Some of Australia’s biggest names in endocrinology and diabetes research have been recognised for their service to the specialty in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours.

Emeritus Professor David McIntyre has been awarded Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for his distinguished services as a clinician and to medical research, education, policy development and allied health administration.

Professor Harold David McIntyre.

A staff endocrinologist at Mater Hospital Brisbane since 1993, much of his work has focused on improving outcomes and care for women with diabetes and obesity in pregnancy. In 2016, he was awarded the Norbert Freinkel Award by the American Diabetes Association for outstanding contributions to the field of diabetes and pregnancy.

Professor McIntyre told the limbic said the changes in thinking around gestational diabetes and its long term impacts had been significant.

“My message to get across is that people have thought of GDM as just a pregnancy complication that then vanishes. But I think now we increasingly understand that it is a marker of a long-term health risk for women and that it and other complications like hypertension in pregnancy are often the forerunners of later cardiovascular disease or permanent diabetes,” he said.

“It gives us a great opportunity to identify people early who are at risk, and to identify that risk over time. It’s sort of a move from thinking about gestational diabetes as just a pregnancy complication to a lifetime health risk marker for women.”

Professor McIntyre also led the development of the Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating (DAFNE) program for type 1 diabetes across Australia, with OZDAFNE now a national program helping patients to self-manage their diabetes.

“To me, that was a great highlight, seeing it come to Australia and developing it further, then publishing several papers showing its beneficial outcomes,” he said.

Meanwhile, he has witnessed the evolution of countless developments in diabetes care, from the development of specific monoclonal antibodies to the widespread adoption of automated insulin delivery systems and continuous glucose monitoring.

The development of diabetes technologies was exciting to witness as a clinician, he said.

“They just make life so much easier with much less guesswork about people’s glucose profiles.”

Improving patient management and access to care has also long been a focus. Professor McIntyre hopes his current work on the Mater Queensland eConsultant program will help GPs in rural and remote areas gain clinical insights from endocrinologists [link here].

The web-based portal allows GPs to lodge a request for advice on behalf of a patient and communicate with a specialist directly.

“We have to start thinking of ways of delivering specialist care that are outside just the traditional full complete comprehensive specialist review,” Professor McIntyre said.

In this model, “[the patient] is getting rapid specialist input into their care, while the primary GP is still maintaining control of their overall clinical management”.

Professor Bernard Tuch has also been recognised with an award of the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his significant services to endocrinology and medical research.

Professor Bernie Tuch

The co-founder and chair of the NSW Stem Cell Network from 2002 to 2022, Professor Tuch was an advocate for embryonic stem cell legislation in the NSW parliament.

Along with his work as a consultant endocrinologist, he has also been a director of the Australian Foundation for Diabetes Research since 2014.

In a statement to the limbic, he said the recognition reflected the support, encouragement and collaboration of many people throughout his career, including colleagues and patients.

“I am deeply grateful to my parents for their unwavering support and guidance, particularly my father, who fled Europe in 1938 in search of a better life in Australia — a country that provided extraordinary opportunities,” he said.

He also recognised mentorship from others, including Professor Alf Steinbeck, “whose example as both an endocrinologist and researcher greatly influenced my own path”.

Professor Tuch said the modern emergence of stem cell science transformed his field by “providing a renewable source of insulin-producing cells”.

“Prior to this, such cells could only be obtained from donor pancreases. I have been privileged to contribute to this exciting era through the work of my former Unit at Prince of Wales Hospital, which developed two stem cell lines with the potential to generate many different cell types, and through the creation of the NSW Stem Cell Network, of which I served as Director for two decades.”

Meanwhile, Professor Timothy Davis was honoured with an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for his services to medicine, research into diabetes and infectious diseases and tertiary education.

A professor of medicine at the University of Western Australia, he served as a chief investigator at the National Health and Medical Research Council from 1993 until 2023. He is currently a consultant endocrinologist at Fremantle Hospital.

In 1991, he founded the Fremantle Diabetes Study, a unique longitudinal community-based diabetes natural history study. Findings from the study have been published in more than 160 studies, according to UWA [link here].

He also served as vice-president of the Australian Diabetes Society from 2004-2006 and is a lifetime member.