Bowled over by healthcare at scale
Meet Liquid Partner and COO, Leo Yin

Like many kids growing up in Australia, Leo’s career ambitions centred around playing Test cricket for Australia and wearing the prized Baggy Green. Upon realising this was out of reach, he shifted his focus to a career in physiotherapy.

While being a sports physio provided Leo with the opportunity to improve health outcomes for individuals, he discovered his true calling in the ability to create change at scale: improving population-level health outcomes through transformative, human-centred technologies.

Today, Leo sees the real power of technology in its ability to support the collective expertise of multidisciplinary teams who work together to co-design trusted, fit-for-purpose systems to achieve the ‘Quadruple aim of healthcare’. Namely, the delivery of enhanced patient experience; better population health; improved healthcare team wellbeing; and reduced costs.

At Liquid, this is a key driver behind his systems thinking approach to healthcare delivery.

Leo did play international cricket, but that’s another story for another time.

You started out as a sports physiotherapist. What changed?

I really enjoyed being a clinician and working closely with my patients. I did some extra studies, in terms of an MBA, with the intention of running my own private practice. Then, half-way along, I discovered consulting and realised I could make an impact on the health system at a population-wide level or at a system level, rather than at an individual level.

It was the ability to deliver impact at scale that most interested me. Rather than treating and seeing eight people in a day, I could possibly do work that impacts bigger numbers; broader populations; and different areas, including aged care and mental health.

So, that's the short version of the journey. It was a bit by accident, a bit by discovery. And I haven’t looked back since.

When did you first realise the power of AI as an enabler for better healthcare?

Weirdly enough, I first stumbled upon the wow factor with AI a good 12 years ago, before people were calling it AI. A colleague of mine, as a side project, created what sounds like an obvious use case now. But at the time it wasn't, and that was to essentially feed a bunch of X-rays and MRIs into a machine learning algorithm and then use that to do better, quicker, more efficient, and safer diagnosis.

Back then, AI really wasn’t a thing. I just remembered it being a very cool technology use case for a very specific health application. So, that was my first encounter. More recently, as AI continues to evolve, what really strikes me is how it can be used more broadly to connect and integrate information across the health (and broader) system.

What do you see as the biggest opportunities and/or barriers to technological transformation across healthcare in 2026?

I think the key opportunity is breaking down barriers. That means looking at cross-departmental care and how it spans state and federal government lines. And looking at whole-person car: so not just a knee or a hip or a back or a chest or a heart. But what about the impact physical ill-health can have on someone’s mental health? And how does mental health and wellbeing impact their work situation and other social indicators of health?

I don't think the technology is going to solve it alone. Technology is an enabler and it might connect the data into one ecosystem. But ultimately people need to change. Systems need to change, governance needs to change, and leaders need to change their thinking to make whole-person care happen.

If we can crack that with a coalition of the willing, then I think we can collectively make a huge difference. My “glass half-full" view of this is that the people and leaders I have been lucky enough to come across and work with on various transformation programs all see this too. So, I choose to believe this change is closer than we may think.

How does your early experience as a clinician inform your current work with Liquid?

Having been a clinician and a deep subject matter expert in one area, I have an utmost respect for collaboration and the need to co-design systems with experts. And that’s not just clinical experts but extends to ‘experts’ with lived experience: patients, families and carers.

In the work we do now, we need to act as designers for the system, which often means thinking at the 10,000-foot view. However, my experience as a clinician helps ground my thinking in the reality that what we design needs to work equally at a systems level as it does for the individual clinician, carer, patient, or any end user.

My mental model for this trade-off is: as a clinician, you are arguably most efficient when you do what you're best at, seeing patients in 20 or 30-minute slots. And that makes a lot of sense from an individual clinician’s point of view, but does it make sense from a person-centred care point of view? Maybe. Maybe not. And how does that impact the system, the models of care around it, the funding model, and other incentives?

So, at Liquid, my experience helps our understanding of the trade-offs on all sides of the equation, and designing for the most optimal outcome and experience with all factors considered. These days in healthcare, it’s about achieving what’s called the ‘Quadruple aim of healthcare’. Enhanced patient experience. Better population health. Improved healthcare team wellbeing. Reduced costs.

You’ve worked with many large organisations both in the public and private sectors. What makes Liquid so special?

I truly think we're small enough to care, but large enough to make a difference. We’re small and nimble — not burdened by bureaucracy. But we are big enough to provide a full range of services, attract very talented people, and we’re also collaborative by nature.

Our size also means most of the transformative projects that we do, we can't do by ourselves. We're part of an ecosystem of players, and we play our role with respect and openness. But what sets us apart is that no matter what ecosystem we are in, we want to make a difference.

Finally, we work with good clients and good customers who we call partners. And we're lucky enough that we get to choose who we work with, so values alignment is key for us.

Final thoughts?

We are at a critical point where population demographics and technology will collide, and we can either use technology to improve at the edges or revolutionise the way we understand how care is received.

We need to challenge and rethink traditional models of care that assume care is given to someone in a hospital setting, physical clinic or in aged care home. More and more, we need to shift the thinking to meeting the patient where they are: either in-home or virtually, and shift our perception that this might be a sub-optimal experience.

Rather, if we remove one of the biggest limiting factors, being physical space, and replace it with technology-enabled models of care, then I believe we will not only manage increasing demand, but improve access, create greater equality, and enhance outcomes.

Connect with Leo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leo-yin/

Start a conversation with Liquid: https://www.liquidinteractive.com.au/contact

Bowled over by healthcare at scale

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