Gillian Mason is a person with heaps of time-consuming medical appointments, is disabled, chronically ill, a physiotherapist and rehabilitation researcher. At Hunter Medical Research Institute, for the University of Newcastle, she manages the Priority Research Centre for Stroke and Brain Injury’s Stroke Research Register, and its consumer engagement and communication strategy. She is a science communicator for the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Stroke Rehabilitation and Brain Repair. As a clinical research assistant for the Centre for Rehab Innovations, her focus is on innovating solutions for delivering individualised rehabilitation in the home and community setting. Living with multiple chronic illnesses, she has gained insight into and lost patience with inflexible healthcare. Without radical change, the way healthcare is delivered in Australia will continue to both restrict people with chronic illness from accessing healthcare itself, by design, and limit the time, energy and cash left over for participation in employment and society more broadly. Gillian is busy overcoming her own learned ableism to properly value and leverage her lived experience expertise as an advocate for meaningful consumer involvement in health and medical research.

An expert in Internet of Things and artificial intelligence combining hardware, software and cloud for enabling intelligent interactive devices, his work in medical technologies on multidiagnostics and VR simulations is well recognised.

Telemedicine and digital health entrepreneur Dr Ohannessian, MD MPH, is a medical doctor from Paris, France, who specialises in public health. He is the co-founder and medical director of Télémédecine 360, a global consulting company dedicated to support the international development and deployment of telemedicine and telehealth. He is also academic researcher in France on teleneurology and telestroke, and board member of the French Society of Digital Health.

Aetna International is a managed healthcare company committed to helping create a stronger, healthier global community by delivering comprehensive healthcare benefits and population health management solutions. One of the largest providers of international healthcare benefits, Aetna International serves more than 900,000 members worldwide, including expatriates, local nationals, and business travelers. Its global benefits include medical, dental, vision and emergency assistance.

Coming soon.

Jo Lewis is a Nurse Practitioner working in country South Australia at the Kapunda and Eudunda Medical Practice located 77 km north of Adelaide. Jo provides a range of primary health care services across the lifespan including immunisation, women’s health, chronic disease management and preventative health care.

Before working as a Nurse Practitioner Jo was a Registered Nurse within the practice and spent 3 years working in an urban Melbourne General practice. She also worked at the local Kapunda hospital for a number of years and has extensive experience in cardiovascular nursing in a range of locations including metropolitan Adelaide and Cairns.

Her educational qualifications include a Bachelor of Nursing having gained her Registered Nurse qualification via hospital-based training at St Andrews hospital in Adelaide, followed by a specialist certificate in cardiovascular nursing. Jo completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Primary Care nursing from the University of Melbourne in 2015. In July 2018 she was awarded a Master of Nursing (Nurse Practitioner) from Flinders University.

Jo enjoys implementing innovative models of care

Associate Professor Christopher Pearce is a practising clinician in general practice, emergency medicine and anaesthetics. He is also a health informatician, with an international standing in the fields of data, workflow and usability. In Outcome Health he assists with the development of research infrastructure, and in the POLAR program, particulalary in the area of data governance.

Working with our government partners to deliver Australia’s leading telehealth services draws on Karen’s extensive private and public sector experience.

Prior to joining Healthdirect Australia in 2019, Karen was the inaugural CEO of Jobs for NSW, where she launched the Sydney Start-up Hub. Her multi-sector, market, channel and cross-industry experience including health (Johnson & Johnson, ResMed) honed her expertise in leading organisational transformation and growth in emerging and mature markets in Asia/Pacific, the USA and Europe.

Karen holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney and was a NSW finalist for Telstra Businesswoman of the Year 2017. Karen was also a member of the NSW Export Advisory Council. She is based in Sydney and speaks fluent German.

Karen is an experienced public speaker and has been invited to present at a range of events. Whether delivering plenary keynotes, hosting intimate lunches or facilitating C-suite round table discussions, her style is relatable, adaptable and always tailored to the audience.

Karen is a media commentator on the challenges and benefits of integrating telehealth services into a modern health system, improving access to quality healthcare for all Australians no matter where they live. See recent examples here and here.

Dr Shane Jackson has broad clinical, policy and research experience across several areas of pharmacy and healthcare in general. His interests lie in medication safety, quality use of medicines and optimisation of medication use in practice. He is a former National President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia and led a number of activities associated within the PSA directed at improving the safe and quality use of medicines. He is currently a policy advisor to the PSA.

The PSA in 2019 has published a number of reports, Medicine Safety: Take Care, Pharmacists in 2023, Connecting the Dots: Digitally empowered pharmacists as well as Pharmacists in 2023: Roles and remuneration which all point to the future of pharmacy practice.

Shane is also practicing community pharmacist, and owner of three community pharmacies in Tasmania and has significant clinical experience in aged care settings.

He has significant academic and research experience having completed a PhD in pharmacy practice and a fellowship with the National Institute of Clinical Studies on translational clinical research.

Kylie Appel is passionate about making a positive impact in the world and in 2016 launched the inaugural TOM: Melbourne (Tikkun Olam Makers) community program which has grown exponentially to become a social impact entity and not for profit organisation with purpose.

TOM create and build products that improve the lives of people with disability – focused on making AT (assistive technology) more accessible and affordable for greater inclusion and diversity.

Kylie is currently the Executive Officer at TOM and manages the technology, innovation, communication and programming team. TOM: Melbourne is part of a larger global network with 65+ TOM communities around the world.

Ben is currently GM Australia for Soul Machines, a ground-breaking high-tech company of AI researchers, neuroscientists, psychologists, artists and innovative thinkers who are re-imagining how we connect with machines.

Michelle is one of the founding directors of Beyond. She is also a Board Member of Osteopathy Australia, the peak association for Osteopaths in Australia.