Medical administrators from across Australia and New Zealand will gather in Naarm Melbourne to address critical healthcare challenges, including artificial intelligence, systemic racism, and the demand for bold leadership amid rapid change.
The Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators (RACMA) annual conference will take place from October 10-13, 2026. The event will unite leaders to explore how human judgment, system performance, and sustainable care can adapt to global pressures and technological shifts.
AI’s role in healthcare: opportunity or risk?
Tom Lawry, a former Microsoft executive and author of Hacking Healthcare: How AI and the Intelligence Revolution Will Reboot an Ailing System, will deliver a keynote on the federal government’s efforts to develop a national AI framework. He has emphasized the need for the healthcare sector to influence regulations as they form.
“Healthcare has to be at the table,” Lawry told Croakey. “The stakes in AI’s application in healthcare go way beyond those of other fields, like consumer apps recommending the best restaurants.”
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With 16 years at Microsoft advising global organisations on AI strategy and deployments, Lawry is a full-throated advocate of the technology. He likened the growing use of AI to parallel moments in history like the introduction of cars.
The Australian Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare found the sector’s regulatory and governance systems are unprepared for the rapid uptake of AI that is occurring, and amid concerns about the lack of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation in the Federal Government’s approach.
Leadership beyond the status quo
The conference will also examine traditional medical leadership, featuring sessions on resilience, cultural safety, and the human aspects of healthcare management.
The event aims to provoke new thinking about how healthcare systems can adapt to modern demands while preserving their human foundations.
Confronting racism and workplace culture
Dr. Jillann Farmer, a former United Nations Medical Director and veteran Australian health leader, will deliver a direct assessment of racism, sexism, and bullying in healthcare. Farmer, who led RACMA’s A Better Culture project, argued the sector’s failure to address these issues stems from a system designed to maintain power structures.
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“Change isn’t happening because the system benefits those in control,” she said. “It keeps medical trainees slightly fearful, uncertain about their future. That makes them easier to manage.”
The Better Culture project, commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Health, revealed more than one in three doctors in training had experienced or witnessed bullying, discrimination, harassment, or racism in the past year. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander doctors reported these issues at more than twice the rate of their peers.
Farmer’s reports called for coordinated action from governments, employers, and medical colleges, but progress has stalled. “I haven’t heard from Health Minister Mark Butler or most state and territory health ministers,” she said. One immediate step would involve mandating workforce diversity data collection, similar to the UK’s approach.
In the UK, recent data in the British Medical Journal showed stark disparities: black doctors were four times less likely to secure specialist training places than white applicants. The gap widened in certain specialties, with black applicants in anaesthetics facing less than a 1% chance of success in 2024—30 times lower than white counterparts.
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“Australia can’t claim to be better because we lack data,” Farmer said. “We have no visibility on admissions or career paths for trainees from different backgrounds.”
First Nations leadership sessions will include a keynote from Dr. Glenn Harrison, a Wotjobaluk emergency specialist, on cultural safety as a core leadership duty. Workshops will examine governance in health systems post-“Doctrine of Discovery,” featuring Aotearoa New Zealand presenters Dr. Joshua Manukonga and Nadene Edmonds, RACMA’s Senior Advisor First Nations & Advocacy.
Edmonds recently led RACMA’s inaugural First Nations Leadership for Clinicians program, part of efforts to expand the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical leadership workforce. The conference will also feature the Langford Oration by Yorta Yorta and Wurundjeri elder Aunty Lois Peeler AM.
Farmer sees the event as an opportunity to redefine leadership—not as a set of technical skills, but as an act of courage. “If you want different outcomes, you must design different systems,” she said. “They produce the results they’re built for.”