Subacute Care Improvement Group 28 & 29 November 2018

Prof. Andrea Maier (1978) graduated in Medicine at the Medical University Lübeck (Germany) in 2003 and registered as a specialist Internal Medicine-Geriatrician at the Leiden University Medical Centre (The Netherlands) in 2009. Her research is driven by her passion to unravel ageing mechanisms and the interaction of ageing and age-  related diseases, with a particular focus on sarcopenia. In 2013, she was appointed as full Professor of Gerontology at the VU University Amsterdam (The Netherlands). Since February 2016 she is Divisional Director of Medicine and Community Care at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Professor of Medicine and Aged Care at the University of Melbourne (Australia). During the last 10 years she conducted multiple national and European observational studies as well as clinical trials and published more than 190 peer reviewed articles in international journals. Her innovative, multidisciplinary @Age research team works in the Netherlands (@AgeAmsterdam) and in Australia (@AgeMelbourne). She is an invited member of several international research and health policy committees to eventually increase the visibility, quantity and quality of ageing research.

Louise McKinley

Discussion Breakout Session leads

Michael Bink
MBA, BA (Social Science), BAppSci, GradDip (Prof Writing), Vincent Fairfax Fellow in Ethical Leadership
Michael has over 30 years’ experience in the disability sector. He has worked in a range of executive operational roles, including allied health, employment and community development. While at Scope (Aust) he had responsibility for the organisation’s strategy and service development, and inaugurated their research program. Since 2011, he has worked as National Program Manager for Ability First Australia, an industry alliance of 14 leading disability service providers. He is also General Manager of the Ability Roundtable, which provides a platform for benchmarking and service improvement by disability service providers around Australia.

Natalie Anderson
Natalie has over 25 years’ experience in public healthcare and currently works as the Program Manager for Ambulatory Rehabilitation at Barwon Health. Natalie has a range of interests in health and is passionate about consumer driven care and the role of innovation and assistive technology to improve the lives of people living with disability.  She believes that improving equity and access to ‘next practice’ healthcare, is achieved by co-designing systems that use the principles of universal design – where the user’s experience is fundamental to design and the consumer view is central to decision making from the word go. Having trained and worked as a Speech Pathologist for 15 years Natalie’s has remained particularly interested in building better systems around communication access for people with communication support needs either as a result of disability or reduced health literacy.
Natalie is currently responsible for a number of programs that have transitioned to NDIS and so brings some learnings with regards to the health-disability interface and the challenges therein. 

Matthew Parsons
PhD MSc BSc (Hons) RGN
Matthew currently holds the position of Professor in Gerontology across Waikato DHB and The University of Auckland.  He has a strong working relationship with multiple health boards having reviewed or supported implementation of services across many.  He has been heavily involved in service development around older person health, disability and rehabilitation for over 20 years and has been central to a number of key national initiatives including development of supported discharge, implementation of interRAI, development of the Health of Older Person Strategy and Specialist Health Services for older people guidelines.
He has also had significant involvement in the development of restorative home support and the accompanying case-mix funding model across New Zealand and a number of other countries and was has a keen interest in technology having led a large telemedicine trial.
Matthew has won in excess of $20 million in external research funds and has over 100 publications relating to older people, disability and technology.