Mina Giang on the Sparked Leadership & Networking panel in Brisbane

Co-founder Mina Giang spoke on the panel at the Sparked Leadership & Networking Evening in Brisbane – the first Sparked leadership evening back in Brisbane since the program launched there in August 2023. The Q&A was facilitated by Kate Ebrill, with Simon Cleverley (Department of Health, Disability and Ageing), Dr David Hansen (Australian eHealth Research Centre, CSIRO), Dr Raelene Donovan (eHealth Queensland), Pip Brennan (Consumer and Sparked Clinical Design Group Co-Lead) and Mina Giang (Consumer and Oexa). The conversation moved across the levers that matter. Simon Cleverley on the progress – and the funding – behind Australia’s digital health agenda. Dr Raelene Donovan on the harder work of moving large institutions like hospitals, and where AI can take administrative weight off clinicians. Pip Brennan ready, as ever, to bring her army of consumers into patient co-design. AI sat across most of the answers – less as novelty, more as a tool the system is already starting to lean on. Mina spoke from the consumer seat. Her line on the night: “the patient is the interoperability layer.” Until you’re navigating the system yourself, you don’t feel it. As care teams grow – with age, chronic conditions or a new diagnosis – the record too often reflects what got billed, not what actually happened. Patient data should be owned by the patient, with clinicians as contributors and custodians. That’s the work behind Oexa. We started Scripty with a simple belief: patients should own their health data. From there we’ve been building the connective tissue – extending into Light, our clinical platform for pharmacy, so the clinicians caring for those patients have the tools to match. Interoperability that starts with the patient isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the point. Her hope: in two years, the connected care vision shown at the CSIRO Connected Care Demonstrator is the reality patients actually live. Thanks to Kate and the team for a great evening – and to the room for the conversation that followed. The desire to get this right is real. The open question is who funds it, and whether the incentives are actually aligned with the patient. More on the program at sparked.csiro.au.