The Unsolved Puzzles Round Table Series:
Decoding Complex Clinical Problems with Informatics

The Hidden Complexity of EHR Data:
Why Healthcare AI Is Hard?

Dr Verghese is a Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) and Intensive Care Specialist with a strong interest in data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and electronic medical record (EMR) implementation across South Australia.

At SA Health, he lead digital health initiatives that focus on integrating advanced data solutions, enhancing EMR systems, and improving healthcare outcomes through technology.

His dual expertise in clinical practice and informatics enables me to design and implement strategies that meet the complex demands of both critical care and healthcare data systems. As an intensivist, he prioritises the delivery of safe, high-quality, patient-centred care, leveraging EMR systems, predictive analytics, and AI to streamline clinical workflows and support timely, data-driven decision-making.

Dr Verghese’s work in EMR implementation across South Australia has strengthened interoperability, clinical documentation, and care coordination, driving consistency and efficiency in how care is delivered statewide.

Realize the Future of EHR Data with this exciting Round Table event.

Data Visualisation of the Future

Chat with Dr Santosh Verghese, Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) at our round table.

Thurs 30 July 3:30 – 4:15pm (SA, ASCT)

The future of patient data analysis

The Hidden Complexities

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are often viewed as the ideal foundation for artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare because they contain vast amounts of patient information collected during routine clinical care. 

However, despite their size and richness, EHR datasets are among the most challenging forms of data for AI development. 

The Future: An AI driven medical dashboard

Why is Health Care AI so Hard?

Clinical information is fragmented across structured fields and free text, recorded by different clinicians with varying documentation styles, influenced by workflow rather than research protocols, and frequently incomplete or biased. These complexities limit model performance, generalisability, and clinical adoption. 

This presentation explores the hidden challenges within EHR data, explains why developing trustworthy healthcare AI is substantially more difficult than many expect, and discusses emerging approaches – including interoperability standards, multimodal AI, and digital twins – that may help overcome these limitations.

23 June 2026, 3pm-5pm (Brisbane, AEST)

From Childhood Disabilities to Aged Care Dementia:
How Can Art Therapy, Artful Environments,
Health Informatics
and AI Help?

Unfortunately,
Dr Emily Handley, Wicking Dementia Research & Education Centre, has had to cancel her keynote due unexpected health reasons. If well, she may join us at the end.

However, the HIKM ACM Chapter is delighted to announce that industrial artist extraordinaire Sharron T will be headlining the Round-Table instead. 

Sharron is a pioneer in applying art for therapeutic purposes.  For over two decades she has created, designed (in Brisbane and London), beautified, researched, etc – including over 15 years of giving children’s/adult art workshops and creating art for aged care and dementia care across Australia.

Sharron has become a sought-after thought leader and speaker, publishing and keynoting internationally on dementia and Alzheimer’s.  She is also the inventor of Art-based Technologies (ABTs).

Psychotherapist, Shazzy Tharnby on What Matters Matters: Capturing Human Outcomes in Disability, Mental Health and Dementia Care

Shazzy Tharby is a Counselling Psychotherapist, Credentialed Mental Health Nurse, disability advocate, researcher and Founder of Positively Living. Drawing on both professional and lived experience, she works across neurodiversity, disability, mental health and systems advocacy. Shazzy serves on the Western Australian NDIS Advisory Council and is passionate about ensuring that health, disability and aged care systems measure the outcomes that matter most to people, including autonomy, participation, communication, belonging and quality of life.

Shazzy will speak on how health and disability systems are excellent at recording diagnoses, appointments and incidents, but often struggle to capture the outcomes that matter most to people. Drawing on clinical practice, lived experience and systems advocacy, this presentation explores the gap between what services measure and what people value. It will highlight the importance of capturing communication preferences, sensory needs, participation, autonomy, quality of life and lived experience outcomes, and consider how health informatics, knowledge management and AI may help create more person-centred systems across disability, mental health and aged care.

23 June 2026, 3pm-5pm (Brisbane, AEST)

Associate Professor Andrew Stranieri on Health Informatics and AI in Environmental Design

Associate Professor Andrew Stranieri is a digital health researcher in the Centre for Informatics and Applied Optimisation at Federation University Australia with over 150 publications in health data analytics, remote patient monitoring, blockchain and decision support. Andrew will also open the Round Table.

The University of Tasmania’s Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre has responded with its Understanding Childhood Dementia course, designed for families, educators, health professionals, policy makers, support workers, and anyone seeking to understand childhood dementia, its symptoms, underlying conditions, diagnosis, genetics, lived experience, and care needs.

Childhood Dementia needs a system connecting parents, clinicians, and data for earlier diagnosis.  The average life expectancy is 9 years, yet the current time to a diagnosis is up to six years! 

The on-line Round-table will bring the childhood dementia challenge to the health informatics community and explore how digital health, data systems, artificial intelligence, clinical pathways, parent-reported information, and cross-sector coordination might support earlier diagnosis and better system response to shorten this ‘diagnostic odyssey’ for parents and carers.

Dr Emily Handley, Wicking Research and Education Centre, University of Tasmania

Childhood dementia is a rare, life-limiting group of mostly genetic neurodegenerative conditions affecting an estimated 700,000 children and young people worldwide.

Symptoms begin, on average, at around 2.5 years of age, but diagnosis often occurs later, around age four, after families have already entered a frightening race against time. More than 100 genetic disorders can cause childhood dementia; there are currently no cures, and half of affected children die by age 10. Rates of death in Australia are similar to childhood cancer, yet childhood dementia remains far less recognised and under-resourced.

Bring the Whole Picture to the Table

Some health problems remain unsolved because no single discipline, service, dataset or family story contains the whole picture. HIKM invites clinicians, allied health practitioners, researchers, advocates, families and informatics experts to examine complex problems together.

Find the Pattern the System Keeps Missing

When symptoms, observations and records are scattered across settings, the pattern can remain invisible for years. The Unsolved Puzzle Series asks whether health informatics can help connect fragmented evidence into earlier recognition, better pathways and clearer decisions.

Turn Complexity into a Researchable Question

The hardest clinical and public-health problems often begin as confusion: repeated referrals, delayed diagnosis, inconsistent data, unmet needs and no clear pathway forward. HIKM roundtables help translate lived and clinical complexity into problems informatics researchers can investigate.

Contact Us:
Enquiries@hikm.acm.org