Improvement and Innovation Showcase - Series 15 - Adopting Digital and Data-based Innovations in Healthcare

Our Improve­ment and Inno­va­tion Show­case brings togeth­er teams from across the health sys­tem to con­nect, share and explore their expe­ri­ences of work­ing towards bet­ter health­care for all South Australians.

Data and tech­nol­o­gy are key enablers for a bet­ter health­care sys­tem and our June 2025 Show­case focus is ’ Dig­i­tal and Data-based Inno­va­tions’. We have brought togeth­er experts who can share per­spec­tives on what is cur­rent­ly occur­ring in this are­na through the work they are doing. 

With a series of four diverse pre­sen­ta­tions there is some­thing for every­one. Hear com­pelling dis­cus­sions from health­care experts from South Australia’s lead­ing organ­i­sa­tions as they share their insights either on deliv­er­ing inno­va­tions to the mar­ket or those who are enablers of inno­va­tion adop­tion.

The show­case is a free, tick­et­ed online webi­nar held over con­sec­u­tive weeks in the month of June. We have 4 fan­tas­tic ses­sions lined up start­ing week­ly from Thurs­day, 12^th June 2025.

Episode 44: AutoMedic — Improv­ing med­i­cines safe­ty with col­lab­o­ra­tive dig­i­tal process improvement 

Date: 12 June 2025
Time: 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm (ACST)

Med­i­cines are among the most fre­quent­ly used health­care inter­ven­tions, yet med­ica­tion-relat­ed harm remains a lead­ing cause of pre­ventable hos­pi­tal admis­sions. Clin­i­cians, par­tic­u­lar­ly phar­ma­cists, often work with­in frag­ment­ed data envi­ron­ments where crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion about pre­scribed, dis­pensed, and admin­is­tered med­i­cines is scat­tered across sys­tems. This not only increas­es work­load and stress but also cre­ates unac­cept­able risks for patients, espe­cial­ly those with mul­ti­ple comor­bidi­ties or vul­ner­a­ble health con­di­tions. The AutoMedic project will cre­ate a dig­i­tal­ly enabled work­flow that mean­ing­ful­ly trans­forms the process and safe­ty of sup­port­ing med­i­cines man­age­ment across tran­si­tions of care. 

Join us for an insight­ful pre­sen­ta­tion on how the AutoMedic project is rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing med­ica­tion safe­ty through col­lab­o­ra­tive dig­i­tal process improve­ment and dis­cov­er how we can reduce pre­ventable harm and enhance patient care. 

Speak­er Bio:

Michael Bakker (B Pharm FANZ­CAP (Infor­mat­ics), Chief Phar­ma­cy Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer, SA Phar­ma­cy, Statewide Clin­i­cal Sup­port Ser­vices, Depart­ment for Health and Wellbeing)

Michael Bakker, Chief Phar­ma­cy Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer, SA Phar­ma­cy and PhD can­di­date, spe­cial­is­ing in human-in-the-loop AI for clin­i­cal deci­sion sup­port. Michael brings over a decade of expe­ri­ence at the inter­sec­tion of health­care, tech­nol­o­gy, and strate­gic sys­tem redesign. He has led statewide dig­i­tal med­i­cines ini­tia­tives and is a recog­nised leader in dig­i­tal health trans­for­ma­tion. In his cur­rent work, he focus­es on how tech­nol­o­gy can mean­ing­ful­ly sup­port clin­i­cians, improve med­ica­tion safe­ty, and dri­ve sus­tain­able change. 

Reg­is­ter for the event 

Episode 45: Dig­i­tal Health­care Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty – For­rest Gump or Peter Parker?

Date: 19 June 2025
Time: 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm (ACST)

“Health­care data is like a box of choco­lates…..”

Health­care has strug­gled to lever­age the remark­able tech­nol­o­gy leaps of the last 25 years that have trans­formed oth­er indus­tries. Inter­net, mobile devices, cloud, voice & ges­ture con­trol, wear­able sen­sors and automa­tion are just a few that haven’t real­ly made their way to the every­day in health­care. Yet.
Now AI is on the scene and we want that yes­ter­day too. Not for technology’s sake, but because these things can pro­found­ly improve healthcare. 

And health­care matters. 

“With great data comes great inter­op­er­abil­i­ty (or is that the oth­er way round?)”

How do we get nice things? By estab­lish­ing stan­dard pat­terns and prac­tices that make our data exchange cheap, reli­able, fast and effi­cient. Find out how SA Health must (and will) be an indus­try leader in imple­ment­ing the Nation­al Health­care Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty Plan, and what that means for Health­care transformation. 

Don’t miss this excit­ing pre­sen­ta­tion where Marc explores the future of dig­i­tal health­care inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and how SA Health is lead­ing the charge in trans­form­ing health­care with smarter, faster, and more reli­able data exchange. 

Speak­er Bio:

Dr Marc Belej (MBBS, FAIDH, GAICD, Finance & Per­for­mance Board Com­mit­tee Mem­ber – SAL­HN, Con­sul­tant – Cha­monix IT Solu­tions & Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty Archi­tect – Dig­i­tal Health SA)

Marc is a dig­i­tal health­care leader with a pas­sion for build­ing fast, effec­tive, and user-friend­ly solu­tions that gen­uine­ly improve health­care for clin­i­cians, patients, and sys­tems. With a career span­ning med­ical prac­tice, co-found­ing a suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal health­care com­pa­ny, and exec­u­tive roles at major dig­i­tal health­care providers, Marc has thrived on inte­grat­ing emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy and indus­try stan­dards to mod­ern­ize health­care deliv­ery. With hands-on expe­ri­ence in both clin­i­cal prac­tice and soft­ware design and deliv­ery, com­bined with busi­ness strat­e­gy and com­mer­cial results, Marc strives to bring togeth­er clin­i­cal, tech­ni­cal and admin­is­tra­tive teams togeth­er to deliv­er real impact. Marc is an active con­trib­u­tor to indus­try groups such as the AIDH, HL7 Aus­tralia and Sparked, and is a grad­u­ate of the Aus­tralian Insti­tute of Com­pa­ny Direc­tors and a cer­ti­fied FHIR Devel­op­er. He is cur­rent­ly dri­ving the Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty Pro­gram at Dig­i­tal Health SA. 

Reg­is­ter for the event

Episode 46: Enabling inno­va­tion in health through exec­u­tive lead­er­ship of data

Date: 26 June 2025
Time: 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm (ACST)

Data should under­pin all deci­sion mak­ing. To enable this, we need to be able to get the ​‘right data, to the right peo­ple, at the right time’. This is what good Data Gov­er­nance achieves. Data is also increas­ing­ly desired to be used in AI, which comes with some addi­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions for gov­er­nance and assur­ance. SA Health have been work­ing towards cre­at­ing the gov­er­nance and assur­ance envi­ron­ment that enables inno­va­tion and data-dri­ven deci­sion mak­ing while ensur­ing meet­ing leg­isla­tive require­ments and safety. 

Join Joshua to explore how exec­u­tive lead­er­ship is shap­ing the future of health through smarter data gov­er­nance and innovation. 

Speak­er Bio:

Dr Joshua Ross (Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Data, Ana­lyt­ics, and Insights, Depart­ment for Health and Well­be­ing; Prin­ci­pal Research Fel­low, SAHMRI)

Dr Joshua Ross is cur­rent­ly the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Data, Ana­lyt­ics, and Insights in the Depart­ment for Health and Well­be­ing, SA Gov­ern­ment. Joshua has a PhD in math­e­mat­ics (sto­chas­tic mod­el­ling) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land, and was a Junior Research Fel­low at King’s Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, and an ARC Future Fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide. Pri­or to join­ing SA Health, he was a Pro­fes­sor of Math­e­mat­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ade­laide and Prin­ci­pal Research Fel­low at SAHM­RI. His career has been focused on using data to pro­vide action­able insights and was the lead mod­eller for SA Health dur­ing the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Reg­is­ter for the event 

Episode 47: Inno­va­tion = Cre­ative Prob­lem-Solv­ing in Action

Date: 03 July 2025
Time: 1:00 pm — 2:00 pm (ACST)

How a coun­try town rewired what it already had to keep peo­ple home and healthy.

What if you could cut read­mis­sions with­out buy­ing a sin­gle new plat­form?

In South Australia’s River­land, Ren­mark Med­ical Clin­ic joined forces with the local hos­pi­tal net­work, Rur­al Sup­port Ser­vice and CEIH to find out. Togeth­er they took every­day assets — remote-mon­i­tor­ing kits already sit­ting on store­room shelves, an exist­ing health coach­ing ser­vice, an under-used GP refer­ral por­tal, a sim­ple risk algo­rithm, and a fort­night­ly team meet­ing ros­ter — and stitched them into one proac­tive ​“Region­al Care Con­nect” workflow. 

Join Marie to dis­cov­er the prac­ti­cal, repeat­able steps — deep need-find­ing, rapid co-design and relent­less cross-sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion — that turned a small rur­al tri­al into a roadmap for statewide transformation. 

Marie Less­ing (Direc­tor of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Rur­al Sup­port Ser­vice, Depart­ment for Health and Wellbeing)

Marie Less­ing is an accom­plished dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion leader with over 20 years’ expe­ri­ence span­ning clin­i­cal prac­tice, ICT strat­e­gy, and health­care inno­va­tion. As Direc­tor of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion for the Rur­al Sup­port Ser­vice, Marie has led the mod­erni­sa­tion of region­al health­care ser­vices across South Aus­tralia. Notably, she trans­formed a grant-fund­ed remote health mon­i­tor­ing ini­tia­tive into a sus­tain­ably fund­ed pro­gram under activ­i­ty-based fund­ing. This required redesign­ing clin­i­cal work­flows, redefin­ing ser­vice mod­els, and mod­ernising dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture to align with patient and sys­tem needs. A key achieve­ment under her tenure was the migra­tion of the region­al data ware­house from an on-premis­es envi­ron­ment to a secure, scal­able cloud-based plat­form. Rather than out­sourc­ing, Marie lever­aged and upskilled exist­ing inter­nal teams — sup­port­ing their pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment while build­ing long-term organ­i­sa­tion­al capa­bil­i­ty. Marie brings a rare dual per­spec­tive as both a for­mer clin­i­cian and a sea­soned tech­nol­o­gist, under­pinned by qual­i­fi­ca­tions in Nurs­ing and Com­put­er Sci­ence. Her career includes enter­prise-scale dig­i­tal pro­grams in both the UK and Aus­tralia, with exper­tise in sys­tems inte­gra­tion, ICT gov­er­nance, and dig­i­tal enable­ment in com­plex health envi­ron­ments. She is a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for region­al inno­va­tion, known for dri­ving sus­tain­able dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ground­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion, capa­bil­i­ty build­ing, and ser­vice excellence. 

Reg­is­ter for the event