Speakers

Prof Gavin Andrews: Gavin Andrews AO MD is Professor of Psychiatry at UNSW at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. He is interested in the problems of the elderly and in the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety and depression, both in the clinic and especially over the web. Professor Andrews directs a WHO Collaborating Centre to further the revision of ICD-10.. He is also heavily involved in work towards revising DSM-IV towards DSM-V; he was a member of the first meeting to plan the research agenda, and is a member of the Anxiety Disorders and of the Disability Workgroups. He has argued that both classifications are unnecessarily complex. Invited by both WHO and the APA, both he and David Goldberg are working to produce a simplified classification that will be robust in clinical use.

Assoc Prof David Austin: David is a clinical psychologist and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences at Swinburne University. David’s research work relates to investigations of cognitive models of anxiety disorders, psychometric evaluations of psychological assessments, and on the efficacy of internet-based treatments for mental health disorders. David is also the Co-Editor of the e-Journal of Applied Psychology (e-JAP). David has been a key contributor in the development of Anxiety Online,  an internet-based ‘virtual’ treatment clinic for Australians with anxiety disorders. 

Prof Branko Celler: CEO Telemedcare systems a leading Australian designer and manufacturer of Home Health Monitoring systems and the Director of the Biomedical Systems Laboratory and the Laboratory of Health Telematics at the University of NSW. He was also Foundation Director of the Centre for Health Informatics at the University of NSW and is a Foundation Fellow of the Australian College of Health Informatics. Whilst maintaining his University role part time, Branko is now CEO of TeleMedCare Pty Ltd, a company established to commercialise telehealth technology developed at the University of NSW.  Over the last ten years he has focused his research on applications of information and communications technology (ICT) in health. Branko is internationally recognized for his innovative research contributions in developing information and communications technologies for the management of chronic disease in the community.

Prof Enrico Coiera: Director, University of NSW, Centre for Health Informatics, Key research interests include: 

Developing models of human-computer interaction to support the rational, appropriate and sustainable development of technological interventions in health care.

Developing of advanced knowledge management and decision support tools to assist with clinical decision making, including advanced search engine technologies.

Understanding the impact of poor communication systems on health care delivery, with a focus on their role in error and inefficiency, as well as the development of technical and non-technical solutions to improve health organisation communication.

Julie Grasso is a registered nurse with extensive experience in the field of paediatric burns. She held a position as the clinical nurse consultant for burns in the Royal Children’s Hospital Brisbane for 6 years prior to joining Diversionary Therapy Technologies in 2008 as their business development manager. She has been greatly involved in research and development in the field of burns and authored and co-authored many papers in this area. Julie has also been involved in the development of Ditto from the very beginning and today will present to us Ditto, diversionary therapy and procedural preparation for children.

David Holloway. David is a Registered Nurse and has been writing and commentating on technology since the early 1990's, with an emphasis on online collaboration and virual worlds.  From the text-based MUD and MOO worlds of twenty years ago to the current 3D immersive experiences of worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft, he has observed the growing power of the avatar. In 2006, david created The Metaverse Journal (www.metaversejournal.com), a virtual worlds news site with an Australian Focus.  He also regularly commentates on virtual worlds for ABC Melbourne, Fairfax and News Limited newspapers and Crikey.com.au.  With postgraduate qualifications in health and business, particular passions for David are the opportunities and challenges of virtual world for health and for business.  

James Kavanagh: James is the lead architect for Microsoft Australia in working with public and private health care organisations.  His primary focus is in supporting the adoption of eHealth in Australia through policy, business and technical engagement.  Over the last number of years, James has led Microsoft's consulting division for state government and previously been the lead architect on several major government and health programs. 

Dr Michael Legg: Michael is Principal of Michael Legg and Associates, a consultancy in Information and Organisational Systems. He has more than 20 years experience in senior positions in the health industry. Before establishing ML&A he was Director Developments for Pathology, with what was then Australia's largest private health care group, Mayne, and before that General Manager of Southern Pathology, winners of the Australian Quality Award for Business Excellence. He has been involved for many years in health informatics standards setting with Standards Australia and HL7 and has served on many National Committees including the National Health Information Standards Advisory Committee and the Australian Health Information Council's subcommittee for Electronic Decision Support.  He is President of HISA and leader of HISA’s Pathology and Bio-informatics Special Interest Group.

Dr George Margelis: George took on the role of Industry Development Manager for Intel’s new Digital Health Group in November 2005. For him it was an opportunity to take an active role in changing the way healthcare was delivered in Australia. Prior to moving to Intel Australia he has been very active in the healthcare informatics arena as the CIO of a private hospital group in Sydney, manager of an innovative software development group developing solutions for healthcare providers and consumers, and board member at the state and national level of the Health Informatics Society of Australia.

Adam Powick: Adam Powick is a Deloitte Partner with over 20 years consulting experience in Australia, Asia and the United States and is currently the national leader of Deloitte’s information technology consulting practice. Adam has undertaken significant IT consulting work in the health sector and recently led the Deloitte team that worked with a wide range of sector stakeholders to develop the national eHealth strategy. In addition to this work, Adam has provided eHealth consulting services for clients including NEHTA, Queensland Health, DHS (Vic), DoHA, DHHS (Tasmania) and the DHS (Vic) HealthSMART program.  

Mandy Salomon: Senior Researcher, Faculty of Life and Social Sciences: Based at Swinburne University of Technology, Mandy scopes the impact of the networked world on business, production and society. Her specialist interest is online environments and communities. She reports on a range of issues content creation, community building, media practice and consumption, new business and service delivery models, and entrepreneurship.

Prior to this, Mandy worked a journalist, writer and producer in radio, television, newspapers, theatre and documentary film. In 2008-9, Mandy wrote the column Web Watch, for the Age Newspaper, which chronicles the disruptive nature of emerging web practices for a general readership.

Mandy holds degrees in Arts and Communication. She was a representative at the Virtual Worlds 2008 Conference, New York and LA and a panellist at the Harvard, Yale and New York Law School convened 'State of Play V' Conference in Singapore in 2007. Locally, Mandy has contributed to AMIA, AIIA, World Internet Partners (WIP), Monash Law School, AFTRS and Asia Link initiatives in this emergent field. She is associate editor of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (USA) and a foundation member and conference convenor of the Australasian Virtual World Association.

Mr. Sanjeewa Samaraweera Chief Operating Officer, Medtech Global
Sanjeewa is the Chief Operating Officer of Medtech. He has been involved in the design and architecture of ManageMyHealth and today leads and champions the Medtech ManageMyHealth initiative. Sanjeewa holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and has held senior roles in very successful consulting and systems integration practices at Pricewaterhouse Coopers Consulting (now IBM Business Consulting) and Unisys in the Asia Pacific region. He has a wealth of experience in formulating and implementing business strategies, managing projects and programmes, delivering large-scale information systems implementations, delivering complex integrated technology solutions, managing client and vendor relationships, managing strategic alliances and managing diverse teams and people.

Ben Sawyer  (talking via an avatar from the Metaverse): Ben Sawyer is the co-founder of Digitalmill (www.dmill.com), a technology project consulting firm in Portland, ME. Sawyer has worked in and covered game development for over eight years. He is the author of the best-selling Creating Stores on the Web and Game Developers Marketplace. His company has authored several analyst reports on the gaming industry and it managed the development of The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's university simulation game: Virtual U which was an Independent Games Festival finalist in 2000.

Sawyer has been a former contributing editor to Game Developer Magazine, and has written for it and its online sister publication Gamasutra.com. Recently Sawyer helped found the Serious Games Initiative (www.seriousgames.org) with U.S. Government's Woodrow Wilson Center think-tank to foster the development of public policy management games. One of Sawyer's previous books, The Game Developers Sourcebook (Coriolis, 1996) was given a Game Developer Magazine choice award in 1998. He is also the author of Monster Gaming also published by Paraglyph.

Dr Stuart Smith: Stuart completed a PhD in Experimental Psychology at Macquarie University in 2000 followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Following his time at NASA, Stuart held academic positions at Trinity College and University College Dublin. In 2006 he contributed to a successful bid to set up the Technology Research for Independent Living centre in Dublin (http://www.trilcentre.org). In 2007 Stuart returned to Australia to take up NHMRC Career Development Award to investigate how telehealth technology might be used to reduce the risk of falls in older adults. He is currently using video games to train stepping responses in older adults and is actively engaged in developing game technology for other health applications.

David Stokes: David is the Manager, Professional Issues, for the Australian Psychological Society.  In that role he develops programs of support for professional psychologists. He also authors official submissions, policy and position statements for the Society.  This necessarily involves representation and engagement with all National and State Governments and is a member of a range of national consultative committees. 

Currently, this has meant considerable involvement in e-health.  As the representative of a profession that is closely involved with, and one of the major provider of services to, mental health consumers, David is keenly aware of the issues that the electronic health record raises in relation to personal rights to privacy, confidentiality and informed consent.

David is trained as a clinical neuropsychologist and worked for many years in the public health system as a clinician and manager in a large Melbourne public health facility.  He understands at close hand the practical nature of record-keeping and its implications for consumers.  He still conducts a small private practice and sees first-hand the benefits of a more comprehensive and readily available health record.  Finding the right balance between needs for care and privacy is his objective.

Bruce Winzar: Bruce is Chief Information Officer of the Loddon Mallee Health Alliance and is also Executive Director of Information Services responsible for ICT, applications and medical records at Bendigo Health.