Dr Brooke Spaeth

Brooke is a Senior Research Fellow with the Flinders University International Centre for Point-of-Care Testing and a member of the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute Health Equity Impact Program. Her research focuses on improving pathology service delivery in remote primary health care through the implementation and evaluation of point-of-care testing (POCT) technology across acute, chronic, and infectious disease settings.

She completed her PhD in 2018, documenting a decade of quantitative and qualitative research into POCT effectiveness in rural and remote Australia. This work produced 13 peer-reviewed publications and remains the most comprehensive assessment of POCT in these environments. Through this program of research, including her role as Northern Territory (NT) POCT Coordinator, she developed and validated sustainable models for POCT evaluation, implementation, and service integration, helping to shape NT Government policy and embed POCT into routine care across every remote health facility in the Territory.

Dr Spaeth has generated significant evidence demonstrating the clinical, operational, and economic benefits of POCT, including more than $21 million in annual cost savings associated with acute presentations. She has also built substantial workforce capacity by training more than 1,500 health professionals and strengthening community resilience in remote settings. Her work has been translated internationally, demonstrating the transferability of the methods developed in remote Australia to rural Pakistan.

Brooke currently leads a $2.96 million Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) project focused on improving sepsis detection in remote NT communities. Dr Spaeth has also provided leadership across major national and international initiatives, including the World Health Organization (WHO) multi-country molecular POCT validation study and the First Nations COVID-19 POCT Program, which required the rapid scale-up of testing across 35 NT sites and 85 sites nationally.