Health & Medical Research Awards now recognise data innovation

Research Australia has announced its 2016 Health & Medical Research Awards, to be held on 16 November at The Westin Sydney.

The awards will be presented across several categories in order to reflect the multitude of important roles and contributions that all come together to make Australian health and medical research a powerful force. These categories include the following:

• The Griffith University Discovery Award is for an early researcher whose paper/patent/discovery has already demonstrated its importance or impact.
• The Advocacy Award recognises an Australian who has raised community awareness about the benefits of health and medical research.
• The Great Australian Philanthropy Award recognises personal philanthropic donations over a period of time by an individual or family to health and medical research.
• The Health Services Research Award recognises an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to health services research.
• The Leadership in Corporate Giving Award recognises outstanding leadership by a corporation or business in giving to and supporting health and medical research.
• The Peter Wills Medal recognises an Australian who has made an outstanding contribution to building Australia’s international reputation in the area of health and medical research, and fostering collaboration for better health.

Research Australia will also be presenting the inaugural Data Innovation in Health & Medical Research Award, which recognises the most innovative method of gathering, making available, processing or interpreting data in a way that advances health and medical research. Nominees in this new category are as follows:

• Ambo Project — a project that has collected and analysed public health data on alcohol- and drug-related ambulance attendances across Australia to inform public health decisions.
• DreamLab — an Android app that processes data for cancer research using the computing processing power of thousands of smartphones at night, speeding up important research as users sleep.
• The Health Market Quality R&D Program — a program that uses advanced data sciences to provide tailored solutions to the health services sector to make better decisions and reduce fraud, waste and errors.

“The Data Innovation Award is a new category, and so we were thrilled about the high level of the candidature — the three nominees in contention are simply outstanding,” said Research Australia CEO Nadia Levin.

“The use of data is critical to all health and medical research fields, and these amazing innovations are leading the industry and greatly deserve recognition.”

Tickets to the event are now available at http://researchaustralia.org/events/hmr-awards.