Events

Associate Professor Liam Caffery, Centre for Online Health, Centre for Health Services Research, University of Queensland

Liam is an Associate Professor in Telehealth and Director of Telehealth Technology for the University of Queensland's Centre for Online Health. Liam is involved in telehealth service development, delivery and evaluation across a broad range of telehealth services. His research is centred on pragmatic trials of telehealth services, with a special interest in the use of telehealth for Indigenous health and rural health care delivery.

Liam has 25 years industry experience as a health informatician. His previous role was Manager of Medical Imaging Informatics at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. Liam also has more than a decade's clinical experience as a diagnostic radiographer.

Liam is executive member of the Australasian Telehealth Society and the International Teledermatology Society, and a member of the Metro South Health Telehealth Advisory Group.

Professor Adam Elshaug, School of Medicine and School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne

Adam Elshaug, PhD, MPH, is the incoming Professor in Health Policy and Director of the Centre for Health Policy at The University of Melbourne, with joint Chair appointments across the Schools of Medicine and Population and Global Health. He is also a Visiting Fellow with the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy at The Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.

Professor Elshaug leads an international program of work specialising in measuring and reducing low-value care and optimising value in health care. He practices an applied policy approach with approximately half of his time spent working directly with payer and provider organisations. For example, he is a ministerial appointee to the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Taskforce, sits on the Board of Directors of the New South Wales Bureau of Health Information (BHI), an arms-length government agency that publicly reports on the performance of all public hospitals. He is also an economics and policy advisor to Cancer Australia.

Distinguished Professor Jane Hall, Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE), University of Technology Sydney

Jane Hall is Distinguished Professor of Health Economics in the UTS Business School and the Director of Strategy for the Centre. She was the founding Director of CHERE and held that position until 2012. She is a President Elect of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia; and also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. She received the National Health and Medical Research Council Outstanding Contribution Award in 2017; and was named as one of Australian Financial Review/Westpac100 Women of Influence in 2016. In 2012 she was recognised with a UTS Vice-Chancellor's Award for Research Excellence in Research Leadership.  In 2011 she was awarded the inaugural Professional Award made by the Health Services Research Association of Australia and New Zealand, for her outstanding contributions to research, developing the field and mentoring others.

Dr Denise O'Connor, School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine, Monash University

Denise O'Connor is a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director at the Monash Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Cabrini Institute, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University.

She is Director of the Australasian Satellite of the Cochrane Collaboration Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (AusEPOC) Group, the group responsible for publishing Cochrane reviews of interventions to improve health care delivery and systems.

Dr O’Connor’s research is in health services, focusing on the design, delivery, uptake and impact of behaviour change interventions to translate knowledge from research into clinical practice and policy.

Ms Angela Ryan, Australian Digital Health Agency, Australian Government

Angela Ryan is the Australian Digital Health Agency’s Chief Clinical Information Officer. She is the former President of the Australasian College of Health Informatics, and a founding Fellow and Vice-chair of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health.

Angela has 30 years’ experience in hospitals and public sector organisations, with more than a decade’s experience as a paediatric and adult intensive care nurse. In 2017 Angela was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study methods to prevent patient harm through national digital health safety governance and travelled to the UK, USA and Canada as part of the research. She published her report in July last year and is using this to inform policy at a state and federal level.

Professor Anthony Scott, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, University of Melbourne

Anthony Scott leads the Health and Healthcare theme at the Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research at the University of Melbourne. He is an Associate Editor of Journal of Health Economics, and Health Economics, past President of the Australian Health Economics Society, and Board Director of the International Health Economics Association.

Tony is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. He has been an ARC Future Fellow and NHMRC Principal Research Fellow. He holds visiting positions at the University of Aberdeen and the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, and has been a Visiting Scientist at Harvard School of Public Health. Tony’s research interests focus on the behaviour of physicians, health workforce, incentives and performance, primary care, and hospitals. He has consulted and provided advice to the World Bank, Independent Hospital Pricing Authority, Productivity Commission, Medibank Private, and Commonwealth and State Departments of Health. He leads the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL) panel survey of 10,000 physicians, and is a Research Lead Investigator on the NHMRC Partnerships Centre on Health System Sustainability.

Associate Professor Susan Wearne, Health Workforce Division,Australian Government Department of Health and ANU Medical School, Australian National University

Susan Wearne is Senior Medical Adviser in the Health Workforce Division in the Australian Government Department of Health. She is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Australian National University and works as a sessional GP in Canberra.

Susan has been a GP as a partner in York, England; in private practice and for the Aboriginal Medical Service in Alice Springs; and for the Royal Flying Doctor Service at Ayers Rock Medical Centre. Her work for the Remote Vocational Training Scheme, sparked her interest in using technology to facilitate training, and her PhD on remote supervision during GP training.

Susan is working on the National Medical Workforce Strategy as well as other Health Workforce Division programs that focus on the distribution of qualified health professionals across Australia.

Dr Adrian Webster, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australian Government

Adrian Webster heads the Health Systems Group at the AIHW. This Group focuses on the activity, performance and financing of the Australian health system. This includes maintaining the national hospitals data collections, producing the annual record on health spending in Australia, monitoring the performance and safety of the health system and reporting on activity in the medical, dental and pharmaceutical sectors.

Adrian has worked in a variety of roles at the AIHW since 2009 spanning disease monitoring, primary health care data and health and welfare workforce and expenditure monitoring. He is a sociologist with more than 20 years' experience studying and working in the health and welfare sectors in Australia and overseas. This has included heading the monitoring, evaluation and research department in an international aid organisation, providing consulting services to government agencies in Australia such as Medicare Australia and reporting on hospital performance at ACT Health. Before commencing at the AIHW, Dr Webster was working in an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation in remote Australia providing drug and alcohol and community development services.