Digital Health Week 2021 is a collaboration between the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne. It aims to create a space that brings together digital health researchers to share their work, build collaborations, and nurture graduate students and early career colleagues. In 2021 the conference program will be moving fully online with more opportunities to engage with a broader cross-section of researchers, consumers, clinicians, technology designers and students. The theme for Digital Health Week 2021 is Pushing the boundaries of health care.
Speaker bios
Thursday 11th February | Panel discussion ‘Digital Health Black Mirror: What if digital health doesn’t work?’
This year, of all years, we have increased enthusiasm for, and reliance on digital health for enabling the delivery of services. In the rush to enable care in the middle of a pandemic, what have we forgotten to discuss? Whom have we excluded in our service delivery model? This panel discussion explores these questions and others to remind us to think critically about the role of technology in equitable, person-centred care.
Meet the panel
| Associate Professor Jenny Waycott Jenny Waycott is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, working in the interdisciplinary field of human-computer interaction. Her work broadly aims to understand how new technologies can best be designed and deployed to support people’s learning, work, and social activities. Jenny’s current research, funded by an Australian Research Council fellowship, is examining how emerging technologies, such as social robots and virtual reality, are being used to provide social and emotional enrichment in later life, especially in aged care. This research aims to understand the opportunities and challenges these technologies provide, and to inform the future ethical design and use of emerging technologies in aged care. |  |
| Associate Professor Luke Burchill MBBS (University of Melbourne, UoM 1999) PhD (UoM 2010) FRACP (2007). Luke is an Adult Congenital Heart Disease specialist at Royal Melbourne Hospital and an Associate Professor at The University of Melbourne. In 2020, he was recognised by Channel 10’s The Project as a digital health changemaker for his co-design of “RMHive”, a mental health app designed by health care workers for health care workers impacted by COVID-19. As a proud member of Victoria’s Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta communities, Luke leads research and is engaged in national conversations surrounding Indigenous governance and data sovereignty in health care and health research. |  |
| Dr Daniel Capurro Daniel Capurro is a MD, general physician, and PhD in Biomedical Informatics. He is an academic in the School of Computing and Information Systems and the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, both at The University of Melbourne. Daniel has over 10 years of experience in advanced clinical data analytics. His work includes implementation of electronic medical records, clinical informatics, digital phenotyping, and clinical data mining. He founded the Chilean National Centre for Health Information Systems and was Chief Medical Information Officer where he implemented a network-wide Electronic Health Record and other health information systems. He currently leads a team of researchers in the area of digital phenotyping, clinical data analysis, and process mining. Daniel obtained his MD and Internal Medicine specialty from P. Universidad Católica de Chile, his PhD from the University of Washington, USA and is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health and Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association. Daniel is leading the Digital Health Week workshop, Design of Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) from 24-26 February 2021. |  |
| Dr Kobi Leins Kobi Leins is a Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at The University of Melbourne, and a Non-Resident Fellow of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. Kobi represents Standards Australia on behalf of the University of Melbourne to the International Standards Organisation (ISO) as an expert advising on ISO Standards on AI and sits on the Board of the Carnegie AI and Equality Initiative. Kobi is currently conducting research on responsible innovation in AI and the life sciences, and has also been researching the existing laws relating to cybersecurity and cyber resilience in Australia. She has managed programs and teams in the areas of administrative law & justice, humanitarian law, human rights law, and disarmament with the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2006, she worked with the International Service for Human Rights in New York to advocate for the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, after which she worked for the United Nations Secretariat. Her PhD with the University of Melbourne was on international law that regulates the use of nanomaterials in armed conflict. |  |
| Professor Wendy Chapman Wendy Chapman is the Associate Dean of Digital Health and Informatics at the University of Melbourne, as well as the Director of the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health. Her interests include biomedical informatics, natural language processing, knowledge representation, and application of informatics to clinical care and research. Wendy is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the US National Academy of Medicine. |  |
Tuesday 9th February | ‘In Conversation’ Keynote
Professor Leanne Togher, Director, Acquired Brain Injury Communication Lab, in conversation with Mr Nick Rushworth, Executive Officer of Brain Injury Australia. In the Keynote ‘In Conversation’ presentation, an academic and consumer have a conversation about the impact of digital health on their lives and work in traumatic brain injury. We hope that this conversation will re-centre our discussions as researchers, clinicians and technology designers to focus on the person.
 | Professor Leanne Togher is a full Professor at The University of Sydney, Australia, and Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Senior Research Fellow. Professor Togher is internationally recognised with more than 120 papers, 4 books and over 20 book chapters and over AUD$20 million in external grant funding and was awarded the 2018 NHMRC Elizabeth Blackburn - Clinical Research Fellowship prize as the highest ranked female research fellow applicant in the field of Clinical Science and Medicine in the NHMRC Fellowships scheme. Togher’s work focuses on enabling access to healthcare for people with brain injury using digital health. Professor Togher is Honorary Professor at City University, London, UK, and Visiting Professor, Education University of Hong Kong, International Board Member for the Journals Board of ASHA (USA), member of the Board of Governors of the IBIA, and a Director on the Board of Brain Injury Australia. Follow Leanne on Twitter |
 | Nick Rushworth has been Executive Officer of Brain Injury Australia - the national peak advocacy organisation representing the needs of the 700,000 people living with brain injury, their families and carers – since 2008. He was also President of the Brain Injury Association of New South Wales between 2004 and 2008. In 1996, Nick sustained a severe traumatic brain injury as a result of a bicycle accident. Before joining Brain Injury Australia in 2008, Nick worked for the Northern Territory Government setting up their new "Office of Disability". Formerly a producer with the Nine Television Network’s “Sunday” program and ABC Radio National, Nick’s journalism has won a number of awards, including a Silver World Medal at the 2003 New York Festival, a National Press Club and TV Week Logie Award. He serves on a variety of governmental and research advisory committees, is a Director of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, and is an Ambassador for the National Organisation for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and for the Queensland Brain Institute’s concussion research. Between 2017 and 2019, he facilitated a “Community of Practice” in brain injury for the National Disability Insurance Agency. Follow Nick on Twitter |
Artist in residence
Our #DigitalHealthWeek21 artist in residence, Dr. Fereshteh Pourkazemi, will be present during the sessions and will develop art pieces based on the issues explored and solutions discussed. Two of these artworks will be auctioned after the event, with proceeds going towards selected charities.
 | Dr Fereshteh Pourkazemi is a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney and a musculoskeletal physiotherapist, with over 15 years of practice, teaching, and research in this field. Fereshteh is a self-taught artist who learned by exploring, drawing, and painting from the time she was old enough to hold a pencil. As a passionate artist, researcher, and educator, her research and practice aims to bring the Arts, Health and Education together and address different aspects of human pain with a holistic view of its complexities. You can view Fereshteh’s artworks on her website Paintalogic |