Shayne Tong
Chief Digital Officer
Auckland District Health Board

Shayne has been the Chief Digital Officer for Auckland District Health Board since February 2017 reporting into the Chief Executive Officer.  This is a key leadership role within Auckland DHB and the Northern Region DHBs to become a regional integrated digital healthcare ecosystem to more than a quarter of New Zealand’s population 
Shayne is accountable for strategic leadership and direction in Auckland DHB and Northern Region DHBs at Executive level, driving digital healthcare transformation, digital innovation, cloud enablement, advanced analytics and data science, service delivery excellence through enhanced customer experience, and maintaining influential strategic relationships within Auckland DHB senior leadership team, the Board and various sub committees, the Northern Region DHB and regional entity healthAlliance to ensure the successful delivery of services to Auckland DHB and the regional 10 year Information Technology Strategic Plan.  He is currently chair of the National Digital Health Leadership Forum and just been recognised, placing #10 in the NZ CIO50 for 2020. 

Alistair Vickers
Chief Information Officer
Compass Health

Alistair has almost 20 years’ experience working in IT, including roles as CIO for MetService and Wellington Water, IT Manager for Plunket, CTO for Parliamentary Service and Technology Manager, Metering for Vector. Alistair moved to New Zealand in 2003 from the UK, after a varied career in teaching, merchant banking and IT – amongst others. He spent five years in Chad and Algeria as a boy, and has worked in France, Germany, Israel and Australia, as well as the UK and New Zealand. Alistair’s main areas of interest are in the innovative use of technology to drive new opportunities for service improvement and benefits realization into all organisations and their customers. He was an early champion for and adopter of Cloud Computing, and Smart Metering and the Internet of Things in New Zealand. Nowadays, the focus is on using Business Intelligence and Big Data, Agile/Lean practices, social and mobile integration to improve collaboration and create an environment for success. Alistair’s areas of responsibilities include developing, maintaining, and supporting ICT systems that support Tū Ora Compass Health strategic initiatives, and overseeing and managing of the ICT Services department. 

Alex Forsyth
Director Allied Health Scientific and Technical
Whanganui DHB

Alex is the Director of Allied Health, Scientific and Technical, as well as Operational lead for Primary and Community services at Whanganui DHB. She is also a doctoral student at Auckland University of Technology. Alex has over 20 years experience in health across NZ and the UK, both as a Speech and Language Therapist and in various leadership roles.  Alex has specific interest in whole of system healthcare and delivery of equity in health outcomes across urban and rural communities. 
She has been leading clinically in the implementation of telehealth within Whanganui DHB, rapidly progressed in response to covid-19.

Karen Blake
Head of Clinical Informatics
healthAlliance

With more than 20 years in the health sector, Karen's experience spans clinical practice in both Australia and New Zealand as well as time spent in management, education and senior policy roles. She brings together the worlds of clinical practice and IT systems and processes through her work as a clinical informatician at healthAlliance. 
She's also regularly called on to put out fires. This isn't a euphemism - she's a volunteer fire fighter in her spare time.

Tracy Voice
Chief Digital Officer
Wairarapa, Hutt Valley, and Capital & Coast District Health Boards

Tracy Voice as Chief Digital Officer, 3DHB ICT has recently created a Greater Wellington Digital Strategy for the three District Health Boards and the wider health ecosystem. Tracy has an appetite for innovation and emerging technologies and has a primary objective to digitally transform the DHBs way of working while ensure data interoperability is enabled and new data insights are achieved. 
Prior to joining the DHBs, Tracy was the Director, Business Technology and Information Services (CIO) at the Ministry for Primary Industries.  Tracy was instrumental in creating the right platforms and efficiencies for the Ministry to operate over an eight year period. In 2017 Tracy won a public sector scholarship to study offshore of which this took her to Oxford University where she participated in a number of studies particularly focused on Digital and new ways of working. Tracy led the Border Sector digital committee and sponsored the 3D X-ray and AI technologies which are now operating at Auckland airport for biosecurity purposes.

Robyn Whittaker
Clinical Director of Innovation
Waitemata District Health Board

Robyn Whittaker is a public health physician and Associate Professor at the National Institute for Health Innovation at the University of Auckland. She is Clinical Director of Innovation at Waitemata District Health Board where she leads the Leapfrog Programme of strategic projects focused on digitising hospital systems. Her research interests are in developing and evaluating mHealth interventions that use behaviour change theory and techniques to help support healthy behaviour change and self-management support for patient groups. She is an invited member of the WHO Digital Health Technical Advisory Committee, WHO Committee on Ethics and Governance in AI for Health, management team of the MedTech Centre of Research Excellence, National Telehealth Leadership Group, Ministry of Health’s Digital Investment Board and Business Design Council.

Nigel Millar
Chief Medical Officer
Southern DHB

Nigel came to New Zealand from the UK in 1992 as a Geriatrician and General Physician. He became Clinical Director of the Canterbury Older Persons Health Service in 1994 and then CMO in 2003 transferring to Southern in 2016. Nigel has worked to develop and improve health services, particularly for older people over the years including initiating and leading the InterRAI aged care assessment programme, leading the development of information systems regionally and nationally including the Health Connect South and Health One systems. Nigel has also played a role in disaster and emergency response including the Christchurch Earthquakes and more recently Covid-19. He continues clinical practice as a Geriatrician and Physician in addition to the CMO role. Nigel is a lifelong cyclist and advocate for active transport. 

Sue McCarthy
Healthcare Industry Lead
Amazon Web Services

Sue is a Healthcare and Life Sciences leader and a member of the AWS global Healthcare and Life Sciences team.  Being a clinician, she feels strongly about arming healthcare professionals with the appropriate technology to achieve exemplar patient care. She is excited to see where cloud takes healthcare – The Art of the Possible. 
Sue has over 20 years of commercial experience in healthcare within the APAC region, whilst also maintaining her registration with AHPRA.    Her background includes engagements in health informatics, digital health, acute and aged care in the public, private and NFP sectors.  
Sue holds a Bachelor of Nursing and a Graduate Certificate in Business and is a Member of the Australian College of Nursing.

Webinar facilitator:

Rebecca McBeth
HiNZ News Editor

Rebecca McBeth joined the HiNZ team as editor of eHealthNews.nz in January 2018. Rebecca was previously news editor at Digital Health Intelligence in London and prior to that, was the senior health reporter at The Christchurch Press, where she won a NZ Canon Media Award and a NZ Reporting Diversity award. Based in Auckland, she is committed to communicating news, experience and knowledge throughout New Zealand’s data and digital health sector.