming to support the smoother transitions of care and the delivery of a simplified health care system for the community including the My Health Record Expansion, Secure Messaging Delivery between GPs and Residential Aged Care Facilities, and Digital Maturity in the Private Health sector.

Andrés has over 15 years’ experience specialising in the delivery of transformational IT programs and strategies, that deliver tangible business outcomes across for-profit and not-for-profit businesses. He has both international and domestic experience within Aged Care, Health and Governments, and has also owned and run his own consultancy firm. 

 He has delivered outstanding results in some of the most challenging cultural, technological and diverse places in the world, including the successful delivery of the largest financial management transformation that has ever been done in the Pacific.   He is a dynamic leader that is also innovative and passionate about people.

 Andrés is the Chief Information Officer at PresCare, a large not-for-profit provider of Aged Care Services for nearly 90 years, and also includes five commercial businesses – Surecom, Contented Chef, MWD, Walk-On-Wheels and Adapt Health Care.  He is now working with Greg Skelton (CEO) to innovate new solutions that will help transform not only PresCare but also the Aged Care market.

Bruce Pedersen is recognised as Australia’s most respected authority for strategy and execution in healthcare. For over 30 years he has been highly sought after by executives and CIOs to ensure the successful delivery of their healthcare systems.

Bruce’s corporate career began in health IT, starting as a management trainee when the first personal computers entered the workforce. He later became a CIO, delivering all sizes of ICT projects for large hospitals and healthcare organisations in Australia and New Zealand. In his role as State Program Director, he spearheaded the implementation of EMR across New South Wales – one of the largest successful EMR implementations anywhere in the world.

Bruce has led IT roadmapping exercises, pre-go live checks and post-go implementation reviews, as well as quality assurance reviews for numerous private and public healthcare organisations. He also worked for large consulting houses, such as Ernst & Young and then SMS Management Technology, serving as their Regional Director for New South Wales.

As founder of The Checkley Group, Bruce works with area health services, hospital boards and agencies in reviewing programs, setting strategies, and providing advice on staffing.

He is the author of the recent book, “What’s Your eHealth Strategy”.

Troy is an experienced IT professional with over 25 years of IT management and consulting expertise across a range of sectors, with an emphasis on research and analysis, as well as systems development and implementation. He spent four years from 2012-2016 in the role of both Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Data Officer (CDO) in the healthcare sector and was involved in developing and implementing a number of key initiatives involving both government and private sector organisations.

He currently works with organisations to help guide them in transforming their businesses by implementing and leveraging best in class IT solutions to improve both improve/streamline business processes and to enable clients to make better use of their information, people, IT systems allied technologies. A believer in the use of evidence-based approaches and developing new ways to analyse all ones data/information assets, he is currently working on the development of solutions that allow for the analysis and of unstructured data in ways not previously possible through the use of graph database technologies.

Raj Verma has been involved in working with clinicians, managers, executives and patients in improving health systems since 1995. Raj has delivered many large scale projects through structured project management, significant stakeholder engagement, and a focus on deliverables and results.

Raj has worked to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health care services through new models of care at almost every point of the patient journey. These include models of Emergency Care, redesigning Hospital in the Home services, Integrated Care, Improving Patient Experience and creating the NSW Patient Experience Survey.

He has been involved in running and sponsoring the NSW Centre for Healthcare Redesign since its inception in 2007.

Raj gained his initial clinical experience working as a hospital Medical Laboratory Scientist at Royal Darwin Hospital.

Raj is passionate about service improvement and innovation.

Grahame Grieve is HL7’s Product Director for “FHIR” – the leading healthcare data exchange standard of the future. Grahame has a background in laboratory medicine, software vendor development, clinical research, open source development and has also conceived, developed and sold interoperability and clinical document solutions and products in the Australian market and around the world. Grahame has worked to develop standards and solutions with several US vendor consortiums, and the national programs of Canada, England, Singapore, and Australia

Dr Tal Rapke, is a trained physician with 20+ years of health experience as a strategist, a digital health player, an entrepreneur, and a bio-pharmaceutical industry expert. He spent five years in New York City in digital health and strategic consulting, and 7 years at Sanofi in various roles including most recently their Innovation Director. He has been building ScalaMed, a blockchain based health startup, over the last two year – dedicated to empowering patients with health record, in order to revolutionise the future of healthcare. 

David is a businessman and entrepreneur with a deep background in information technology and digitally-enabled business models. David’s passion is to support businesses where talented engineers are brought together with great ideas to deliver digital products that people love to use. David has extensive “in the trenches” experience in the field of software product development. In 2004 David founded software production house Agile Digital. He has successfully grown Agile Digital into a multi-disciplinary team with a reputation for expert large-scale software development across both the public and private sectors.

Anthony Maeder joined Flinders University in April 2016 as Chair in Digital Health Systems and subsequently established the Flinders Digital Health Research Centre. His previous appointment was as Professor in Health Informatics at Western Sydney University, where he founded the Telehealth Research and Innovation Laboratory (THRIL) in 2010.  Prior to that he served as Research Director of the CSIRO Australian eHealth Research Centre in Brisbane, from 2004 to 2008. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society, and a Fellow of the Australasian College of Health Informatics.  He is currently a member of the Standards Australia IT-14 Health Informatics Committee. Professor Maeder was president of the Australasian Telehealth Society in the period 2010-2012, and joined the Governing Board of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth in 2013.

Carolyn Jensen has been at the forefront of innovation in the Australian cardiology sector for over 25 years.  Originally coming from a cardiac science background at St Vincent’s in Melbourne, she entered the pharmaceutical industry before transitioning into the medical imaging and devices sector.  Carolyn has worked with several key opinion leaders in Australia to address complex PACS networking solutions. 

Carolyn was also previously the General Manager of GE Healthcare, Lifecare Solutions, and more recently the Business Unit Director for St. Jude Medical, Electrophysiology and Cardiac Rhythm Management for ANZ.  Carolyn established Cardio-Jenic in 2016 with the motto “Innovation, not iteration in diagnostic cardiology” with a belief that there were validated innovative solutions available internationally that could support Australian clinicians in providing a better healthcare service to the Australian community.

Associate Professor Brent Richards is Medical Director of Innovation and Director of Critical Care research at Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service, and Associate Professor at Griffith and Bond Universities. He was previously director of ICU for 15 years, an executive director of Surgery, and chair of the state Intensive Care network. He helped design and commission the new 50 bed ICU in the Gold Coast University hospital.

Brent’s research interests are wide ranging, both as a foundation member of the ANZICS CTG and numerous commercial multi-centre trials over the last 20 years, as well as interest in how technology and devices can improve patient outcomes. As part of this he has initiated a programme looking at heart rate variability in critically ill patients.

Brent has been involved in Information systems and eHealth projects since the early 1990s, including the Queensland Health Information Strategy and Investment Board, and as the Project Executive for the State Intensive Care Clinical Information System.

Realising the opportunities and responsibilities in the big data sets being created in ICU and other Health areas, in conjunction with University colleagues in biomedical sciences, Engineering and Computer sciences, Brent is working on ways to expand, interrogate and understand these data sets, using predictive analytics and neural networks, for clinical understanding, business KPIs and research opportunities, and ultimately improved patient outcomes.

Additionally he is working in collaboration with the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge precinct building an ecosystem for AI enabled Healthcare, attracting large and small companies, researchers and educators to realise the gains possible with these technologies.

Professor Ingrid Winship is the Inaugural Chair of Adult Clinical Genetics at the University of Melbourne and The Royal Melbourne Hospital, commencing in November 2006.
She was also at the this time appointed as Melbourne Health’s Executive Director of Research and during her 12-year tenure Prof Winship made significant contributions to improve research capacity and activity within the organisation, including the launch of a Clinical Trials Research Centre in the city campus; the establishment of the Melbourne Genomics Health Alliance; and programs to increase engagement for women in research.
A graduate of the University of Cape Town, she is dual trained in clinical genetics and dermatology. In 1994, she moved to New Zealand to take an academic position at the University of Auckland where she later became Professor of Clinical Genetics within the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. She was Clinical Director of the Northern Regional Genetic Service, a comprehensive genetic service based in Auckland that she initiated in 1995. In her last five years in Auckland she was Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Professor Winship is currently a member of the Victorian Cancer Agency Reference Group, and is on the Board of the Australian Genome Research Facility. She is on the executive management committee of the Melbourne Genomic Health Alliance, Scientific Advisor to the Human Variome Project and a member of the Strategic Advisory Council of the Kinghorn Centre for Clinical Genomics. She is Chair of the Australian Health Ethics Committee and a member of the Health Research Strategy External Advisory Group for New Zealand.

Matthew is a highly regarded Business Solutions Expert and author of several scientific peer reviewed articles. He has a Master of Business Administration from the Australian Institute of Business and is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (MAICD). Matthew currently sits on the board of Precision Cancer Care as a Non-Executive Director.
Matthew is a sought-after speaker on topics ranging from digital innovation to industry transformation. With a strong understanding of emerging trends, Matthew continues to develop healthcare ICT operations locally.

Ian Varughese is the founder of Axonium, a blockchain technology company that provides a trusted, value driven health data exchange platform that rewards individuals and organisations for the consented use of their private and ethically sourced health data.

Ian has a passion for integrity and efficiency in data analysis, and system design & development which has resulted in continual work with stakeholders at all levels of government and private organisations. He bridges the gap between IT capabilities and business requirement.

He is also the Managing Director of Modillion Technology (modillion.com.au), a specialist IT company delivering scalable and reliable business management tools for organisations looking to improve operating processes through smart data web based systems.  All system solutions are based on a proven set of contextually agnostic code that has been developed and is fully owned by Modillion Technology.

His proprietary code and design methodology has been proven to work in wide range of sectors and environments.  Ian’s systems are used in government departments, private and publicly listed companies, and non-profit organisations in Australia and the United States.  Past & present clients and projects include: WA Department of Health, Fiona Stanley Hospital, Perth Children’s Hospital, Ramsay Health Care / Joondalup Health Campus, Deloitte Touché Tohmatsu, and WA Department of Education.

Associate Professor Vasilios Nimorakiotakis (Bill Nimo) has worked at Epworth for over 20 years. He has special interests in Retrieval Medicine, Medical Student Education and Adult Education, and is a senior Educator at the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine. He also has a special interest in clinical toxinology (all things bites and stings) and research. He recently developed an interest in VR/AR and looking at ways this technology can be used in medicine now and in the future.

Professor Erwin Loh is Chief Medical Officer and Executive Director of Innovation, Patient Safety and Experience at Monash Health, Victoria’s largest health service. Besides being a current Board Member of the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, he is also on the Board of the Monash Health Research Precinct and the Australasian College of Legal Medicine (where he is also Vice President). He is adjunct Clinical Professor at Monash University where he teaches clinical leadership and management. He is the Chair of the Victorian State Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Administrators. He has academic interests in health leadership, health law and medical futurology.