NSW Health Pathology’s Chief Medical Information Officer is retiring, leaving behind a remarkable legacy of leadership.

NSW Health Pathology’s Chief Exec­u­tive Vanes­sa Janis­sen thanked Dr Braye for his years of service.

“It’s with mixed emo­tions of grat­i­tude and sad­ness that we farewell Stephen Braye,” she said.

“He has played a piv­otal role in NSW Health and NSW Health Pathol­o­gy, help­ing to shape clin­i­cal ser­vices and dig­i­tal initiatives.”

Stephen’s career has seen him work across many of NSW Health Pathology’s major lab­o­ra­to­ries, including:

• Prince Hen­ry and Prince of Wales where he com­menced his train­ing as a Reg­is­trar in Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy and sub­se­quent­ly as Senior Lecturer/Accredited Spe­cial­ist in Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy for UNSW
• ICPMR West­mead where in 1988 he was appoint­ed as Staff Specialist/Lecturer in Anatom­i­cal Pathology
• John Hunter from 1990 join­ing the Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy Depart­ment and the Uni­ver­si­ty of New­cas­tle Med­ical School as a Senior Lec­tur­er, a post he held to 2017.

Stephen has main­tained a pas­sion­ate inter­est in Cytol­ogy through­out his career, includ­ing sup­port­ing and devel­op­ing the Depart­ment of Cytol­ogy at the John Hunter Laboratory.

His areas of spe­cial inter­est encom­passed head and neck, thy­roid and breast cytol­ogy. His exper­tise in breast cytol­ogy led to his appoint­ment as the Accred­it­ed Des­ig­nat­ed Pathol­o­gist for Breast Screen NSW, New­cas­tle dur­ing the years 2000 – 2017.

He has held many roles in the Hunter area, includ­ing Senior Staff Spe­cial­ist, Direc­tor of Anatom­i­cal Pathol­o­gy, Assis­tant Direc­tor and, in 2011, he was appoint­ed as Net­work Direc­tor of Pathol­o­gy North. In this capac­i­ty Stephen was a foun­da­tion­al exec­u­tive in the for­ma­tion of NSW Health Pathol­o­gy in 2012. He was lat­er appoint­ed the organisation’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Clin­i­cal Ser­vices and then took on the role of Chief Med­ical Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer and Direc­tor of Statewide Clin­i­cal Services.

From Jan­u­ary 2020, Stephen also led our COVID-19 response as Inci­dent Man­age­ment Con­troller pro­vid­ing guid­ance to NSW Health Pathol­o­gy and the Min­istry of Health.

Stephen says he con­sid­ers the work done dur­ing the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic to be some of the most reward­ing of his career.

“You’d like to say it was painful and mis­er­able, and debil­i­tat­ing, but it was none of those things, it was actu­al­ly very, very excit­ing,” he said.

“As a team we were engaged and coop­er­a­tive – it was tru­ly ener­gis­ing. One of the best expe­ri­ences of my work­ing life was work­ing with a team so incred­i­bly focused on deliv­er­ing real, tan­gi­ble and vis­i­ble out­comes for the community.

“I think I would have been absolute­ly mis­er­able if I’d retired five years ear­li­er and missed the oppor­tu­ni­ty of being engaged in NSW Health Pathology’s response to COVID-19.”

Ms Janis­sen acknowl­edged Stephen’s gen­eros­i­ty and com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing oth­er staff at NSW health Pathol­o­gy, through staff devel­op­ment work­shops, plan­ning days, organ­i­sa­tion­al lead­er­ship, and spon­sor­ing many valu­able edu­ca­tion­al opportunities.

“I would like to thank Stephen for his excep­tion­al ser­vice, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ded­i­ca­tion to NSW Health Pathol­o­gy. We wish him all the best as he steps into what is sure to be a busy and ful­fill­ing retirement.”

Stephen will be fea­tured on the offi­cial NSW Health Pathol­o­gy pod­cast, Pathol­o­gy Speak­ing, in the spe­cial COVID episode. You can check out the pod­cast page on our web­site so you don’t miss an episode. It’s also avail­able here on Spo­ti­fy or wher­ev­er you get your podcasts.

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