Artificial intelligence (AI) is already transforming healthcare. We’re seeing an acceleration in AI-driven systems, tools and data – and it’s changing the way we work and deliver care.
The 2026 Queensland AI in Healthcare Symposium brought together experts, innovators and industry leaders to highlight recent advances and explore how AI could transform diagnosis, treatment, patient care and hospital operations across Queensland.
Symposium recordings
Keynote speakers
Our distinguished keynote speakers included:
Professor Mark Braunstein – Advanced AI for patients care
Visiting scientist, eHealth Research Centre, CSIRO; Emeritus Professor in Practice, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA; Honorary Professor, University of Queensland
Professor Mark Braunstein's career-long focus on health informatics began with developing a Problem-Oriented electronic Medical Record (POMR) in the early 1970s. Currently, his focuses on data standards, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), and applications of artificial intelligence to healthcare. He is Emeritus Professor of the Practice at Georgia Tech, Honorary Professor at The University of Queensland and Visiting Scientist at the CSIRO Australian e-Health Research Centre.
Professor Enrico Coiera – Realising the benefits of AI in healthcare
Director of the Centre for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University
Trained in medicine and with a computer science PhD in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Professor Enrico Coiera has a research background in both industry and academia, with a strong international research reputation for his work on decision support and communication processes in biomedicine. Professor Coiera is the founder of The Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAAiH); the Alliance has been working with partners and stakeholders to support and accelerate the adoption of AI-enabled healthcare in Australia since 2018.
Bettina McMahon – Front door AI assistance for patients seeking care – a win-win for everyone
Chief Executive Officer, Healthdirect Australia
Bettina McMahon is the Chief Executive Officer of Healthdirect Australia. She is on the Board of SNOMED International, and former Board Chair of the Australasian Institute of Digital Health. She has considerable experience in digital transformation in the health sector over the past 15 years, and across the public sector prior to that. Prior to joining Healthdirect, Bettina was the Interim Chief Executive Officer at the Australian Digital Health Agency, where she had also held executive roles since 2009. Bettina has postgraduate qualifications in public policy, applied finance, business and technology.
Rapid fire presentations – abstracts
- Pilot retrospective evaluation of an AI chest X-ray report generator
Presenter: Aaron Nicholson, Research scientist, e-Health Research Centre, CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, Australia - A machine learning model for personalised heparin dosing in hospitalised patients
Presenter: Prof Michael Barras, Director, Pharmacy Department, PA Hospital; Professor, School of Pharmacy, UQ - Improving clinical efficiency using AI scribe for documentation (ICE-AID study): A cohort study at a quaternary children’s hospital and health service
Presenter: Dr Vishal Kapoor, Consultant paediatrician, Queensland Children’s Hospital - What makes clinicians want to use ambient AI scribes: A multidisciplinary study
Presenter: Simon Townsend, Clinical Consultant Lead, MSH Digital Health and Informatics and Krishna Dermawan, PhD student, School of Business, UQ - Clinician and patient perspectives of AI scribes within hospital allied health settings: A mixed methods study
Presenter: Dominic Wall, Implementation Lead, Digital Transformation and Research, Gold Coast Health - From bytes to bedside - Detecting sepsis earlier with the Qld Sepsis Prediction Algorithm
Presenter: Dr Paul Lane, Director, Safety, Quality and Innovation, Prince Charles Hospital; Co-chair, Qld Sepsis AI Working Group - Using AI to rapidly retrieve evidence to inform point of care decision making - the ClinicalKey-AI Project
Presenter: Prof Ian Scott, Clinical Consultant in AI, MSH Digital Health and Informatics; Professorial Research Fellow, Qld Digital Health Centre - Classifying inpatient barriers to discharge using language models
Presenter: Roger Butler, Data scientist, Gold Coast University Hospital - The Adelaide Score – The AI informed hospital discharge planning tool
Presenter: A/Prof Stephen Bacchi, Healthcare Systems, University of Adelaide and Alasdair Leslie, Neurology Department, Northern Adelaide Local Health Network - Using AI to triage referrals to busy outpatient clinics
Presenter: Dr Bernard Whitfield, Director of Ear, Nose and Throat Surgery, Logan Hospital - Clinically-aligned AI for diagnosis in dermatology
Presenter: Professor Tim Miller, TIET-UQ Chair of Data Science, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, UQ - Testing machine learning (ML) based patient deterioration alerts in a clinical setting
Presenter: Dr David Stewart, Director of Intensive Care Medicine, QEII Hospital and Alan Scanlon
Digital Health and Informatics, Metro South Health
Sponsors
Thank you to our sponsors for making this year's symposium possible.
Gold sponsor
Silver sponsors
Bronze sponsors
