Gold Coast Power 100 2019: meet the city’s most influential doctors

Meet the Gold Coast’s medico power players: they are the go-to doctors and surgeons renowned for their skills, compassion and influence.

THE GOLD Coast is spoiled for choice when it comes to health with an enviable line-up of medical elite choosing to call the city home.

Magnificent lifestyle and world-leading research opportunities has helped to lure medical professionals at the top of their field to the city.

From private practice to the city’s hospital wards where Gold Coast University Hospital senior emergency medicine Doctor Christa Bell treats the city’s children, and Dr Shahina Braganza, founder of the oneED Foundation, raises awareness for workers’ wellness so they don’t suffer in silence.

Gold Coast associate professor and orthopaedic surgeon Matthew Scott-Young.

GPs like former Gold Coast Medical Association president Dr Sonu Haikerwal, who was one of just 35 people chosen to study at India’s best medical school in her year, orthopaedic spinal surgeon Matthew Scott-Young and respected plastic surgeon Craig Layt, who both graduated just up the M1, are also prime examples of the city’s best and brightest inductees.

But while attracting industry leaders has been integral to the city’s current success, nurturing homegrown talent will bolster the future, with the number of students completing health-based university courses on the Coast jumping by 38 per cent in the past five years.

Craig and Tina Layt. Picture Jason O'Brien

The Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH) is one of Australia’s major teaching hospitals, and Gold Coast Health, helmed by CEO Ron Calvert and Chairman Ian Langdon, is the city’s largest employer with a workforce of over 9,500.

In the last 12 months, the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct, encompassing the Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH), Gold Coast Private Hospital headed by CEO David Harper, and Griffith University has come into its own after the 2018 Commonwealth Games athletes made their departure.

Dr Sonu Haikerwal Picture John Gass

The precinct, which will keep growing over the next decade, has already cemented itself as a major player in the Asia-Pacific area for clinical trials thanks to the partnership between academia and health.

More than 150 research projects, from personalised medicine and biomedical technology, to drug and vaccine development, are delivered each year through Gold Coast Health, bringing in around $2.2 million in annual funding.

GC Health director for research, governance and development Dr Greta Ridley spearheads the research team: “We’re incredibly focused on research that has the greatest impact on patient outcomes, health practices and increased efficiency in the health system”.