Michelle Nelson-Cox

Ms Michelle Nelson-Cox possess exclusively 30 years of practical experience in Aboriginal health. She is the former Chairperson of the Aboriginal Health Council of WA, Executive Board member of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organization, Executive board member of WA Health Translation Network, Chairperson of the WA Aboriginal Health Planning Agreement, previous board member of Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service for almost 25 consecutively years.

Yarlalu Thomas

Yarlalu Thomas is Aboriginal Nyangumarta Pitjikarli person from the fringe of the Great Sandy Desert. He is a current medical student at the University of Western Australia where he aspires to be apart of the effort in improving health care for rural and remote areas. Yarlalu is the inaugural recipient of the Roy Hill Community Foundation precision public health fellowship at the West Australian Register of Developmental Anomalies. Yarlalu was also awarded as Western Australia’s Young Australian of the Year in 2019. For the past year, he has been involved in Pilbara Faces, a 3D facial imaging project aimed to create rapid, non-invasive and more accessible health care for Aboriginal children living with Rare and Genetic Diseases. His work involves working in the community to understand facial variation amongst ATSI people and implement this new technology to solve an existing health problem. Another project he manages is Lyfe Languages where he is apart of a team of other young Indigenous people looking to bridge language and cultural barriers through the translation of complex medical terminology.

Sebastian T. Koenig, Ph.D., Dipl.-Psych.

Director, Katana Simulations Pty Ltd; Experimental Psychologist; Human Interface Technology Engineer

Context-sensitive rehabilitation has been proposed and applied as an alternative to a decontextualized, process-specific cognitive rehabilitation approach, most notably by Mark Ylvisaker and colleagues. A significant body of research has been conducted over the past 25 years that lends support to using clinical virtual reality (VR) in various clinical domains. The technological advances of the past five years have finally put affordable VR technology in the hands of consumers at scale. This presents a unique opportunity to consider VR systems for delivery of context-sensitive rehabilitation to a broad range of patient groups. This presentation will introduce a rationale for using clinical VR tools to contextualize rehabilitation, by creating meaningful customized VR scenarios that adapt to a patient’s individual circumstances. An overview of technical, clinical and design considerations is presented and supplemented with past and present projects as well as a discussion of future trends and opportunities.

Ali Fardinpour, Ph.D
Executive Director, Wise Realities Institute for Healthcare Emerging Technologies Research; Immersive Technologies Research Scientist

Dr Ali Fardinpour is an Immersive Technologies research scientist and the founder and Executive Director of Wise Realities Institute for Healthcare Emerging Technologies Research. Ali has been conducting research on computer simulations and immersive technologies for more than a decade in education and healthcare. Ali is deeply passionate about helping those challenged by health issues through innovation; enabling young researchers and innovators to grow; and contributing to the future of healthcare, as a human right, to be equally accessible and affordable for all. Ali is leading the field towards the future state-wide, national and international constructive community-led research collaborations. He is seeking to mentor the next generation of health researchers and innovators with a deep understanding of both technology and health. He has established Wise Realities as a platform for the health services, academic institutions, medical research institutions, start-ups and communities to have access to centralised synergic research & development and technological resources to advance the quality of care through collaboration and innovation.

Shawn Parr
CEO, Calytrix Technologies

Shawn is the CEO and Co-Founder of Calytrix Technologies. With over 30 years’ experience in the IT industry, the last 20 years in the Military Training & Simulation (T&S) domain, Shawn brings a wealth of knowledge and delivery experience to the organisation. Calytrix Technologies focuses on the delivery of training and simulation solutions in the defence and humanitarian disaster response sectors. Providing highly qualified training experts supported by a team of talented software and simulation engineers, Calytrix blends experience and technology to create world-class training environments; ranging from first-person desktop training and VR/AR experiences to fully federated and globally distributed Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) simulation architectures. Calytrix has the experience and people to support a wide variety of training needs. Shawn holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree from the University of Queensland and a research-based Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) in Component-Based Software Engineering from Griffith University.

Tracey Wilkinson, Ph.D
Commercialisation and Partnerships Manager, Telethon Kids Institute and Co-Founder of the WA Digital Health Accelerator

In her role at Telethon Kids, Dr Wilkinson observed the need to better understand the commercialisation pathway for the many digital health tools under development at the Institute. This led to the creation of the WA Digital Health Accelerator, which launched in Western Australia in 2019 to develop and deliver the State’s first digital health-specific commercialisation programs. These include two leading commercialisation and entrepreneurship training programs – ANDHealth/Planet Innovation (PI)’s BRIGHT Futures for Digital Health, built upon PI’s proven BRIGHT Framework and Stanford’s globally recognised Biodesign innovation process, which will run as a partnership between Perth Biodesign and leading digital health technology company, Curve Tomorrow. Uniquely, the programs combine industry-led expertise with proven frameworks for teaching innovation to provide tailored advice and thinking models specifically for digital health entrepreneurs.

Pip Brennan
Executive Director, Health Consumers’ Council (WA) Inc

Pip Brennan is the head of WA’s patient advocacy non-profit, the Health Consumers’ Council. The organisation is dedicated to ensuring people can make informed choices about their health care, and be part of the decision-making process in health policy, planning, review and research. While Pip began her journey as a maternity consumer representative, she has broadened her scope of interest right across health and human services. Effectively engaging with consumers in immersive design is absolutely critical and Pip will share her insights and experiences of how to do this well.