
Talking HealthTech
Conversations with clinicians, vendors, policy makers and decision makers to promote innovation and collaboration for better healthcare enabled by technology.
Learn about digital health, medical devices, medtech, biotech, health informatics, life sciences, aged care, disability, commercialisation, startups and so much more.
Latest episodes

Oct 21, 2019 • 24min
21 - Adam Meredith, Migraine Stopper
Dr Adam Meredith is the CEO, Founder and Inventor of Migraine Stopper, a device that turns off migraines.
Adam is a Chiropractor by trade, with his own group of practices known as the Spine and Health, a Posture Based Chiropractic Centre.
In this interview, learn how migraines come about, some different treatment methods and the theory behind the Migraine Stopper device.

Oct 14, 2019 • 32min
20 - Anna Johnston, Sallinger Privacy
If you work in the healthcare industry you have a huge responsibility when it comes to managing sensitive patient information, whether you’re a big software vendor or a single physiotherapist, everyone needs to follow the same rules, and there are some pretty serious consequences for not doing it properly. Do you know what your obligations are and if you’re doing a good job? Check this episode out to find out!
Who is Anna Johnston
Anna Johnston is one of Australia’s most respected experts in privacy law and practice.
She has qualifications in law, public policy and management, and 26 years’ experience in legal, policy and research roles. Anna has a breadth of perspectives and a wealth of experience to dealing with privacy and data governance issues.
She is the former Deputy Privacy Commissioner for NSW, so she knows the regulator’s perspective and since 2004 is the Director for consulting firm “Salinger Privacy”.
Anna has been called upon to provide expert testimony before various Parliamentary inquiries and the Productivity Commission, spoken at numerous conferences, and is regularly asked to comment on privacy issues in the media.
Anna holds a first class honours degree in Law, a Masters of Public Policy with honours, a Graduate Certificate in Management, a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice, and a Bachelor of Arts, plus a number of other relevant and well regarded certificates and industry associations.
In this Episode you’ll learn
2:08 - About Salinger Privacy
4:55 - Privacy Concerns in Data (with a focus on health tech)
8:15 - All about, privacy reviews, data flows, data governance, and privacy design
14:28 -AI - How does it fit ethically, legally and is policy keeping up with innovation
16:40 - AI - GDPR, challenges for AI with diagnostic decisions
20:10 - AI - Transparency, Accountability and Consent
26:00 - Legal Obligations with Data Privacy
Key TakeAways
When it comes to privacy law in Australia, the same laws and consequences apply to everyone dealing with healthcare information - whether they are a big institution of a single doctor.
While Data Privacy breaches do happen they are often the result of lack of education and or the best intentions in mind, not so much because of malicious intent
Often AI is trained on data that was collected not for the intention of training the machine, so the concept of informed consent is a tricky one
The simple “tick this box to agree” actually isn’t enough and more emphasis needs to be put on clearly communicating clearly with the person who’s data is being collected
The expectations of patients data privacy holds the health and medical industries to the highest levels of scrutiny meaning that breaches are to be reported to the Price Commissioners office and the patients whose privacy has been breached
Links
Anna Johnston Twitter - @SalingerPrivacy
Anna Johnston LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-johnston-ba188410a/
Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme - https://www.oaic.gov.au/ndb
GDPR - https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/guidance-and-advice/australian-entities-and-the-eu-general-data-protection-regulation/
MSIA - https://msia.com.au/
Salinger Privacy - https://www.salingerprivacy.com.au/
My Health Record (Formerly PCEHR) - https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/
NDIS - https://www.ndis.gov.au/
National Health and Medical Research Council - https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Pete: With me today is Anna Johnson. Anna is one of Australia's most respected experts in Privacy Law and practice.
She has qualifications in law, public policy and management and 26 years experience in legal policy and research roles. Anna has a breadth of perspectives and a wealth of experience in dealing with privacy and data governance issues. She's the former deputy privacy commissioner for New South Wales.So she really knows regulatory perspective well, and since 2004 is the director for consulting firm Salinger Privacy Anna holds a first-class honours

7 snips
Sep 30, 2019 • 25min
19 - James Scollay, Genie
James Scollay is CEO of clinical and practice management software vendor Genie Solutions.
He’s the former General Manager of MYOB, and was originally the executive chair of Genie before moving into the full time CEO gig early last year.
Genie has earned tremendous respect and trust from its customer base, with over 20 years in market as a software solution for Doctors. More recently James has been focused on bringing the company into a new era of industry collaboration and technological advancements, enabling practices around Australia deliver a better patient experience and drive real practice efficiency.
In this episode James and Pete chat about the new Gentu cloud platform and it’s rapid growth (400% in the last quarter!) and how more practices are adopting Cloud over Desktop solutions. ☁️
They also talk about Private Equity funding and how it’s helped take the company from a family run business to a business with double the staff with much more focus on Development and User Experience. 📈
Listen in to also learn about Genie’s massive investment on "collaboration" using the FHIR standards and their partnership with Movember. 🤝
Transcript
[00:00:48] James how you doing
[00:00:49] James: doing great. Thanks for having me along.
[00:00:50] Pete: Thanks for coming in
[00:00:52] James: beautiful day in Sydney to be stuck inside the studio,
[00:00:53] Pete: How Good is it, yeah yeah.
[00:00:55] Pete: but I guess like with podcasts it could be anywhere but and anyone could be listening and it's [00:01:00] raining outside speaking of raining you were you were so your Genies head office is in Brisbane you're in Sydney a lot, but you're also a [00:01:11] originally a New Zealander is that
[00:01:15] James: that's right.
[00:01:14] Pete: Yeah. Okay. Okay.
[00:01:15] James: Proud kiwi still support the All Blacks.
[00:01:17] Pete: Okay, Yeah.
[00:01:18] James:15 years here.
[00:01:19] Pete: I didn't know that. Okay. Well might be a short. No. No, - no no awesome awesome. That's good. So Genie lots to talk about let's let's let's get stuck into it for those that might not be in the know tell us a bit more about Genie and what you guys do.
[00:01:34] James: So we’re the market leader for Practice Management systems for Specialists and we include by the way GP’s is as a specialty there. So we've got more than 4,000 practices using Genie to run their practice and that means they're using it to do all their practice management in terms of appointment booking, billing and also managing the clinical workflows.
[00:01:57] So we think that's around 65% of all private practices in Australia that are using Genie.
[00:02:02] Pete: Yeah, Wow. Okay first so then because I was always looking around. I think you had over. 20,000 licenses or something back in 2018. What's the count now? who have you got and who are the customers and how many are there and what…
[00:02:15] James: yeah.
[00:02:15] So look, we've got the top 10 Specialties make up about 50% of our client base. Okay, we celebrated our 4,000th practice in October last year, which was a endocrinologist on the on the Sunshine Coast.
[00:02:29] Pete: Oh right? and you know that, you know the 4,000th.
[00:02:30] James: Yeah, we’ve headed down to her office. She took our, our new cloud Gentu product and so we really celebrated that and look no such sounds have been growing pretty rapidly since then who are our customers?
[00:02:41] They're still across Fifty something different different Specialties. They are have been we've been in business for 20 years so most them are on the desktop, but more recently more of our new practices are actually taking cloud. In the last quarter we've seen a 400 percent growth in in Cloud sales compared [00:03:00] to the same quarter last year.
[00:03:01] And for the first time we're seeing more new practices take our Gentu Cloud solution than desktop.
[00:03:07] Pete: Yeah. Okay
[00:03:07] James: Which is really exciting.
[00:03:08] Pet

6 snips
Sep 16, 2019 • 28min
18 - Marcus Wilson, Surgical Partners
Marcus Wilson is CEO of Surgical Partners, a solution that is helping practices around Australia integrate their accounting information with their practice management system.
He is a former healthcare analyst for Macquarie Group, and an Engineer by training. Marcus is passionate about implementing technology-based solutions for the complex challenges facing healthcare practices.
In this chat with Pete, they cover the inefficiencies of back office processes in health, the exciting world of healthcare-FinTech, and the impact on the Australian GP of the emergence of new payment models onto the scene like AfterPay, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency

Sep 2, 2019 • 23min
17 - Ami Assigal, Practice Partners
Ami Assigal is the Director of Practice Partners, a group of Healthcare Business Consultants helping clinics achieve their goals of profitability and growth.
Ami has a wealth of experience in all aspects of running a medical centre. She an MBA specialising in finance, and a Diploma in Practice Management, so she knows her stuff when it comes to running a successful medical practice.
Ami loins Pete in the studio to talk about the concept of Virtual Practice Management, and how it's revolutionising the day to day of busy GPs around the world. She also touches on the technology and tools that GPs need to run a successful and profitable practice.

Aug 19, 2019 • 17min
16 - Karen Finnin, Online Physio
Karen Finnin is a Physiotherapist, and the Director of Online Physio, who specialise in providing long distance Physiotherapy consultations to people who have trouble accessing traditional care.
She's been a physio for 20 years, and worked in many rural and remote areas, here and abroad, and in that time identified the recurring need for patients in remote areas to have better access to quality care for injury management.
Due to the success of Online Physio, she has become one of Australia's leading authorities when it comes to telehealth, and is passionate about opportunities that intersect between health, business and technology.
In this chat with Pete, Karen reflects on the rise of telehealth in allied health, the technology needed to be an effective Telehealth provider, the funding for Telehealth, and some hot tips for aspiring entrepreneurs about what makes a stand out Telehealth platform.

Aug 5, 2019 • 29min
15 - Matt Bardsley, Medical Director
Matt Bardsley is CEO of MedicalDirector, one of Australia's leading Practice Management Software providers. In this episode, Pete and Matt address questions like: is building software for healthcare a pain or pleasure economy? What's the right kind of investment to build innovative technology? Has humankind outpaced Darwinism?

Jul 22, 2019 • 22min
14 - Ariel Garten, Muse
Ariel Garten is CEO and co-founder of Muse - the brain sensing headband which is used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Bloomberg describes her "an innovator who completely remakes reality". She is featured in over 1000 articles and TV spots including Fortune, NBC, CBS, CNET, Business Inside (50 sexiest scientists!), Times India, Huffington Post, GQ, Tim Ferris, Popular Science, New York Times, and multiple times on CNN, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and Tech Crunch. She has a TED Talk called "Know Thy Self, With A Brain Scanner" and even does her own podcast about mindfulness and meditation called "Untangle".
Ariel chats with Pete about the technology and science behind Muse, the application of meditation in a clinical context and how Aussies really really like meditation.

Jul 8, 2019 • 28min
13 - Rafic Habib, Clinic to Cloud
Rafic Habib is the CEO and co-founder of Clinic To Cloud, a cloud based practice management system that is striving to optimise Medica Practices and enabling better patient engagement. We talk about the adoption of cloud by the industry, and his team's approach to solving big problems in healthcare.

Jun 24, 2019 • 27min
12 - Katrina Otto, Train IT Medical
Katrina Otto is the Principal and Owner of Train IT Medical, and is the self proclaimed "Switzerland of HealthTech vendors" - she likes all of them. With a strong track record of delivering results, Katrina has carved out a niche as one of Australia's leading medical software trainers. She helps practices make informed decisions about how best to use technology to provide better healthcare.
In this episode Katrina chats with Pete about the importance and intricacies of sharing health data, the adoption of tech in General Practice, and the growth of telehealth in Australia.