Julie Adams, the co-founder of Rising Stars award winner Chemo@home, has been named the Telstra Western Australian Business Woman of the year.
Julie Adams, the co-founder of Rising Stars award winner Chemo@home, has been named the Telstra Western Australian Business Woman of the year.
Announced at an awards ceremony held at the Perth Convention and Exhibition centre Friday night the Telstra Business Women's Awards, now in its 22nd year, is Australia’s longest running women’s awards program in Australia that recognises the courage, leadership and creativity of the country’s top business women.
Ms Adams also took out the 2016 Telstra WA Business Women’s Entrepreneur Award on the night and hopes the exposure will increase awareness of the unique service Chemo@home delivers.
Chemo@home, which recieved two Rising Stars Awards for the startup and people’s choice categories earlier this year, is a home-based patient care service.
Founded in 2013, Chemo@home provides cancer treatment, as well as infusions for other health conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis, all from the comfort of a patient’s own home.
“For us it’s about letting people know they have the choice to have their treatment in a way we feel is better for them and their family and causes less disruption on their lives,” Ms Adams told Business News.
“It was both very surprising and humbling to win the award and it means more people will be aware of our service and that we’ll be able to deliver our service to more people.”
Ms Adams said that she has had to innovate, negotiate, collaborate and problem-solve to make Chemo@home a reality.
She listed three main challenges the business has faced; finding a way to be able to fund services in the home, breaking down the doctor model of care of taking patients to hospital and instead getting doctors to refer patients to Chemo@home, as well as letting patients know the business existed.
“The aim is to be able to give as many people as possible the opportunity to have treatment at home,” she said.
“We’re expanding across Australia, to South Australia in the next few weeks, and the rest of Australian within the next 12-24 months… we’d also love to make this available to country patients, so that they don’t have to travel to the city much for their treatment where possible.”
“I’m still a bit blown away by the WA awards so I can’t event start to contemplate what would happen if we won at the national level.”
Ms Adams along with the three additional category winners will be flown to Melbourne for the national awards judging on November 16 where they will compete against other state and territory category winners.
2016 WA category winners included Committee for Perth think thank chief executive Marion Fulker for the purpose and social enterprise award and Chandler Macleod chief operating officer Tania Sinibaldi for the women’s corporate and private award.
Betty Tran international founder and 2016 40under40 winner Betty Tran was recognised as the young business woman of the year.
2016 Telstra WA Business Woman of the year Ms Adams said the awards were also valued as a valuable networking opportunity.
“It’s interesting how diverse industries and businesses might be but there’s still some cross-over with what you do or some idea that they do or have that actually resonates with you,” she said.
“So sometimes the more diverse the industry you see something and think oh we could do that too.”
All 19 finalists from the four WA award categories will join the Telstra Business Women’s Alumni and the Telstra Business Women’s awards program will also extend into Asia this year.
Katie McDonald was at the award ceremony on Friday night as a guest of Telstra.
