Dr Martin Seneviratne
Clinician Scientist, Google Health
I am thrilled to welcome the global informatics community to Sydney in July for MedInfo 2023, jointly hosted by the Australian Institute of Digital Health and the International Medical Informatics Association. The first MedInfo was hosted in 1974 in Stockholm. Almost fifty years on, the field has come so far and today it represents one of the most dynamic, interdisciplinary, transformational sectors of health care. The MedInfo ’23 program is a testament to that and a celebration of the diversity in our field.
We often focus on the technological innovations that incrementally advance specialist care in high-resource settings. But the true power of digital health comes in its ability to scale care – to bring quality healthcare into new areas, be that a remote island community or the equally disconnected island of a patient’s own home. This is what the conference’s theme – ‘THE FUTURE IS ACCESSIBLE’ – means to me.
You will see something quite unique in this year’s program: every day begins with a patient voice on the plenary stage. We will hear from Liz Salmi, an inspirational patient advocate who is leading the charge for making clinical notes visible to the patient. Then on that same stage, we go on to hear from the researchers and technologists partnering with patients to create that accessible future. We will hear from Alain Labrique, the director of digital health at the World Health Organization; Graham Grieve, the creator of the FHIR data model that is becoming the lingua franca of health care; Helen Bevan, who is transforming the NHS from the ground-up. There will be innovation tours to some of Sydney’s leading hospitals to see best-in-class digital health care in action – and, of course, many opportunities to experience the (also best-in-class) beauty of Sydney Harbour!
So if you are a leader in digital health – a clinician, a researcher, an entrepreneur, a health system executive (or one of the many hybrids that define our field) – register now for MedInfo, July 8-12th.