Morning tea with IHealthE

Welcome & open | Wednesday 8th February, 2023

Aunty Maxine Ryan, a Dharawal woman from the La Perouse Community of Botany Bay, warmly welcomed all to Bedegal and Gadigal Lands of the Eora Nation. Aunty Maxine opened the day's proceedings and reminded us that we need to look after the land and look after one another.

Dr David Tsai chaired the session and Prof Nigel Lovell, Director of Tyree IHealthE, opened proceedings for Day 2 of Digital Health Week 2023. Prof Lovell also recorded a welcome for all attendees which can be viewed here.

Chaired by Dr Peter Brown, the session commenced with a keynote talk from Prof Farah Magrabi, Professor of Biomedical and Health Informatics at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. Farah gave some interesting comparisons of how AI is used in healthcare and across other industries. She also shared current challenges, and AI's potential in clinical settings including question answering for both clinicians and consumers, assisting humans with decisions, or to make decisions in clinical settings.

Farah also focused on meaningful strategies to avoid climate disaster, educating ourselves and reducing wasteful use of technology. Read the article from the discussion.

Farah was joined in a panel by A/Prof Beena Ahmed, and Prof Kim Delbaere, and moderated by Dr Ian Goon. The panel discussion emphasised the potential for AI to support consumer-led and preventative practice in healthcare to meet the diverse needs of communities and individuals. The panel also discussed the many challenges including clinicians and consumers understanding what technology is telling them and making sure to harness learning from experience. The use of technology also needs to be concise to minimise waste and fulfill an actual need with all human factors addressed.

View the full program and speaker bios here.

The keynote and panel session was followed by an in-person networking session, hosted at UNSW. Chaired by Rodrigo Rizzo, it was a great opportunity for attendees to have informal discussions and meet others. Congratulations to the lucky door prize winners who each received a ticket to the Digital Health Festival 2023.

A very big thank you to the UNSW Digital Health Week 2023 Organising Committee:
Dr Peter Brown, Dr Dorna Esrafilzadeh, Dr Snow Li, Rodrigo Rizzo, Dr David Tsai, Jacqueline Wells. You can read all of the profiles here

UNSW digital health week satellite events

As part of the Digital Health Week 2023 activities we were privileged to partner with UNSW Founders, The George Institute for Global Health, and Talking HealthTech to finish the day with two really exciting events!

Interactive session | Alternative career pathways beyond the PhD

From 3.00pm-4.00pm Dr Joseph Po ran a fantastic interactive session that covered alternative career pathways beyond the PhD. This session was for anyone curious about exploring other options, with Joseph providing information on opportunities and skill-sets outside of the research world.

Panel & Networking | Opportunities and challenges for digital health innovators, bringing their solutions to the market

Day 2 of Digital Health Week 2023 was wrapped up with an exciting event hosted at UNSW Founders. A full house attended a panel discussion on the opportunities and challenges in bringing digital health innovations to the market, featuring A/Prof Beena Ahmed, Dr Amandeep Hansra and Guy Tsafnat and moderated by Dina Titkova. The panelists highlighted the importance of co-designing health innovations with clinicians, how important digital literacy is to the improvement, and adoption of digital innovations in healthcare, and discussed the ups and downs of the start-up journey.

The session concluded with an opportunity to talk to others and expand networks in this really important space.