Allied Health Research Symposium

Prof Joshua Byrnes

Prof. Byrnes is the Director for the Centre for Applied Health Economics in the School of Medciine and Dentistry at Griffith University. His research expertise centres on the design and analysis of studies for the purpose of measuring and demonstrating value in health. Working across government and public health policy, health care services and models of care, and technologies; collaborating with clinical researchers. To date he has published over 150 journal articles, including publications in leading journals across disciplines including: Health Economics, New England Journal of Medicine, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Value in Health and Health Services Research. He is a chief investigator on NHMRC and MRFF grants, as well as numerous commercial and government contracted research projects. He has had significant impact and influence on policy, practice and funding decisions in the Australian health system including national initiatives regarding: plain packaging tobacco legislation, pregnancy warning labels on alcohol, and opt-out arrangements for the MyHealth Record. He is passionate about generating and disseminating health economic insights and to work with others to create improvement.

Dr Daniel Roitman

Daniel commenced as the Deputy Chief Allied Health Officer in April this year to further increase Commonwealth engagement with the allied health sector. Daniel is a practicing pharmacist with a Masters in Public Health and is currently completing a PhD in global health at the University of Melbourne. He has worked for Commonwealth and state governments and most recently held an executive role in the Victorian government COVID-19 Policy and Strategy Branch. Daniel is passionate about finding the balance between patient-level interactions and system reform.

Dr Brent Richards

Adjunct Professor Brent Richards is an Intensive Care Specialist, Medical Director of Research Commercialisation and Professor of Critical Care Research at Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service, and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Queensland AI Hub. Previous roles have included: Director of ICU (15 years); Executive Director of Surgery; Chair of the State Intensive Care Network; and Medical Director of Innovation.

Brent is working on ways to expand, understand and interrogate the growing static and streaming Healthcare Data for continuously growing clinical understanding, business KPIs and research discovery. Particularly focussing on AI-enabling technologies, he is working collaboratively with Industry, Government and Universities to unlock the positive disruptive potential that AI can bring to Healthcare, continuously improving both patient and system outcomes. To this end, Brent has helped establish a large multi-centre ICU-centric clinical and medical IoT data platform for research discovery and algorithm development, and is helping a number of researchers work on AI-enabled projects across many aspects of the patient journey. In addition, recognising the increasing need for rapid innovation in Healthcare, he has also helped initiate a Clinician Entrepreneurship course
jointly between the GCHHS and Griffith University.