Day 1

 

Helen Rizzoli
General Manager Victorian Healthcare Association Health sector diversity across Australia

Leveraging her undergraduate degree and early career roles in Health Information Management, Helen brings board director, executive and operational experience in government, health care providers and professional services working across all Australian jurisdictions an in the Middle East. As General Manager, Sector Capability for the Victorian Healthcare Association, Helen leads the selection, design, development and delivery of professional development programs targeting new and emerging leaders at all levels and from all professional disciplines.

Helen is also responsible for the delivery of all projects through the VHAs consulting arm, the Australian Centre for Healthcare Governance. Helen thrives in roles that allow her to work with health service organisations to develop and embed systems and processes that support sound governance, strategy and risk management and to empower the workforce in these agencies workforce to thrive in their contribution to the organisational vision. 
Helen also provides mentoring and coaching to emerging leaders in health.

 

Ross Buchanan
Director, Digital Information, The Royal Melbourne and Royal Women's Hospitals

Ross Buchanan is currently the Director of Digital Information in the Digital Innovation program at the Royal Women’s and Royal Melbourne Hospitals and is responsible for IT operations across applications, integration, information management and data governance. This perfectly positions him to collaborate with a multi-disciplinary team of technical professionals delivering digital initiatives across the Parkville Precinct as well as closely working with HIM and EMR teams to optimise solution outcomes.

Ross has extensive, longstanding HIM experience within the Victorian public health sector undertaking operational and leadership roles in both acute and community contexts. Although firmly based in industry, he also positions himself in academic practice conducting lectures for La Trobe University as well as being an active HIM Course Advisory Committee member for the university.

Ross offers rich insight into the evolving, empowering and innovating roles of Health Information Managers within the Digital Health context.

 

Cathy Balding
Adjunct Professor Cathy Balding PhD, FCHSM, GAICD
Data Quality for Performance and Governance

Cathy works with human service boards, executives and leaders, specialising in ‘clinical governance systems with purpose’. Starting out as an HIM, Cathy’s career spans quality and health service manager, accreditation assessor and quality policymaker. She was inaugural manager of the ACHS clinical indicator program and the Victorian Quality Council and spent the last 20 years as Director of Quality works, focused on clinical governance systems that support great point of care experiences for clients and staff.
She conducts research into clinical governance effectiveness and is the author of many journal articles, online courses and three books on this topic; as well as developing state-wide clinical governance frameworks for health and human services.

 
 

Cathy is currently Adjunct Professor at James Cook University, and a Board Director with RSL LifeCare NSW. She oversees the Institute of Clinical Governance Membership Community; and is co-host of the No Harm Done podcast and QualityClub, an online coaching program for quality managers

 

Dr Tabitha Healey (Motivational Speaker)
Executive and Organisational Coach | Medical Oncologist / Clinical Hypnotherapist

After 20 years in Medical Oncology and Palliative Care, Dr Tabitha Healey understands what matters most - relationships, health and wellbeing. Recognising that her passion lay in prevention rather than palliation, in 2019 Tabitha established Small moments, Big lives, an Executive Health Coaching Practice with a focus on burnout and evidence-based wellbeing strategies.

Working with professional clients across Health, Education and Engineering, Tabitha challenges individuals to take back control, professionally and personally, with positive reverberations throughout families, organisations and communities.

Alongside her coaching practice, Tabitha is an educator, speaker, clinical hypnotist and sits on a number of health-related boards.

 

Peter O’Halloran JP FAIDH FIML MACS Snr CP MAICD
Chief Digital Officer of the Australian Digital Health Agency

Peter O’Halloran was appointed Chief Digital Officer of the Australian Digital Health Agency in February 2023. As Chief Digital Officer, Peter is responsible for stewarding the national digital health ecosystem, products and standards.

Peter represents Australia as the Australian Delegate to the Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP) and as the Australian Delegate to the SNOMED International General Assembly. Peter is also the Co-Chair of the GDHP Evidence and Evaluation Work Stream.

Peter has been a Chief Information/Digital Officer in the healthcare portfolio in the public service since 2009 and has held senior roles with the National Health & Medical Research Council, the National Blood Authority and ACT Health. Peter was named as Technology Leader of the Year 2024 by itnews.

Prior to joining the Australian Digital Health Agency, Peter was the Chief Information Officer for ACT Health, overseeing the development and implementation of the Territory’s Digital Health Strategy 2019-2029. In November 2022, under Peter’s leadership, ACT Health implemented the Territory’s Digital Health Record based on Epic’s EMR platform.

A Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health, a Fellow of the Institute of Managers and Leaders, a Senior Member & Certified Professional of the Australian Computer Society and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Peter is never bored and is always up to something

 

Day 2

 

Bettina McMahon
CEO Healthdirect Australia

Ms McMahon is a leader of digital transformation in the health sector. As CEO of Healthdirect, which had 84 million interactions with Australians in 2023, she oversees trustworthy virtual services and advice, 24/7 and in multiple languages. Prior to joining Healthdirect, Bettina was the Interim Chief Executive Officer at the Australian Digital Health Agency, where she had also held roles executive roles since 2009, and was involved in setting up the Healthcare Identifiers Service and My Health Record. She has an extensive record of accomplishment in delivering major reforms in complex regulatory and stakeholder environments in Commonwealth and State government roles. Bettina is the Chair of the Board of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health, and has postgraduate qualifications in public policy, applied finance, business and technology.

 

Sallyanne Wissmann
CEO HIMAA

Sallyanne Wissmann is the Chief Executive Officer of the Health Information Management Association of Australia (HIMAA).

Sallyanne has over 30 years’ experience as a leader in health information management in the public and private not-for-profit healthcare environments in Australia and New Zealand.

Sallyanne is a fellow and life member of HIMAA, a Certified Health Information Manager (CHIM), a Certified Health Informatician Australasia (CHIA), and an Associate Fellow of the Australasian College of Health Service Management (AFCHSM).

 

Day 2 - Clinical Coding & Clinical Updates

Christine Boktor
Health Information Manager | Clinical Coding Auditor / Educator at Healthe Care

Christine Boktor is a distinguished Health Information Management professional with over 15 years of diverse experience. Specializing in clinical documentation improvement (CDI), clinical coding, and education, she has a proven track record of enhancing quality and efficiency within healthcare organizations.

Christine has played pivotal roles in building and leading CDI teams, notably at the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and Healthscope. Her leadership extends to chairing committees focused on clinical documentation integrity and supporting internal and external coding audits.

She is passionate about fostering collaborative environments and driving continuous improvement. With dual Bachelor degrees in Health Information Management and Health Sciences from La Trobe University, she combines a strong academic foundation with practical expertise. Currently as the National Clinical Coding Auditor and Educator at Healthe Care, she is dedicated to advancing HIM practices and supporting professional development across Australia.

 

Dr Graeme Duke
Intensive Care Medicine Specialist)

Graeme is an intensive care specialist and the clinical lead for Intensive Care Research at Eastern Health in Melbourne; a member of the Intensive Care Data Committee (Safercare, Victoria); and the inaugural Data Analytic Fellow with the Clinical Analytics and Reporting team at Department of Health (Victoria).

He trained in Anaesthesia, Intensive Care, and Retrieval Medicine in Victoria and South Australia. His best friends are clinical coders and health information managers, and this has resulted in research interests in the use of administrative datasets for monitoring patient safety and quality of care in acute health.

This has resulted in publications addressing hospital mortality and morbidity monitoring, hospital acquired complications, clinical indicators, data analysis and reporting. For something different, over the past 15-years, he has worked part-time in Vanuatu supporting primary health services address non-communicable disease burden.

 

Prof. Karin Thursky (MBBS, BSc, MD, FRACP, FAHMS, FAIDH)
Infectious diseases physician and health services researcher

Prof. Karin Thursky is an infectious diseases physician and health services researcher who has over 20 years’ experience in the fields of antimicrobial stewardship and infections in the immunocompromised host. She has successfully implemented and scaled programs to improve the quality and safety of healthcare and has a national leadership role in antimicrobial stewardship and sepsis.

Her roles include the Associate Director of Health Services Research and Implementation and the implementation stream for the NHMRC National Centre for Infections in Cancer Sciences at Peter MacCallum Cancer Hospital. In her role at the Doherty Institute, Karin leads the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship which takes a One Health approach to AMS across all human and animal health sectors, and is the Director of the Guidance Group at the Royal Melbourne Hospital which develops, implements and scales information technology to support the judicious use of antimicrobials.

 

Clinical Associate Professor Lauren Sanders
Neurologist and Head of Stroke at St Vincent’s Hospital

Lauren Sanders (she/her) is a neurologist and Head of Stroke at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne with expertise in stroke, headache and neuromuscular conditions.

She is immediate past Chair, Division of Medicine, SVHM, Education Committee Chair for the Australian and New Zealand Headache Society, sits on several stroke and spinal muscular atrophy advisory committees and contributes to evidence review for the Australian Stroke Guidelines.

Her PhD examined management of Transient Ischaemic Attack and her research has received several awards including the Peter Bladin New Investigator award (Stroke Society of Australasia) and the Head of School PhD Excellence Award (Monash University).

 

Day 3

James Katte (CHIM CHIA)
Board Director, Senior Vice President | Health Information Management Association of Australia (HIMAA)
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care

James is a qualified health information manager with experience across the public, private and community health sectors. James is the senior vice president of HIMAA, and the chair of the Clinical Coding Task Force responsible for updating the Clinical Coding Practice Framework.