2026 Patients Choice Finalists
The 2026 Patients’ Choice Awards recognise the people, teams and organisations whose work has had a meaningful impact on patients, carers and the wider healthcare community.
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This year’s finalists were nominated for the care they provide, the changes they have helped create, the way they advocate for patients, and the contribution they make to improving healthcare in Australia. From individual acts of care through to broader programs, research, innovation and system change, each finalist has been recognised for work that matters to patients.
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The Top 5 finalists in each category were determined through public voting. Their nominations provide a glimpse into why their work stood out and why patients and communities chose to recognise them.
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Explore the 2026 finalists below.
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Outstanding Specialist
This award recognises a specialist who demonstrates exceptional expertise, achieves outstanding patient outcomes, and contributes to advancing their field. They utilise advanced diagnostics and treatments to enhance patient care, publish research, mentor peers, or drive medical innovation.
Mr Stephen Luen
Mr Stephen Luen is recognised for the confidence and hope he gave a patient facing stage 4 breast cancer after spinal surgery, radiation and rehabilitation. He offered access to a clinical trial, but just as importantly, took the time to explain an unfamiliar treatment clearly and calmly. At a point when the future felt frightening and uncertain, his expertise and reassuring manner made the journey feel more manageable. His story reflects the difference a specialist can make when advanced treatment is matched by communication that helps a patient understand what is happening, trust their care and face what comes next with hope.
Professor Jane Davies
Professor Jane Davies is recognised for redesigning specialist care around communities that traditional models were not reaching. By bringing hepatitis expertise into primary healthcare through Hep B PAST and Hep B PAST Plus, her work has helped the Northern Territory achieve 99% diagnosis and 86% engagement in care for chronic hepatitis B. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients across northern Australia, that means earlier diagnosis, treatment closer to home and a better chance of preventing liver cancer and other serious complications. Her impact is not only clinical excellence, but a model of care that has measurably reduced inequity.
Dr Kade Collins
Dr Kade Collins is recognised for making a difficult surgical experience feel safe, understandable and human. After a long period of pain, his patient describes being impressed not only by his clinical professionalism, but by the way he answered every question, offered reassurance and used humour to ease anxiety. The strongest endorsement is deeply personal: the patient would have no hesitation referring a member of their own family to him. His nomination shows how technical expertise, clarity and bedside manner can combine to give patients genuine confidence in their care.
Dr Darshika Christie-David
Dr Darshika Christie-David is recognised for connecting complex specialist care around the patient rather than leaving people to navigate it alone. Her patients may be dealing with infertility, diabetes, thyroid disease, PCOS or obesity, often at emotionally difficult points in their lives. She combines endocrinology and fertility expertise with clear explanations, shared decision-making and collaboration across GPs, specialists and allied health teams. Through community-based care and telehealth, she is also extending access beyond the traditional consulting room. For patients, the difference is specialist care that feels coordinated, understandable and genuinely built around their circumstances.
Assoc Prof Gehan Roberts
Associate Professor Gehan Roberts is recognised for changing what happens early in a child’s developmental journey. His work focuses on recognising ADHD, learning difficulties and developmental delay sooner, helping families access the right support before children fall further behind. Parents remember that he listens, explains without jargon and treats children and families with patience and warmth. His influence extends beyond his own consultations through statewide paediatric training and mentorship. That means his patient impact is multiplied: better experiences and earlier support for the children he sees, and a stronger generation of paediatricians caring for families across Victoria.
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Outstanding
Allied Health Professional
This award recognises an outstanding allied health professional who demonstrates exceptional skill and dedication. They enhance patient outcomes through tailored interventions, collaborate with others, and promote best practices, leading to improved patient health and satisfaction.
Amanda Stork
Amanda Stork is recognised for bringing both specialist counselling expertise and lived experience of neuroendocrine cancer to people facing an often isolating diagnosis. Last financial year she delivered more than 18,000 minutes of free counselling to patients, carers and families. She also created Wellness Wednesday, giving people practical support on grief, family communication, self-care and coping outside formal appointments. For patients, her impact is highly personal: access to someone who understands both the clinical reality and the emotional weight of the disease, wherever they live and whenever they need support.
Dr Jennifer Alphonse
Dr Jennifer Alphonse is recognised for combining exceptional sonography expertise with a patient experience grounded in kindness and empathy. Ultrasound can be an anxious moment, particularly when a patient is waiting for answers, and her care helps people feel safe and respected during that uncertainty. Her impact extends well beyond each examination. As a researcher, educator, former professional leader and clinical supervisor, she has helped shape the standards and skills of future sonographers. Patients benefit both from the care she provides personally and from the stronger profession she has helped build around them.
Fatima Al Amry
Fatima Al Amry is recognised for making healthcare feel understandable, respectful and achievable for the people she supports. She listens carefully, considers each person’s circumstances and explains options so patients can make informed decisions rather than simply being told what to do. Her work also reaches beyond individual consultations through prevention, health education and community programs. At the heart of this recognition is the trust she builds: patients are treated as active participants in their health, while her broader community work helps people access reliable information and support before health problems become more difficult to manage.
Winnie Wu
Winnie Wu is recognised for building a model of women’s healthcare designed to remove the burden of fragmented care. At Papaya Clinic, physiotherapists, psychologists, dietitians, acupuncturists and other practitioners work within one integrated service and review cases collaboratively. For women living with endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, menopause concerns or postpartum issues, that means less repetition, fewer disconnected appointments and a team that sees the whole picture. Winnie is also extending that impact beyond her own clinic by helping allied health practitioners build more sustainable practices, strengthening the quality and continuity of care available to more patients.
Cassandra Nielsen, Jenny Connolly, Emma Neale
Cassandra Nielsen, Jenny Connolly and Emma Neale are recognised for creating an allied health model unlike anything else in Australia. Their job-shared Allied Health Clinical Lead role in Canberra Hospital’s Acute Medical Unit brings allied health assessment and intervention into the first 48 hours of admission, before delays can build into a longer hospital stay. Their work contributes to 60% of internal medicine patients being safely discharged within 48 hours and has helped reduce emergency congestion and bed block. Other hospitals are now looking to replicate the model. For patients, it means earlier care, better coordination and a smoother, safer hospital journey.
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Outstanding
Patient Advocate
This award honours an individual who has championed patients' rights, access to care, or health equity. It celebrates their dedication to improving patients' lives by achieving meaningful change, such as improved policies or increased access to care. Their unwavering commitment inspires others.
Agnes Nsofwa
Agnes Nsofwa is recognised for combining nursing with community-led advocacy in an area of healthcare that can be poorly understood in Australia. As founder of Australian Sickle Cell Advocacy Inc., she helps people and families living with sickle cell disease access information, navigate services and advocate for culturally responsive, equitable care. Her work also educates health professionals and strengthens community awareness. For patients who may otherwise feel invisible within the system, Agnes provides both practical support and a stronger collective voice. Her contribution turns lived challenges into pathways that can improve care for an entire community.
Isla Foy
Isla Foy is recognised for her advocacy began in one of the most confronting circumstances imaginable: a breast cancer diagnosis at 32 weeks pregnant. She has turned that experience into support for other young women, particularly those facing pregnancy-associated cancer, through peer connection, volunteering, fundraising, public advocacy and candid online storytelling. What makes her impact distinctive is its immediacy. Newly diagnosed women can see and speak with someone who understands the fear, motherhood and treatment decisions from lived experience. Her advocacy makes an isolating diagnosis less lonely and gives young patients a voice in spaces where their experience is often overlooked.
Melanie Funk
Melanie Funk is recognised for turning her family’s experience of severe eczema into a national patient movement. She founded Eczema Support Australia when families had few places to find reliable information or feel understood. The organisation now supports thousands of Australians through peer support, education and advocacy, while Melanie has helped bring lived experience into treatment-access decisions, policy discussions and global leadership. For people whose condition is often dismissed as “just an itch”, her work has changed the conversation. Patients are more visible, better informed and represented in decisions that directly affect their quality of life.
Amelia Ramsay
Amelia Ramsay is recognised for advocating for a treatment she believed she would never personally receive. Living with Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome since childhood and having lost close family members to the condition, she publicly campaigned for affordable access to Belzutifan when it cost around $12,000 a month. Her advocacy, alongside others, helped contribute to PBS listing that dramatically reduced the cost for eligible patients. She fought for her sister, her sons and the wider VHL community first. In 2026 she learned she could access the treatment herself. Her story is advocacy driven by collective hope, not personal gain.
Kim Holley
Kim Holley is recognised for moving lived experience from the sidelines into actual decision-making in cystic fibrosis care. As the parent of a child with CF, she chairs the Community Advisory Committee, advises organisational leadership and supports families through diagnosis and hospital care. In 2026 she also helped shape the Community Day at the Australasian Cystic Fibrosis Conference so the program reflected what patients and carers actually wanted discussed. Her impact is both personal and structural: families receive peer support when they need it, while their experiences influence services, advocacy, medicine access and priorities at organisational and national level.
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Outstanding Nurse
This award recognises a nurse who provides extraordinary care, demonstrating empathy, compassion, and professionalism while advocating for patient well-being. They offer exceptional patient support, mentor colleagues and their dedication leads to improved patient recovery, safety, and satisfaction.
Kahlia Wolsley
Kahlia Wolsley is recognised for making specialist neuroendocrine cancer knowledge available both to patients and to the clinicians caring for them. She helps lead a nursing team providing free support to people navigating a rare and often misunderstood cancer, while also delivering professional education, contributing to national clinical research and advocating for regional and diverse communities. For patients, the effect is multiplied: they can access knowledgeable guidance directly, and the healthcare professionals around them become better equipped to provide informed care. Her role strengthens the whole care environment, not just a single consultation.
Catherine Wilson
Catherine Wilson is recognised for recognising that diabetes care succeeds or fails in the hours patients spend away from the clinic. She understands the psychological burden of living with a condition that requires constant self-management and approaches patients without judgement. Her focus is on helping people accept, understand and confidently manage their diabetes over the long term, not simply meeting clinical targets during an appointment. Her commitment to continuous professional education keeps that support grounded in current evidence. For patients, the difference is care that addresses both the numbers and the emotional reality of living with diabetes every day.
Helena Furdas
Helena Furdas is recognised for being the person who helps hold a complicated lymphoma journey together. As a Clinical Nurse Consultant, she bridges complex treatment protocols, multidisciplinary teams and the practical questions patients and families face day to day. She translates clinical information clearly, advocates for patient dignity and connects hospital and community supports so people are not left to navigate the gaps themselves. For someone facing lymphoma, that continuity can turn a frightening series of appointments and decisions into a more understandable pathway. Her recognition reflects advanced nursing expertise used to make the whole system work better around the patient.
Francesca Leggott
Francesca Leggott is recognised through a deeply personal patient story. When prostate cancer was compounded by significant psychological difficulties, his family says Francesca was a tremendous help in supporting him through those issues. Her care reached beyond the physical effects of cancer and responded to what he needed as a person at a vulnerable time. It is a simple story, but an important one: skilled nursing can change a patient’s experience not only through clinical care, but by recognising emotional and psychological distress and helping someone feel supported through treatment and recovery.
Liz Shevill
Liz Shevill is recognised for bringing specialist cystic fibrosis care closer to children who would otherwise travel long distances to receive it. Over more than 20 years, she has helped expand paediatric CF outreach across regional and remote Queensland while leading nursing care for a service supporting around 450 children. She also educates and mentors clinicians, extending her impact well beyond her own patients. For families managing a lifelong and complex condition, her work means greater continuity, less travel and access to specialist expertise regardless of postcode. That combination of direct care and system reach is what makes her contribution distinctive.
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Outstanding
Digital Health Service
This award honours a digital health service that has transformed healthcare delivery through technology and innovation. The service improves efficiency and accessibility, enhances patient experience, and improves healthcare outcomes.
Smilo.ai
Smilo.ai is recognised for making oral health visible in places where it is easily missed. In aged care, rural and remote settings, oral problems may go unnoticed until they affect nutrition, comfort and dignity. Smilo.ai allows non-dental health workers to conduct structured screening, including offline, document concerns and create clearer follow-up pathways. Its approach is supported by published evidence and is designed for real-world care environments rather than specialist dental settings alone. For patients who may not be able to seek dental care independently, the innovation creates a practical chance to identify problems earlier and act before they become more serious.
Biio Australia
Biio Australia is recognised for removing a burden familiar to people with complex or difficult-to-diagnose conditions: having to become the coordinator of their own healthcare. Its multidisciplinary team works within one service, sharing information across assessment, diagnosis and treatment. Patients do not have to repeatedly retell their history or worry that important details will be lost between specialists. At the heart of this recognition is the patient experience it describes: finally finding a system in which the clinicians connect the dots themselves. For someone who has spent years navigating fragmented care, that can be as transformative as the treatment itself.
Clinic Tech
ClinicTech is recognised for using AI to give more of the consultation back to the patient and doctor. Its platform, Thea, gathers information before the appointment so clinicians can arrive better prepared, while patients can provide sensitive details privately and in multiple languages. A patient portal also supports continuity of information between services. The technology is being integrated with major Australian practice software and evaluated in cancer care. Its patient value is clear: less of the appointment spent repeating history, fewer barriers to explaining complex concerns and more time for the human conversation that actually shapes care.
Enlighten Me
Enlighten Me is recognised for using digital health to make multidisciplinary weight care accessible without turning it into a high-volume, impersonal service. More than 40% of patients come from rural and remote areas, where coordinated medical, nutrition and exercise support may be difficult to access. The service can work alongside a patient’s existing GP and has been redesigned in response to what patients and referrers asked for. For people who have often encountered stigma or conflicting advice about weight, the difference is clinically led care that remains flexible, respectful and personal even when delivered through telehealth.
Cub Care Urgent Pediatric Consults
Cub Care Paediatrics is recognised for creating another pathway for children who need urgent specialist assessment but may not need a traditional emergency department journey. In partnership with Darling Downs Hospital and Health Service, the pilot aims to improve access to acute paediatric expertise while reducing pressure on existing emergency services. For families, the practical difference is the possibility of getting a sick child to the right level of specialist care sooner, with less waiting and uncertainty. Its innovation lies in using digital and service redesign to bring paediatric expertise closer to the point of need.
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Outstanding
Patient Campaign
This award celebrates a campaign that has raised awareness, educated the public, or driven meaningful change for patients. It honours creativity, advocacy, and a commitment to patient-centred improvements. The campaign drives tangible change, such as improved patient knowledge or policy influence.
Department of Haematology, St George Hospital
St George Hospital’s World Blood Cancer Day campaign is recognised for turning awareness into practical action for patients and families. In one of Australia’s most culturally and linguistically diverse communities, the campaign brings trusted information, advocacy organisations and opportunities for blood and stem cell donation into one accessible event. People can ask questions, hear from others and connect with support rather than leaving with awareness alone. Its strength is the way education and community partnership are used to reduce stigma, improve health literacy and help people affected by blood cancer find the next source of support when they need it.
Chad Rieger, Sandoz
The Sandoz Medicines Access and Biosimilar Policy initiative is recognised for taking a highly technical policy problem and keeping the patient consequence in view. Barriers to biosimilar uptake can ultimately affect whether medicines are affordable, accessible and sustainable within the PBS. The campaign brought patient organisations, clinicians, pharmacists, policymakers and industry together to identify those barriers and propose practical reforms. For patients, the significance is indirect but substantial: policy decisions made far from the consultation room can determine whether treatment is available when needed. This initiative created a shared platform to make those access issues harder to ignore.
Heart Support Australia
Heart Support Australia is recognised for recognising that the patient journey does not end when someone leaves hospital. For 40 years it has built peer support, education and advocacy around the lived experience of heart disease, including Australia’s largest face-to-face heart peer-support network. Patients and carers can connect with people who understand recovery and long-term management, while those experiences also feed into research and government advocacy. Its distinctive strength is bridging the personal and the systemic: helping an individual feel less alone today while using patient voices to improve cardiovascular care and access for the community tomorrow.
Silicosis Support Hub
The Silicosis Support Hub is recognised for meeting patients and workers at the moment many of them actually begin seeking help: online, confused and unsure what to do next. It brings screening, treatment, compensation, legal and emotional-support information into one national platform using plain, translatable language. Its risk tool can generate a GP-ready report, helping high-risk workers move from searching to healthcare action. In 15 months the Hub recorded more than 18,000 sessions and over 3,000 direct actions. Its impact is practical and measurable: trusted information is not simply being viewed, it is helping people take the next step.
Migraine Australia
Migraine Awareness Month 2026 is recognised for making an invisible neurological disease publicly visible. Through Burple Day, Shades for Migraine, landmark lighting, social education and lived-experience storytelling, the campaign challenged the idea that migraine is “just a headache”. For patients who may be disbelieved at work, at home or even in healthcare, that shift in understanding matters. The campaign gave people visible ways to participate and be recognised while helping families, workplaces and the wider public understand the real impact of migraine. Its strength is turning stigma into conversation and isolation into shared recognition.
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Outstanding
Patient Innovation
This award recognises groundbreaking solutions that significantly improve patients' lives. It honours individuals or organisations whose creativity and innovation address unmet needs, enhance healthcare delivery, or improve quality of life. The solution is practical and scalable for widespread adoption.
Jason Sotiris Supertees
Supertee is recognised for solving a clinical problem and a child’s emotional problem at the same time. The garment gives clinicians safe access to lines, tubes and monitoring equipment while allowing children to wear something designed around superheroes or ballerinas rather than a conventional hospital gown. For a child, that can mean less fear, more dignity and a small sense of control during treatment. Jason Sotiris and his team have developed the design with clinicians and worked to extend access to regional hospitals. The innovation is simple, practical and immediately understandable from the patient’s point of view.
Debra Bland
Debra Bland is recognised for identifying a preventable complication of caesarean birth and building a system to act before it happens. She developed a risk-screening tool to identify women more likely to experience wound problems and helped introduce preventative negative-pressure wound therapy for those patients. She also created the education needed for surgeons and multidisciplinary teams to use the approach consistently. For mothers, the impact is concrete: fewer infections, complications and avoidable readmissions during the first weeks with a newborn. Her innovation combines patient safety, clinical leadership and system improvement around a moment when recovery matters enormously.
Enlighten Me Shakes
The Enlighten Me Shake is recognised for being shaped directly by the patients it was designed to help; patients did not simply test the finished product, they helped define it. Dr Angela Kwong developed it after patients undergoing medical weight loss described reduced appetite, altered taste and digestive problems that made existing products difficult to tolerate. Their feedback shaped the flavour, texture, serving size, formulation and FODMAP Friendly certification. More than 30 manufacturers were approached before the patient-led brief could be preserved. The result is an innovation built around a problem patients themselves identified, with dietetic support now helping people use it appropriately for their individual medical and nutritional needs.
HealthAbility’s Community Champions
healthAbility’s Community Champions Advisory Group is recognised for lived experience has genuine decision-making influence rather than being added as a final consultation step. Its 19 clients, carers and community members test digital concepts, review pathways and communications, identify barriers and show staff how proposed changes will feel in the real world. Their feedback is recorded, acted on and reflected back through visible change. For patients, this means services are designed with the people who use them before implementation. The innovation is not simply asking consumers for opinions; it is treating their experience as expertise capable of changing how healthcare is delivered.
VeinTech
VeinTech is recognised for tackling one of healthcare’s most common procedures from the patient’s point of view: the pain and anxiety of repeated failed cannulation. Its handheld device, Felix, uses ultrasound guidance to help clinicians identify the right vein before the first attempt. In blinded evaluation, Felix identified 150% more suitable veins, four times more non-visible veins and ten times more non-palpable veins than traditional methods. For oncology patients, older people and others with difficult IV access, those results translate directly into fewer needles, less bruising and faster treatment. It is innovation aimed at removing a problem patients have simply been expected to endure.
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Outstanding Hospital
This award celebrates a hospital that excels in clinical care, patient safety, and innovation, delivering exceptional outcomes for patients. The hospital achieves excellent clinical outcomes, patient safety, and satisfaction, while implementing innovative practices and technologies.
Noosa Hospital
Noosa Hospital is recognised for consistency across the whole patient journey. From admission until discharge, one patient describes doctors and nurses as professional, approachable and clear about what was happening and why. They never felt left wondering what came next, and the standard did not depend on one exceptional staff member. That matters in hospital, where uncertainty can make illness even harder. This recognition celebrates a team culture in which communication, clinical care and respect remained dependable throughout the stay, giving the patient confidence that they were being looked after at every step.
Matrescence Birthing Centre Gold Coast
The Matrescence Birthing Centre is recognised for creating a third option for women who want something between conventional hospital birth and home birth. Its midwife-owned model supports physiological birth within a private hospital framework that has undergone NSQHS accreditation, with doctors involved through a co-admission model when needed. For women seeking fewer interventions without giving up structured clinical governance and escalation pathways, that combination is distinctive. The centre expands genuine choice in maternity care, giving women a setting designed around continuity, informed decision-making and the type of birth experience they want.
Peter MacCallum Hospital Cancer Centre
Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is recognised through the confidence of a patient who has experienced its care firsthand. After two surgeries in quick succession, the patient describes the follow-up care and medication support as first-rate, with staff who were consistently professional and caring. Cancer treatment can involve multiple teams, procedures and periods of uncertainty; what mattered to this patient was that the standard of care held throughout the journey. Their story is simple but meaningful: at a frightening time, they felt they could rely on the people and the hospital caring for them.
Logan Public Hospital - Cardiology
Logan Public Hospital’s Cardiology service is recognised for treating patient input as part of the care process. From admission and surgery through outpatient follow-up, one patient describes staff as open to feedback, collaborative and willing to adjust support around their needs. They felt involved rather than simply treated, and that partnership continued after discharge. This recognition highlights something that can easily be lost in complex hospital care: the patient’s own voice. Here, listening was not a one-off courtesy but part of the clinical journey from acute treatment through recovery.
Donvale Rehabilitation Hospital
Donvale Rehabilitation Hospital is recognised for making patients active partners in rehabilitation rather than passive recipients of a program. Patients help set their own goals, participate in case conferences and provide feedback that directly shapes services. Care can continue across inpatient, day rehabilitation, private practice and home-based programs, reducing the disruption that often occurs between stages of recovery. The hospital also translates research and co-design into new programs, including MS rehabilitation. For patients rebuilding independence after illness or injury, the difference is a journey designed with them, with continuity and clear ownership of what recovery means to them personally.
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Outstanding
Community Pharmacist
This award celebrates a community pharmacist who prioritises patient well-being, promotes medication safety, and actively engages with their community to improve public health. Their dedication ensures better health outcomes and stronger connections between pharmacies and the people they serve.
Fatima Al Amry
Fatima Al Amry is recognised for patients experience her as far more than someone who dispenses medication. She knows their health histories, listens carefully and uses her clinical knowledge to help them understand what may be happening and what they should do next. Her approachable, down-to-earth manner makes people comfortable asking questions they might otherwise leave unanswered. In a community setting where pharmacists are often the most accessible health professional, that combination of trust and expertise can make a real difference: helping patients seek the right care sooner and manage their health with greater confidence.
Iraq Doali
Iraq Doali is recognised for using public education to change how people understand the role of community pharmacists. His focus is on the everyday situations where patients may wait days for a GP appointment or hours in an emergency department without realising a pharmacist could assess the problem, provide advice or help determine whether escalation is needed. By taking pharmacy education online, he reaches people well beyond his own counter. For patients and families, that knowledge can mean faster reassurance, earlier care and better decisions about where to seek help, while strengthening trust in an accessible part of the health system.
Nader Eltom
Nader Eltom is recognised for reimagining the community pharmacy as a more integrated healthcare destination. At Pharmacy 4 Less Kotara he is investing in medical services, compounding, dispensing automation and medication-packing technology while embracing expanded pharmacist scope. For patients, the aim is practical: more clinical services in one familiar place, safer medication processes and fewer gaps between different parts of care. His work also extends to mentoring pharmacy students, helping build a workforce ready for this broader role. This recognition shows innovation that is not technology for its own sake, but designed around easier access and better patient care.
Shareef Ali
Shareef Ali is recognised for taking pharmacy care to patients who may be least able to access it. Alongside community pharmacy, he works within aged care and conducts Home Medicines Reviews for housebound and mobility-limited patients across Canberra. He supports safer medicines, deprescribing, diabetes care, vaccination and expanded-scope treatment, and can counsel multicultural families in their own languages. For older people and those managing complex medication regimens, that means expert support where they actually live. His recognition reflects a pharmacist who continually expands his skills so vulnerable patients are not excluded by mobility, language or circumstance.
Anna Theophilos
Anna Theophilos is recognised for identifying why people were missing vaccinations and redesigning the pathway around those barriers. Through The Vaccination Hub she has connected governments, public health units, aged care providers and community pharmacies to turn vaccination policy into practical access. A Victorian MMR initiative involving more than 500 pharmacies issued over 3,500 vaccination vouchers in just ten weeks. For patients, her work means preventive care is available closer to home and easier to understand. Her impact is not simply delivering vaccines, but building systems that help more people receive the right vaccine at the right time.
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Outstanding
Chronic Disease Organisation
This award celebrates organisations making a significant contribution to people living with chronic disease. It recognises those delivering compassionate, person-centred support that helps people navigate the challenges of long-term illness with dignity, understanding, hope, while improving health outcomes.
Crohn's and Colitis Australia
Crohn’s & Colitis Australia is recognised for ensuring lived experience shapes both day-to-day support and national advocacy for inflammatory bowel disease. People living with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis can access trusted information, practical resources and peer connection for conditions that are lifelong, disruptive and often invisible. The organisation also brings patient voices into research priorities, policy and service improvement. For patients, this means support that reflects the realities of living with IBD, alongside a national organisation working to improve the healthcare system around them rather than expecting individuals to navigate those challenges alone.
Healthy Bones Australia
Healthy Bones Australia is recognised for tackling osteoporosis before the first preventable fracture rather than after it. With millions of Australians affected by poor bone health, the organisation developed nationally endorsed resources that simplify diagnosis and treatment for health professionals, reaching more than 5,000 GPs and, for the first time, bringing dentists into the care pathway. By addressing uncertainty around treatment risks and improving coordination, it removes barriers that can delay care. For patients, the result is earlier diagnosis, more confident treatment decisions and a better chance of avoiding fractures that can permanently reduce independence and quality of life.
Cystic Fibrosis Australia
Cystic Fibrosis Australia is recognised for helping transform what it means to live with cystic fibrosis across more than five decades of extraordinary change. As people with CF now live much longer, CFA has helped ensure care, research and advocacy evolve with them. Its work includes medicine access, national standards of care, the Australian Cystic Fibrosis Data Registry, research investment and community-led initiatives. For patients and families, its impact spans generations: better access to life-changing treatments today, evidence to improve care tomorrow, and a national voice ensuring people who still face barriers are not left behind.
Juvenile Arthritis Foundation Australia
Juvenile Arthritis Foundation Australia is recognised for building a national response to a childhood disease that previously had no dedicated organisation advocating for early diagnosis and lifelong care. Delays can leave children with permanent joint damage, so JAFA has focused on connecting families with specialists, improving professional education, supporting research and elevating juvenile arthritis with government and national leaders. Its work has helped reduce diagnostic delays and strengthen treatment pathways. For children, that means a better chance of receiving the right care before irreversible damage occurs and of growing up with greater mobility, independence and quality of life.
Migraine Australia
Migraine Australia is recognised for taking a serious neurological disease that is routinely minimised and making patients visible. Through education, treatment-access updates, research partnerships, community support and national awareness campaigns, it challenges the idea that migraine is “just a headache”. For people whose work, study, relationships and daily life can be disrupted by attacks, that recognition matters. The organisation gives patients practical information and a national voice while working to reduce stigma in healthcare, workplaces and the wider community. Its impact is helping people move from being dismissed to being understood and better supported.
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Outstanding
Patient Research
This award acknowledges groundbreaking research that advances understanding, treatment, or prevention of health challenges. It recognises methodologically sound research offering novel insights or approaches to patient-focused healthcare challenges, translating into tangible benefit.
Rare Cancers Australia
Rare Cancers Australia is recognised for turning thousands of individual experiences into evidence powerful enough to influence policy. Nearly 2,500 patients and carers took part in Australia’s first national rare cancer patient experience survey at this scale, documenting delayed diagnosis, navigation gaps, financial pressure and unmet support needs. Within four months, findings had reached 14 Members of Parliament, informed Australia’s first Optimal Care Pathway for rare cancers and influenced policy commitments. For patients, the difference is that their stories no longer sit as isolated anecdotes. They have become national evidence capable of changing how rare cancer care is measured, funded and designed.
FSHD Global Research Foundation
FSHD Global Research Foundation is recognised for translating patient-funded research into tangible progress for a rare disease with no cure. Over 15 years it has raised $23 million and funded 70 grants across 11 countries spanning basic science, diagnostics and therapeutics. Australian patients now have access to developments including an at-home diagnostic test, advanced imaging and a patient registry, and the Foundation’s advocacy has helped attract clinical trials to Australia. For people living with progressive loss of movement and function, that means research is not remaining in laboratories: it is creating earlier answers, trial access and realistic pathways towards future treatment.
Professor Deborah Bateson and team, University of Sydney
The ScreenEQUAL team is recognised for asking who could be left behind as Australia moves towards eliminating cervical cancer. People with intellectual disability have lower screening rates and can face barriers that mainstream resources do not address. Professor Deborah Bateson and her team use an integrated knowledge translation approach to co-design accessible screening resources with the people who need them. Patients are not research subjects at the end of the process; they are partners in creating the solution. The importance is profound: Australia’s cervical cancer success will only be equitable if people with intellectual disability can understand, access and have a positive experience of screening too.
Professor Helen Skouteris, Monash University
Professor Helen Skouteris’ research is recognised for giving national weight to something many women have been saying individually for years: their symptoms are too often dismissed, normalised or misunderstood. More than 2,200 Australian women and girls contributed to the study, highlighting gaps across chronic pain, menopause, endometriosis, cardiovascular disease, mental health, autoimmune conditions and more. By documenting those experiences at scale, the research turns “I wasn’t heard” into evidence policymakers and health services must confront. For patients, its value is both validation and leverage, a stronger basis for changing what receives attention, funding and better care.
Professor Stephen Davis AO and Professor Geoffrey Donnan AO, Melbourne University
Professors Stephen Davis and Geoffrey Donnan are recognised for research that can save the one resource stroke patients cannot get back: time. Their team demonstrated that neurologists can assess and guide treatment for patients on Melbourne’s Mobile Stroke Unit remotely through telemedicine, with outcomes comparable to having the specialist physically on board. That means scarce stroke expertise could potentially reach more patients, including those outside major metropolitan centres. For someone having a stroke, the impact is immediate: faster specialist decisions can mean less brain damage, less disability and a better chance of walking, speaking and living independently after the event.
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Outstanding
Carer Advocate
This award recognises a carer who has provided exceptional support, compassion, and advocacy for a patient. It celebrates their unwavering commitment to patient well-being by demonstrating deep compassion, building trust, and actively advocating for the patient's dignity and quality of life.
Julie France
Julie France is recognised for sustaining seven years of advocacy before her daughter finally received a brain tumour diagnosis. She researched possibilities, challenged incorrect diagnoses, coordinated specialists, managed medications and attended appointments while also caring for her own mother. When her daughter could not advocate effectively for herself, Julie became the person who held the history, asked the questions and kept pushing for answers. Her contribution was not a single dramatic intervention but extraordinary persistence over years of uncertainty. For her daughter, that meant never having to face a confusing medical journey alone and retaining dignity and independence through it.
Lorraine Mutukisna
Lorraine Mutukisna is recognised for the sheer constancy of her care. At 78, while managing health challenges of her own, she became her husband’s day-and-night carer after a serious accident. She manages medicines, appointments and daily care, advocates with health services and has taught herself the skills needed to support his recovery. Even after suffering multiple injuries herself, she continued. Her husband has reached milestones that once felt out of reach, including weight-bearing on one foot. This recognition shows the enormous clinical, emotional and practical contribution a family carer can make when love becomes sustained advocacy every single day.
Kylie Marion
Kylie Marion is recognised for building an entire support system around her daughter rather than allowing multiple diagnoses to define what is possible for her. Her daughter lives with KBG Syndrome, deafness, ADHD and autism, and Kylie coordinates complex healthcare and therapy while advocating at school, learning Auslan and connecting her daughter with the Deaf community. She also creates opportunities for inclusion through activities such as gymnastics and seeks additional educational support where needed. Her advocacy is not simply about managing appointments; it is about ensuring her daughter can communicate, belong, learn and grow in independence despite the barriers around her.
Muoi Muoi Fernandez
Muoi Muoi Fernandez is recognised for navigating complex healthcare and disability systems on behalf of her husband while also overcoming language, migration and system barriers of her own. Through persistence, community connection and advocacy, she has ensured his needs are understood and that he receives appropriate care and support during recovery. Her nomination highlights the work family carers often do invisibly: translating information, following up services, speaking when the patient cannot and making sure dignity is not lost inside complex systems. For her husband, Muoi is not simply support at home; she is the person helping healthcare work around his actual needs.
Nives Forte
Nives Forte is recognised for choosing to step back into advocacy after retirement and after facing serious illness herself. When a close friend became unwell, Nives recognised the need for urgent medical attention, pushed for hospital assessment and remained a consistent presence when the friend’s family was outside Melbourne. When her friend could no longer advocate effectively, Nives ensured her voice continued to be heard. Drawing on both her healthcare background and her experience as a cancer patient, she provided something clinical teams cannot replace: a trusted person who knew the patient, understood the system and stayed beside her throughout the journey.
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Outstanding
General Practitioner
This award honours a GP who exemplifies excellence in primary care, builds trust with patients, and advocates for preventative healthcare. They deliver compassionate, individualised care while promoting preventative and public health initiatives leading to measurable improvements in health and wellbeing.
Dr Don Yapa
Dr Don Yapa is recognised for providing the kind of comprehensive continuity that is particularly valuable in a regional community. For almost 20 years, Mivo Park Medical Clinic has supported people in Cobram and surrounding areas with general practice, mental health care, diabetes management, physiotherapy and referral to specialists. Patients have a familiar place to begin and a team that understands the broader picture rather than a series of disconnected encounters. This recognition reflects the value of dependable, long-term primary care: knowing where to turn, having someone who knows your history and being helped to navigate what comes next.
Dr Kristin Soda
Dr Kristin Soda is recognised for doing the work patients often cannot see but deeply feel: connecting the dots across their care. She creates calm consultations where people can explain what is worrying them, translates complex medical information into language families can understand and follows through with specialists and therapists so important details do not fall between services. Patients describe feeling seen rather than processed. Her nomination shows a GP acting not only as a clinician, but as an advocate and coordinator who reduces the burden of navigating a complicated healthcare system when patients are already dealing with illness.
Dr William Hung
Dr William Hung is recognised through the powerful experience of one patient. Two years ago, that patient believed they were “on death’s door”. Today, they credit Dr Hung’s understanding and care with giving them renewed energy to keep fighting. There is no long list of programs or titles here, and the patient story does not need one. The impact is intensely personal: someone who had lost hope now sees a reason to continue. It is a reminder that one of the most meaningful measures of healthcare is the difference a clinician can make to how a person sees their own future.
Dr Angela Kwong
Dr Angela Kwong is recognised for turning what patients tell her into practical changes in weight-management care. She built a medically supervised multidisciplinary telehealth service, then redesigned it when patients and referrers asked for greater flexibility. When nutritional problems emerged during treatment, she co-designed a product with patients rather than expecting them to fit existing options. She also takes those experiences into GP education, with one session on GLP-1 side effects downloaded by 7,000 GPs in its first month. Her impact extends from individual consultations to changing how other clinicians support patients facing weight-related care.
Dr Tian Tu
Dr Tian Tu is recognised for going far beyond the usual boundaries of general practice for a patient with severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. Over seven years he provided home visits, telehealth, after-hours support and consistent advocacy, making sure Joanne was involved in decisions about her own care. During palliative care, when there was pressure for aged care placement, he supported her wish to remain at home and coordinated the people needed to make that possible. His nomination is a powerful example of patient-centred care as action: protecting autonomy, dignity and choice when a patient is at their most vulnerable.
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Outstanding Clinic
This award highlights a clinic that sets the benchmark for excellence in healthcare delivery, patient satisfaction, and community impact. The clinic achieves high patient satisfaction, adopts innovative practices to improve healthcare, and plays a key role in addressing local health needs.
Inner North Medical Centre
Inner North Medical Centre is recognised for something patients often struggle to find: the same high standard of care regardless of which doctor or nurse they see. One patient describes years of consistently being listened to, having options and procedures clearly explained and leaving appointments knowing what happens next. That consistency extends across preventative care, hormonal health, skin procedures and nursing support. For patients, the difference is trust in the whole clinic rather than reliance on one exceptional clinician. It makes seeking care easier because respect, communication and thoroughness feel built into the service itself.
Watersprings Health Centre
Watersprings Health Centre is recognised for the confidence its patients place in the whole care network around them. The nomination describes a clinic where people are welcomed warmly, treated with respect and referred to specialists and allied health professionals whom the GPs know and trust. Its patient base spans ages and cultural backgrounds, yet the experience is described as consistently positive. At the heart of this recognition is not a single innovation but something fundamental to primary care: patients feel confident that the people caring for them are connected, thoughtful and genuinely invested in what happens after they leave the consulting room.
KnG Extended Care / KnG Healthcare
KnG Healthcare is recognised for creating a practical alternative for patients who no longer need acute hospital care but are not yet ready to go home. Its Extended Care model combines personalised recovery plans, multidisciplinary support and a lower-acuity environment focused on independence. Since opening its dedicated facility, the service has saved more than 29,930 hospital bed days. For patients, the benefit is not simply system efficiency: it means recovering in the right setting, with support matched to what they need next, rather than staying in an acute ward or being discharged before they feel ready.
Menopause Symptoms After Cancer
The Menopause Symptoms After Cancer Clinic is recognised for addressing a gap that can remain after cancer treatment has finished. Women may survive cancer but be left with severe treatment-induced menopause, limited options and little understanding of where to seek help. The Royal Women’s Hospital clinic provides specialist advice tailored to that complexity, helping patients understand symptoms, explore safe treatment options and regain quality of life. One patient describes it as the first place where her experience was truly understood. Its value is in recognising that surviving cancer is not the end of care and that recovery must include how women live afterwards.
Australian Cardiovascular Specialists
Australian Cardiovascular Specialists is recognised for providing specialist heart care across an unusually broad patient journey, from children with congenital heart conditions to adults with complex cardiovascular disease. Around 17,000 patients receive care each year. For families, that scale and breadth mean access to specialist expertise across different ages, diagnoses and stages of illness without losing the focus on the individual. The service’s point of difference is continuity around complex cardiac needs: helping patients move from diagnosis through treatment and long-term management with a team committed to accessible, compassionate and coordinated cardiovascular care.
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Outstanding
Cancer & Rare Disease Organisation
This award celebrates organisations making a significant contribution to people affected by cancer or rare diseases. It recognises those delivering specialised support, raising awareness, advocating for patient needs, and improving outcomes for patients and families across Australia.
My Room Childrens Cancer Charity
My Room Children’s Cancer Charity is recognised for supporting the whole reality of childhood cancer, not only the treatment. Since 1993 it has raised more than $45 million, funding family support, clinical care, research and clinical trials across Australia. Families can receive practical help with accommodation and financial pressure while specialist roles and research investment aim to improve survival and long-term quality of life. What makes its impact distinctive is the combination of immediate relief and future impact: helping families cope with what cancer demands today while investing in better care and treatment for the children who come next.
NeuroEndocrine Cancer Australia
NeuroEndocrine Cancer Australia is recognised as the only national charity dedicated specifically to people living with neuroendocrine cancer, a complex disease that is often poorly understood. Patients and carers can access specialist NET nurses, counselling, dietetic support, education and trusted information at no cost. In the past year alone, NECA delivered more than 75,500 minutes of one-to-one specialist support. For patients who may struggle to find knowledgeable care locally, the difference is profound: a team that understands the disease, can help navigate treatment decisions and remains available throughout a long and uncertain cancer journey.
Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research
The Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute is recognised for translating precision oncology research into treatment opportunities for patients with advanced cancers. Through the MOST CIRCUIT Study, patients whose standard options were limited could receive treatment matched to the molecular characteristics of their tumour. The study generated evidence that contributed to expanded PBS access to combination immunotherapy and recruited around 30% of participants from regional Australia. For patients, this was not research at a distance: it created new treatment pathways, widened access to potentially life-extending therapies and demonstrated how national collaboration can turn scientific discovery into real-world care.
Inherited Cancers Australia
Inherited Cancers Australia is recognised for supporting people at a point where cancer may not yet exist, but the risk can shape every major health decision. As Australia’s only national organisation dedicated to inherited cancer risk, it helps people understand genetic results, screening, prevention and what those choices may mean for their families. Its transformation from Pink Hope expanded support beyond hereditary breast and ovarian cancer to all inherited cancer risks, regardless of gene, cancer type or gender. For patients and families, that means clearer choices, less isolation and support before cancer has the chance to define their future.
MPN Alliance Australia
MPN Alliance Australia is recognised for being led entirely by people who live with myeloproliferative neoplasms themselves. Created when patients had little disease-specific support, the volunteer team now provides Australia’s only MPN-focused peer support, information, advocacy, treatment updates and community connection. Members share current information on clinical trials, medicines and specialist care while creating a place where patients and carers can speak with people who genuinely understand the condition. Its difference is lived experience at the centre: the organisation was built by the community it serves and remains accountable to their real needs.
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