Biography

Dr Lai is the Director of Intensive Care Services at Mater Health. He is also the Director of Clinical Stream Governance for Surgical, Neurosurgery, Acute Care and Cancer Services at the Mater. His other commitments include working with the Therapeutics Goods Administration (TGA) to establish standards for critical care mechanical ventilators and being an active committee member of the Queensland Statewide Intensive Care Clinical Network (SICCN).

A graduate of Monash University Medical School, Dr Lai holds the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians of United Kingdom and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand and the Royal Society of Medicine. He is a holder of the European Diploma in Intensive Care Medicine and has a Postgraduate Diploma in Echocardiography and Clinical Ultrasound from the University of Melbourne.

Dr Lai is an Associate Professor at Griffith University and has been the founder, convenor and faculty member of a number of courses including the Basic Intensive Care Medicine (BICMed) course, A-B-C critical skills for ICU, the Australian Short Course in Intensive Care, Basic Assessment and Support in Intensive Care (BASIC), Antimicrobial Masterclass for Acute Care Practitioners, Short Course in Critical Infections and the Advanced Diagnostic and Physiological Monitoring in Critical Care (ADP-MoCC) Symposium.

Dr Lai has authored and co-authored a number of publications in the fields of critical care medicine, central venous catheter related blood stream infections, systemic inflammatory response syndrome and sepsis. His work contributed to research on sepsis and evolution of sepsis definition. He is passionate about perioperative critical care, advanced diagnostic modalities in medicine, innovative physiological monitoring in enhancing safety and quality in healthcare and detection as well as prevention of acute deterioration in hospitalised patients.