The Health Innovation Community (HIC) conference, themed “It Starts with Us”, was a powerful reminder that change begins within the collective “us”.
Keynote speaker, Suzanne Waldron, set the tone with a straightforward message: "Do one thing about one thing." She shared the idea that in today’s overwhelming healthcare landscape, taking on too much reduces our impact. Instead, Waldron advocated for focusing on manageable pieces of the puzzle, encouraging us to share the load and collaborate across our community.
The discussions around design highlighted that it is not an art form but rather a science of creating solutions people truly need and will use. Service design, especially in healthcare, must align with real-world needs, delivering services that are accessible, practical and increasingly digital. As people now expect digital entry points in their healthcare journeys, designing with this in mind is essential.
Professor Clair Sullivan from the Digital Health Centre at UQ shared her eye-opening insights into the impact of electronic medical records (eMRs) in a session entitled ‘Take the red pill: Current state of digital health in Australia’. Slow and clunky systems contribute to clinician burnout, yet digital maturity within organisations appears to correlate with lower turnover rates. The challenge is to create tools that not only solve problems but also promote wellbeing. Her reflections tied back to Waldron’s theme – if we don’t start by doing even just one thing correctly, we risk falling behind.
The new era of healthcare panel: (L-R) Dr James Fielding, Kate Wylie, Dr John Tellam, Vivienne Neilan and Fiona Armstrong.
Following this session, I joined a panel discussion on ‘The new era of healthcare’. Moderated by Liquid CEO, Fiona Armstrong, panellists Dr John Tellam from Queensland Health, Vivienne Neilan from NIISQ, Dr James Fielding from Audeara, and I discussed the future of healthcare and how we can make quality care more equitable, proactive and patient-focussed.
In the inspiring session ‘Why learning to fail intelligently is crucial for digital health innovation’, Ross Hadfield and Melissa Andison urged us to embrace both intelligent futures and failure. They explained that failing early and with purpose is crucial to innovation in digital health. Their guidance helped attendees better understand their roles as innovators, which will be key as we collectively push for advancements.
Liquid CEO, Fiona Armstrong, shared insights from our work developing the Head to Health website and highlighted how health system workflows can be improved by ensuring customers are at the heart of service design. This session dedicated to ‘Improving workflows’ was shared by Ryan Mavin from the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), where he outlined the broader healthcare digital infrastructure plan and how the ADHA is working towards addressing the challenges of interoperability.
AI was a major focus of the conference. We were reminded that while AI can process vast amounts of unstructured data and offer recommendations, it still requires an accountable human touch. The key lesson? Use AI to free up clinicians to be more human, letting them focus on what truly matters – patient care. The potential is immense: from AI-assisted documentation to task prioritisation, these tools could give back valuable time to healthcare providers, time that can be redirected toward patient interaction. However, this future hinges on effective interoperability – a major sticking point.
There was a lot of good conversation around innovations like CSIRO’s Sparked initiative and the potential of fully integrated tech stacks. And the challenge of implementing these solutions given the entrenched systems many health services currently rely on. The path forward is clear: we need to adopt standards, work with vendors who prioritise interoperability, and invest in systems that are built for the future.
As we reflect on the insights from the conference, it’s evident that as a community, we hold the power to shape a digitally enabled healthcare ecosystem that truly enhances patient care. Together, we can build better futures – one step at a time.