Is chronic disease prevention only a step away?

There is no denying that wearables have taken the world by storm - with products like watches, bracelets, rings and even clothes - designed to track fitness and wellness-related metrics. So, with one in three Australians owning a smartwatch, are wearables the future of predicting and preventing chronic diseases in Australia? 

Join our expert panel as they investigate Australia’s biggest healthcare burden; chronic disease, and the role that wearables could have in a healthcare setting to prevent and treat people with heart disease, obesity, cancer, or diabetes.

Our expert panel

Associate Professor Clair Sullivan

Director, Queensland Digital Health Centre, UQ

Associate Professor Clair Sullivan is an internationally-recognised leading practising and academic clinical informatician who helps drive digital health transformation in Queensland.

Clair is the Director of the new Queensland Digital Health Centre within the Centre for Health Research at The University of Queensland.

A specialist endocrinologist, Clair graduated with Honours in Medicine from The University of Queensland and earned a Research Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Leeds. In 2014, Clair began a parallel career in the emerging field of digital health and has held significant leadership roles in digital health practice and governance across government and academia. Her work is regularly translated into practice and informs policy in Australia and globally.

Clair was appointed Associate Professor of Medicine in Clinical Informatics at UQ and is an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology and an Adjunct Professor, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

She is a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Australian College of Health Informatics and the Australasian Institute of Digital Health.

Clair serves on several national advisory boards for digital health. She is the recipient of several awards including the 2021 Premier's Award for Excellence for her team's work on the digital response to COVID-19 and the 2022 Telstra Brilliant Connected Women in Digital Health Award. She has generated over $30M in grant funding and has deep collaborations with government and industry. She is ranked in the top 1% of Medical Informatics researchers globally.

Dr Sjaan Gomersall

Associate Director, Health and Wellbeing Centre for Research Innovation

Sjaan Gomersall is Associate Director and a Senior Research Fellow at the Health and Wellbeing Centre for Research Innovation at School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences and Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Queensland. Established in 2022, the Health and Wellbeing Centre for Research Innovation (HWCRI) is a collaborative, co-funded research centre by The University of Queensland and Health and Wellbeing Queensland. The HWCRI combines world class research expertise in physical activity, nutrition and health at The University of Queensland, with the reach and capacity of Health and Wellbeing Queensland to integrate, deliver and evaluate evidence-based programs that provide scalable, equitable access to improve the health and wellbeing of all Queenslanders (and beyond).

Dr Gomersall is an expert in physical activity, sedentary behaviour and health. Her research has focused on understanding, measuring and influencing physical activity and sedentary behaviour using a variety of methods and with a range of populations, with a focus on adults and the prevention and management of chronic disease. Sjaan has a strong track record for multi-disciplinary collaborations and industry partnerships, with specific expertise in partnering with healthcare organisations to build capacity in research and physical activity behaviour change, to evaluate the impact of healthcare services and to co-design and test innovative solutions to gaps in service delivery. Dr Gomersall is a nationally and internally recognised leader in physical activity and health. She is the President-Elect of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health, Co-Lead for the Physical Activity in Healthcare Special Interest Group for the Asia-Pacific Society for Physical Activity, a Consultant for Physical Activity for the World Health Organisation and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Activity, Sedentary and Sleep Behaviours.

Dr Robyn Littlewood

Chief Executive, Health and Wellbeing Queensland

As leader of the state’s first dedicated prevention agency, Dr Littlewood is a passionate advocate for health promotion in Queensland.

Dr Littlewood believes every Queenslander has the right to better health, with expertise in driving outcomes for individual patients and populations in the area of non-communicable diseases. She is relentless in driving policy and action to achieve fairness for all and reach the right communities at the right time.

An experienced leader, researcher, clinician, academic and educator, Dr Littlewood has more than 25 years’ experience working with the most vulnerable patients and families across paediatric obesity prevention, nutrition and dietetics.

Dr Littlewood holds a raft of formal qualifications in dietetics, business, research and executive leadership from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), James Cook University and The University of Queensland (UQ). These include a PhD, Master of Business Administration, Master of Medical Science and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. As such, bringing universities, industry, government and communities together to solve problems is key to her work.

She currently holds three Adjunct Professor appointments with Griffith University, QUT and UQ, and is proud to be working with these outstanding teaching and research universities. Dr Littlewood remains passionate about education, fostering student learning opportunities at HWQld.

Before her Chief Executive appointment in 2019, Dr Littlewood was a member of the inaugural HWQld board and held titles including Director, Health Services Research, Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service and Conjoint Associate Professor, Nutrition at UQ. While Director of specialist private nutrition practice ChildD, she led the first national paediatric dietetics training course in Australia, alongside Dietitians Australia.

Dr Littlewood has been awarded for her work and proudly accepted the QUT Outstanding Alumni Award (Health) in 2020. She has also held several Board roles including Board Director, Dietitians Australia, and has been awarded Fellow, Dietitians Australia for her service.