The 2026 Occupational Therapy Exchange (OTX) is Australia's premier clinical OT event.  This year it was held at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre across 23 and 24 June.

The conference brought together over 1,000 Allied Health professionals to collaborate on innovations, clinical research, and the future of Occupational Therapy practice. 

Key themes discussed at the conference this year

OTX 2026 focused on translating research into practical, everyday interventions. Attendees praised the conference for offering actionable tools and strategies that they could bring straight back to their clinics and patients. 

With significant updates to the NDIS and Aged Care sectors, sessions also heavily focused on novel approaches to assistive technology, functional capacity assessments, and advocating for clinically appropriate client funding.

Keynote speakers we tuned into 

Greg Santucci

Greg is an internationally recognised paediatric occupational therapist from the US. He presented heavily attended sessions on neurodevelopmentally informed practice and creating sensory-safe spaces.

Dr. Catherine Ball 

Dr. Catherine is an award-winning futurist, company director, and bestselling author working across global projects where emerging technologies meet humanitarian, educational, and environmental needs. Her inspirational talk focused on how leaders can work to advance social mobility and environmental stewardship.

Dave Jereb

Dave is an occupational therapist, author, speaker, mentor and course facilitator. He has developed the 3S Framework for Supported Self-Development and the ABC-IDEAS Framework for Supporting Behaviour. His talk explored how designing systems that support meaningful work can strengthen workforce sustainability, professional identity and outcomes for clients.

Pitch it competition 

A novel innovation that grabbed our attention was the Pitch it competition which invited submissions from clinicians, students, researchers, and exhibitors. Participants were encouraged to showcase their emerging or innovative practice, advancements in occupational therapy, or product and service innovations.

Submissions could include project briefs, practical applications of evidence-based practice, case studies, quality improvement activities, research findings, or stories and experiences. All of this could be presented as an oral presentation, clinical conversation, workshop, occupation station or poster display.

Our top takeaways

Automation as an efficiency multiplier

Industry shifts such as the NDIS changes and rate stagnation has led to a growing demand to understand and deploy automation as a way to relieve pressure on OT practices. For us at splose, this proved to be a relevant conversational starter. Practitioners were keen to learn about how our platform streamlines client onboarding and can help reduce no-shows, which helps guard revenue and time for their practice. 

The need to deploy AI strategically is growing

The practitioners we spoke to were a mix of users and non-users of AI. The ones currently using AI had only just begun to dabble with off-the-shelf tools that offered little in the way of customisation. As we dug deeper into their usage of these tools, we learned they were happy to have begun trying out AI but were still unimpressed with some of the duplication of work that still needed to be done to get their AI output across to their current systems.

Our team used this insight as a foot in the door to demonstrate how splose AI offered access directly into document templates without having to switch between context windows. We also showed how our system was fully customisable to the documentation style of their practice and could be deployed as a single source to every practitioner in their business. 

For those still on the fence with AI, our team took a different approach. We focused more on operational efficiency by showing how splose AI transformed  session transcripts and client history into structured, formatted drafts. We walked them through how each AI transcript saved their practitioners time at the end of every session; time which could then be redirected to caring for more clients in the day. 

Thank you

We loved meeting and speaking with so many Occupational Therapists who stopped by our booth and took the time to share their current journey with us. We also value the time taken by so many to draw us a vision for the kind of technological changes they were hoping to see in their practice. This desire to grow and improve care outcomes through technology really demonstrates the dedication and commitment of every practitioner in this space. 

And of course, a heartfelt thank you to Occupational Therapy Australia for hosting such an expansive event with so many talented speakers to learn from. We’re proud to support occupational therapists with a platform that forms the bedrock of a stable practice and provide them with the advanced tools they need to thrive in the future.