SPACE HEALTH & MEDICINE ON AUSTRALIA’S CLINICAL LAUNCHPAD
With
Professor Tracy Smart AO, Air Vice-Marshal (Ret’d)
BMBS, MPH, MA, Dip AvMed, FRACMA, FACAsM, FAsMA, FCDSS, FACHSM (Hon) &
Tracy Smart AO, Professor, Military and Aerospace Medicine
The Australian National University
HEALTH EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS SEGMENT
Filmed in Canberra | April 2026
Professor Smart is a veteran, medical doctor, health leader, aerospace medicine specialist, and retired Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) senior officer. She is currently at the Professor, Military and Aerospace Medicine at the Australian National University (ANU), and serves as the Interim Director of the ANU Defence Institute, and as a Mission Specialist at the ANU Institute for Space. She previously served as the University’s COVID-19 Public Health Lead from 2020 to 2022.
Prof Smart’s 35-year RAAF career included several operational deployments, and leadership and command positions at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of Defence. Her career culminated in the roles of Surgeon General of the ADF and Commander Joint Health. In these roles she drove substantial reform in the delivery of policy, programs, and treatment in the military Mental Health space, and in the health aspects of transition from Defence. She transferred to the RAAF Specialist Reserve in early 2020 and continues to take a strong interest in Defence and Veterans’ health.
Apart from her ANU roles, Prof Smart is a non-executive Director of Goodwin Aged Care Services and the International Academy of Air and Space Medicine; Chair of the ANZAC Research Institute and the Australian Football League Industry Mental Health Steering Group; and Co-Chair of the Australian War Memorial Gallery Development Project Veterans’ Advisory Group. She is a member of the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal, an Honorary (Professorial Fellow) in the Psychiatry Department, University of Melbourne, a frequent keynote speaker, and undertakes various consulting and advisory roles in aerospace medicine and military and veterans’ health.
Source: Supplied
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8918-8939
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Bionic eye trial shows improvements in functional vision for retinitis pigmentosa
Results of the first clinical trial of Australia’s ‘second generation’ bionic eye have demonstrated ‘substantial improvement’ in four participants’ functional vision, daily activities and quality of life over a period of more than two and a half years.
Led by the Centre for Eye Research Australia, Bionics Institute, University of Melbourne and Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, the trial findings add to interim results which showed that the second-generation bionic eye developed by Australian company Bionic Vision Technologies provided rapid improvements for four patients with blindness caused the genetic eye condition retinitis pigmentosa.
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Confronting picture of growing women’s health crisis in uterine cancers
Uterine cancers have become Australia’s fastest-growing women’s cancer, with incidence doubling over the past 25 years and projected to continue to surge. Without immediate action, more than 44,000 women are expected to be diagnosed by 2035, and 8,900 will lose their lives to the disease.
Released November 2025, Australia’s first State of the Nation: Uterine Cancers in Australia 2025 report by the Australia New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group (ANZGOG), reveals a confronting picture of a growing women’s health crisis that has gone largely unseen and one that now requires immediate, coordinated national action.
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Allied Health Leader shares career insights
Mirella Vagnarelli is a distinguished healthcare leader with proven expertise across South Australia and the United Kingdom, where she has successfully led large, multidisciplinary teams. Holding a Master of Business Administration (Health) from Flinders University, she earned Fellowship status with the Australasian College of Health Service Management in 2022. In 2023, Mirella was honoured as a scholarship recipient for the prestigious ‘Women in Leadership’ Program at the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation.
