How a coun­try town rewired what it already had to keep peo­ple home and healthy.

What if you could cut read­mis­sions with­out buy­ing a sin­gle new plat­form?

In South Australia’s River­land, Ren­mark Med­ical Clin­ic joined forces with the local hos­pi­tal net­work, Rur­al Sup­port Ser­vice and CEIH to find out. Togeth­er they took every­day assets — remote-mon­i­tor­ing kits already sit­ting on store­room shelves, an exist­ing health coach­ing ser­vice, an under-used GP refer­ral por­tal, a sim­ple risk algo­rithm, and a fort­night­ly team meet­ing ros­ter — and stitched them into one proac­tive ​“Region­al Care Con­nect” workflow.

Join Marie to dis­cov­er the prac­ti­cal, repeat­able steps — deep need-find­ing, rapid co-design and relent­less cross-sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion — that turned a small rur­al tri­al into a roadmap for statewide transformation.

Marie Less­ing (Direc­tor of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Rur­al Sup­port Ser­vice, Depart­ment for Health and Wellbeing)

Marie Less­ing is an accom­plished dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion leader with over 20 years’ expe­ri­ence span­ning clin­i­cal prac­tice, ICT strat­e­gy, and health­care inno­va­tion. As Direc­tor of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion for the Rur­al Sup­port Ser­vice, Marie has led the mod­erni­sa­tion of region­al health­care ser­vices across South Aus­tralia. Notably, she trans­formed a grant-fund­ed remote health mon­i­tor­ing ini­tia­tive into a sus­tain­ably fund­ed pro­gram under activ­i­ty-based fund­ing. This required redesign­ing clin­i­cal work­flows, redefin­ing ser­vice mod­els, and mod­ernising dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture to align with patient and sys­tem needs. A key achieve­ment under her tenure was the migra­tion of the region­al data ware­house from an on-premis­es envi­ron­ment to a secure, scal­able cloud-based plat­form. Rather than out­sourc­ing, Marie lever­aged and upskilled exist­ing inter­nal teams — sup­port­ing their pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment while build­ing long-term organ­i­sa­tion­al capa­bil­i­ty. Marie brings a rare dual per­spec­tive as both a for­mer clin­i­cian and a sea­soned tech­nol­o­gist, under­pinned by qual­i­fi­ca­tions in Nurs­ing and Com­put­er Sci­ence. Her career includes enter­prise-scale dig­i­tal pro­grams in both the UK and Aus­tralia, with exper­tise in sys­tems inte­gra­tion, ICT gov­er­nance, and dig­i­tal enable­ment in com­plex health envi­ron­ments. She is a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for region­al inno­va­tion, known for dri­ving sus­tain­able dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ground­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion, capa­bil­i­ty build­ing, and ser­vice excellence.

Reg­is­ter for the event