NIISQ at “New era of healthcare” Future Led Forum 

L-R: Dr John Tellam, Vivienne Neilan, Dr James Fielding, Dr Dimity Dornan, Fiona Armstrong. 

Director of Innovation, Vivienne Neilan, recently participated in Liquid Interactive’s panel event: The new era of healthcare: Personalised, technology-enabled and human-centric. 

The Future Led series hosts panels of multidisciplinary experts to look beyond the horizon and explore emerging trends and issues, to debate and share their insights, innovations and solutions for a better future.   
 

Improving communication is essential 

Vivienne shared her thoughts on how improving communication is essential in the new era of healthcare. She stated that in her experience, the reality of patient-centred care is often a disjointed, siloed experience for the participant, particularly when communication fails.  

“When we say we’re going to put people at the centre of their care, that language is still quite disempowering. Participants feel like they’re in the eye of the storm, with all this madness swirling around them,” Vivienne said. 

“Participants often speak about the trauma of having to repeat their stories time and time again.” 

Supporting the model with innovation  

Vivienne said that patients are already taking control of their health through digital technologies and will demand the acceleration and adoption of more digital tools.  

“As a patient, you have ChatGPT at your fingertips and you can Google your symptoms. You can have 10 different apps to monitor your health.  

“So, when you go into your GP or hospital and your doctor doesn’t know anything about you, when you’ve given this information time and time again, this change will come from the people. People will say ‘this isn’t good enough; things need to change’.” 

Improving the experience for everyone 

Many stories about families and loved ones feeling like they weren’t seen or heard by doctors and treating teams were shared. 

“To make that situation better, [people] need to advocate for themselves. I know it’s sad that it falls back on us, but because that experience is unique to us, we need to be giving feedback and communicating that this is not okay,” Vivienne said. 

Data, faith and trust 

The discussion turned to centralised data and related themes of trust and faith, with the importance of patient advocacy in owning their data at the forefront of the conversation.  

Vivienne stated that patients expect greater access to their health information that supports their right to make informed decisions about their healthcare journey. 

“People have their own thoughts about how they want to share their data, and you might find that if you give them some ownership it might break down some of those barriers to trust.” 

 Other discussion topics included enabling education and health literacy and the importance of prevention in balancing costs. 
 
Panel members: 

• Dr Dimity Dornan, Founder and Chair at Bionics Gamechangers Australia 
• Dr James Fielding, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Audeara 
• Vivienne Neilan, Director of Innovation at the National Injury Insurance Scheme (NIISQ) Agency 
• Dr John Tellam, ED Senior House Officer, Transformation Advisory at Queensland Health 
• Fiona Armstrong, CEO & Partner at Liquid (Moderator).