SPACE HEALTH & MEDICINE ON AUSTRALIA’S CLINICAL LAUNCHPAD
With
Professor Tracy Smart AO, Air Vice-Marshal (Ret’d)
BMBS, MPH, MA, Dip AvMed, FRACMA, FACAsM, FAsMA, FCDSS, FACHSM (Hon) &
Tracy Smart AO, Professor, Military and Aerospace Medicine
The Australian National University
HEALTH EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS SEGMENT
Filmed in Canberra | April 2026
Professor Smart is a veteran, medical doctor, health leader, aerospace medicine specialist, and retired Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) senior officer. She is currently at the Professor, Military and Aerospace Medicine at the Australian National University (ANU), and serves as the Interim Director of the ANU Defence Institute, and as a Mission Specialist at the ANU Institute for Space. She previously served as the University’s COVID-19 Public Health Lead from 2020 to 2022.
Prof Smart’s 35-year RAAF career included several operational deployments, and leadership and command positions at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of Defence. Her career culminated in the roles of Surgeon General of the ADF and Commander Joint Health. In these roles she drove substantial reform in the delivery of policy, programs, and treatment in the military Mental Health space, and in the health aspects of transition from Defence. She transferred to the RAAF Specialist Reserve in early 2020 and continues to take a strong interest in Defence and Veterans’ health.
Apart from her ANU roles, Prof Smart is a non-executive Director of Goodwin Aged Care Services and the International Academy of Air and Space Medicine; Chair of the ANZAC Research Institute and the Australian Football League Industry Mental Health Steering Group; and Co-Chair of the Australian War Memorial Gallery Development Project Veterans’ Advisory Group. She is a member of the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal, an Honorary (Professorial Fellow) in the Psychiatry Department, University of Melbourne, a frequent keynote speaker, and undertakes various consulting and advisory roles in aerospace medicine and military and veterans’ health.
Source: Supplied
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8918-8939
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Trends report identifies prototyping targets for breakthroughs in digital and hybrid futures
Vishaal Kishore, a Professor of Innovation and Public Policy at RMIT in Melbourne, serves as the Executive Chair of the RMIT-Cisco Health Transformation Lab and RMIT’s Director of Impact. Led by the RMIT-Cisco Health Transformation Lab, the National Industry Innovation Network (NIIN) Health Alliance combines the best minds, technologists, industry capabilities and academic resources to solve pressing industry and social challenges through technology-driven innovation. The NIIN aims to pool insights and expertise to address national health challenges, marking its first vertical focus on health.
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Allied Health Building Leadership Experience in Tasmania
A notable program run by Hospitals South is the ABLE program, or Allied Health Building Leadership Experience. This program was created to address the challenge of allied health professionals being seen as a single entity, rather than as individual disciplines, when it comes to leadership and management opportunities. The program is delivered entirely internally, with seminars presented by senior staff and mentorship opportunities for participants to become more effective representatives of allied health in meetings and working groups.
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Empowering underprivileged communities with sustainable health
Dr Gaj Panagoda, CEO of Xstitch Health, has a diverse medical background and is working to improve health systems for underprivileged communities. In the Australian Health Journal’s People In Health Care series, he talks about the changes needed in community-based care using a project based approach,
According to Dr Panagoda, there is a need for a shift towards community-based care and collaboration with stakeholders in the healthcare system, and the potential to create a new kind of socially conscious, inspired, community-informed medical specialist is the future of medical specialty care.
