Why this matters now
South Australia is on track to become the first state with a single electronic medical record across every regional and metro hospital. That makes the cyber challenge in health impossible to separate from service delivery itself. When hospitals operate as one connected digital environment, patient data, clinical systems, uptime and incident response all become part of the same resilience conversation.
This is why the Government Cyber Security Showcase South Australia is putting health cyber resilience directly on the agenda through the panel “Statewide Electronic Medical Records: Health, Uptime and Cyber Risk.”
A high-stakes environment for cyber resilience
Healthcare is one of the clearest examples of why cyber resilience cannot be treated as a back-office issue. In a fully integrated clinical environment, security failures are not just data problems. They can affect access, continuity, response times and confidence in essential services.
The agenda for this panel is explicit about the key issues at stake:
- protecting patient data and clinical systems in a fully integrated EMR environment
- ensuring availability and incident response for a statewide health platform
- celebrating delivery while being honest about risk, lessons and next steps.
The conversation on stage
The session brings together leaders with experience across digital health, clinical systems and digital health education:
- Alastair McDonald, Director, Strategy and Architecture, Digital Health SA, Department for Health and Wellbeing
- Wendy Sutton, Director Clinical Information Systems, SA Health
- Bryan MacDonald, Lecturer/Course Co-ordinator - Digital Health, RMIT University.
That mix of perspectives makes this more than a technical discussion. It is a conversation about how large-scale health transformation is delivered while maintaining trust, continuity and resilience.
Why the lessons go beyond health
What makes this session especially relevant is that the lessons are not limited to hospitals. Any agency modernising sensitive, always-on services faces similar questions around availability, risk, integration and user trust. If cyber resilience works in health, where disruption has immediate consequences, there are powerful lessons for every part of government modernising critical platforms and connected services.
The broader Showcase agenda reinforces that point, with roundtables including “From Data Breach to Data Trust: Securing Citizen Information” and “Zero Trust in Action: Safeguarding South Australia’s Digital Future.” Together, these sessions point to a wider challenge across government: how to modernise connected systems without weakening trust or continuity.
Why attend
For anyone working across cyber, health, digital transformation, service continuity or risk, this panel offers a practical look at what resilience really means in one of the state’s most critical environments.
To hear Alastair McDonald, Wendy Sutton and Bryan MacDonald discuss the cyber, privacy and uptime implications of a statewide EMR, join the Government Cyber Security Showcase South Australia on Wednesday 10 June 2026 at Adelaide Oval.
View the event & agenda: https://publicsectornetwork.com/events/government-innovation-week-south-australia-adelaide-2026/government-cyber-security-showcase-south-australia-adelaide-2026/overview/
Register now: https://psnevents.eventsair.com/government-cyber-security-showcase-south-australia-2026/gov/Site/Register
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