Our 2022 NSW Health Pathology Awards was well worth the wait. With 200 guests in the room on Wednesday 26 October, and many more tuning into our live stream, the celebration was at an all-time high.

Uncle Michael West, our guest from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Local Abo­rig­i­nal Lands Coun­cil, wel­comed us to Coun­try and shared his pas­sion and con­nec­tions to his land, and the Sec­re­tary of Health, Susan Pearce, gave a very warm speech that was filled with grat­i­tude for the achieve­ments and deter­mi­na­tion of our organisation.

The oppor­tu­ni­ty to gath­er togeth­er in such a unique way was a priv­i­lege. It was a true high­light to see the achieve­ments and hard work of all our 2022 final­ists being recognised.

And our 2022 win­ners are…

Team awards

• Our Lis­more lab won the Keep­ing Peo­ple Safe and Healthy Team award for their response to the dev­as­tat­ing floods that hit Lismore.
• Our PoCT Team, Lab­o­ra­to­ry and ICT Oper­a­tions, and IMT were named win­ners of the Deliv­er­ing Tru­ly Con­nect­ed Care award for imple­ment­ing Roche Liat for Covid-19 solu­tions. They set up Liat analy­sers across NSW ear­ly in the pandemic.
• Our aku­na Spec­i­men Track­ing Pro­gram Team won the award for Con­tribut­ing to Bet­ter Health and Jus­tice sys­tems. This clever team designed and devel­oped aku­na, which lets us know where every pre­cious patient spec­i­men is at all times once we receive it.
• Our Statewide Edu­ca­tion Series Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Team won the Peo­ple and Cul­ture award for their Sci­en­tif­ic and Tech­ni­cal Statewide Edu­ca­tion Series estab­lished to over­come pan­dem­ic-relat­ed social and pro­fes­sion­al isolation.
• Our Genomics Lab at Prince of Wales took home the Recog­nis­ing our Pio­neer­ing Spir­it award. They’ve bro­ken new ground in Aus­tralian med­i­cine in recent years, estab­lish­ing a range of crit­i­cal repro­duc­tive genom­ic services.
• Our Out­stand­ing Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Vol­un­teers won the Envi­ron­men­tal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty award. These envi­ron­ment cham­pi­ons have lob­bied ven­dors, estab­lished plas­tics recy­cling at their work­sites, and are ded­i­cat­ed to sustainability.

Indi­vid­ual awards

• Jacob Bird­sall was named win­ner of the Research Excel­lence award. As the PoCT Coor­di­na­tor at Roy­al North Shore, Jacob led a project to design, build and imple­ment a sys­tem to analyse data from the Roche Liat COVID test­ing devices.
• Our RITE Staff Mem­ber for 2022 is Gayle Warnock, Man­ag­er of our Point of Care Test­ing net­work. Gayle helped estab­lish 6 rapid COVID test­ing clin­ics in Syd­ney and com­mu­ni­ty test­ing in Far North West NSW, and proved an exem­plary leader.
• The win­ner of our Col­lab­o­ra­tive, Con­nect­ed Leader award is Dr Peter New­ton, Illawarra/Shoalhaven Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor. A hands-on leader and prob­lem solver.

Spe­cial Commendation

A spe­cial moment in our awards cer­e­mo­ny was hon­our­ing Dr Annabelle Mahar, who sad­ly passed away this year. We tru­ly were for­tu­nate to have Annabelle as a part of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy and she was a very deserv­ing final­ist in the RITE Staff Mem­ber cat­e­go­ry this year. It was a priv­i­lege to acknowl­edge and cel­e­brate her with a spe­cial com­men­da­tion that was accept­ed on her behalf by mem­bers of her family.

Chief Exec­u­tive award

The 2022 Chief Exec­u­tive Award was award­ed to the Incep­tion of Region­al Mol­e­c­u­lar Pathol­o­gy – Wag­ga Wag­ga, Dub­bo, SERH Bega, ICPMR West­mead Micro­bi­ol­o­gy. A tru­ly inspir­ing collaboration.

And last but not least

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all 10 win­ners, as well as the many final­ists and nom­i­nees who were a part of this year’s NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Awards.

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