Associate Professor Mellick Chehade

Mellick Chehade is an academic orthopaedic surgeon at the University of Adelaide and Royal Adelaide Hospital specialising in trauma surgery and is a chief investigator in the NHMRC CRE in frailty research to achieve healthy ageing. He has strong interests in research, education and patient agency. His current main research interests focus is in strategically merging innovations in Digital Health, Artificial Intelligence and eLearning to improve patient-centred integrated-care for multimorbidity through the co-creation, with patients, carers and health providers, of a personal digital health hub platform built on higher education principles and technology.

In education he established the Australian Musculoskeletal Education Collaboration (AMSEC) and developed a comprehensive health competency framework which has been applied to the development of musculoskeletal as well as generic health education frameworks internationally, including the WHO workforce universal competencies for health care workers framework. He currently leads the International Education Task Force for the Global Alliance for MSK Health in the development of an online education hub in collaboration with the WHO for the Workforce 2030 strategy.

Clinically he has a major interest in osteoporosis, hip fractures and care of older patients with frailty. He served on the Scientific and Medical advisory board for Osteoporosis Australia and is a member of the ANZ Hip Fracture Registry steering group which has developed the National Hip Fracture guidelines and Health and Safety Commission Standards for Hip Fracture.

The virtual hip fracture follow-up service he established in Adelaide (2011) was an early innovation in telehealth which enabled a large prospective cohort observational study collecting patient report outcome measures. This service was the precursor to a virtual fracture liaison service supported within the new personal digital health hub platform by the newly defined role of a Telehealth Liaison Carer (TLC). This program is providing the research and development template for the development of other specialised TLCs supporting the delivery other virtual Models of Care to be implemented within the digital Hub platform.