The format ISSA Healthcare has refined over nine years of U.S. summits is heading overseas.

On Oct. 7, 2026, the day before the ISSA Cleaning & Hygiene Expo opens at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, ISSA Healthcare hosts its first Healthcare Surfaces Forum in Australia.

Linda Lybert, executive director of the Healthcare Surfaces Institute and leader of ISSA Healthcare, said the idea grew out of conversations with key stakeholders at last year’s expo. Interest across Australia and the wider Oceania region was strong, and the problems on the table are hardly local ones.

“I think we really all know that a clean healthcare environment is critical no matter where you live in the world,” Lybert said.

The forum is sponsored by Virtual Mgr, a workforce management technology company with Australian roots. Tony Morocco, global CEO of Virtual Mgr, noted that the company was founded in Queensland in 2014 by his business partners Anil Patel, now chairman, and Neil Fillingham, now global chief operating officer. Both will be in Melbourne for the event.

Finding the gaps together

The forum borrows the model of the Healthcare Surfaces Summit, which ISSA Healthcare and the Healthcare Surfaces Institute held most recently in May at ISSA headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois. The morning brings presentations from professionals in infection prevention, research, environmental services (EVS) and related fields. In the afternoon, attendees break into task forces built around one question, which Lybert framed this way: “What can we do in a year to make a difference or to have an impact on some of the issues that they’re faced with?”

Nobody should expect to spend the day as a spectator.

“This is not an event that you come and sit in a chair,” Lybert explained. “It’s an event that you engage in conversation so the audience will participate with the speakers that are talking about their areas of expertise.”

Underneath all of it is patient safety.

“We want people to come into the healthcare facility and be healed,” Lybert said. “Unfortunately, the numbers are showing us that that’s not happening. They’re actually being exposed to illness while they’re within the healthcare setting.”

She pointed to a recent AI-assisted review of existing data and research that estimated 20% to 40% of healthcare-associated infections stem from unclean healthcare environments. She called the findings staggering.

Every specialty in the building has its own theory about what’s going wrong, Lybert noted. Progress tends to come when those specialists finally hear each other out.

“It’s not until we put them all together in the room that they start to go, ‘Oh, that’s why that didn’t work.’ Or they hadn’t thought of that,” she said.

A timely question from New Zealand

Lybert had a specific reason for bringing Morocco into the forum. She said New Zealand’s health system is in the process of changing its standards, and the questions coming from that effort center on how EVS professionals manage workforce load and daily assignments, and how standards can be written to address those problems. In her view, Virtual Mgr’s data answers many of them.

Morocco has spent about 10 years on exactly this problem. He sees an industry that still runs largely on paper and habit.

“Most of the industry is manual,” Morocco said. “We need to digitize and we need to move forward with innovation.”

Over the last decade, Virtual Mgr has validated more than 170 million cleaning tasks in its system across more than 500 task types. Morocco admitted the number surprised even him when he looked it up.

“We’ve essentially followed cleaners for the last 10 years,” he said.

That record matters as the industry turns toward benchmarking what it actually takes to clean a room properly. Staffing has long been built on square footage, an approach Morocco doesn’t dismiss. What has always been missing, he said, is time studies. Facility size and room types are a starting point, though accurate task times also need to flow into scheduling, with quality measured right alongside speed.

“It’s not how fast you go,” Morocco explained. “It’s about cleaning as fast as you can to get the right quality.”

Since January of 2026, one of his priorities has been getting that data out of the company’s system and into wider use.

“What are we doing with this data? We need to get this to market,” he said.

More than a sponsor’s check

Virtual Mgr’s software manages janitorial and housekeeping work in hospitals, and the company has always focused on making that work more efficient and productive. Morocco draws a straight line from that work to patient outcomes.

“It’s such an important part of the hospital. It saves lives,” he said.

He sees education as the piece that ties it together, both in the U.S. and now abroad. His message to other companies in the industry is simple: show up.

“We just got to get involved. We got to have more conversations,” Morocco said. “Solutions and companies need to work together. We need to partner together for the overall solution of the patient that we all care about.”

He added that the industry has to put the right tools in people’s hands and keep thinking outside the box. Virtual Mgr plans to keep sponsoring ISSA Healthcare initiatives going forward.

What attendees should carry home

Good intentions often fade once a conference ends. Lybert wants this one to be different.

“I hope to develop some passion,” she said. “I know people want to do something about it, but it’s hard to know what to do.”

The forum is designed to answer that. People from healthcare facilities will work side by side with manufacturers and others who can help solve their problems, and Lybert expects attendees to arrive ready to roll up their sleeves.

“You sit in conferences all the time, which are great, but our goal is to really start bringing people together for conversations and then implementing solutions that begin to be sustainable,” she explained. “Now you’re talking across industry professionals instead of just one silo of expertise.”

Melbourne is meant to be a beginning.

“We are opening a platform in Melbourne for this event and hope to continue it for years to come,” Lybert said.

Go here to get more information on the Forum and to register.