Patient Zero Named a Finalist in Five ARN Innovation Awards Categories
Key Highlights
Five finalist positions from one company. Two organisational, three individual, at the awards' twentieth year.
Enterprise Partner and Emerging Tech together. The two categories describe the business exactly: delivery for large organisations, and the agentic engineering that now powers it.
Three individuals, three disciplines. Marketing, technical and management excellence, which is roughly what it takes to run a software company.
The work underneath it. Years of delivery for enterprise and government customers. The nominations recognise a body of work, not a single project.
Fifth consecutive year on the finalist lists, after outright wins in 2022 and 2024.
Decided 28 October at Ilumina in Sydney.
Finalists for the twentieth ARN Innovation Awards were announced today, selected from more than 420 nominations and narrowed to 271 finalists across 134 organisations by judges, Moheb Moses (Channel Dynamics), Cathy O'Sullivan (Foundry) and Julia Talevski (ARN). Patient Zero appears five times.
The Five Finalist Categories at the ARN Innovation Awards 2026
Each considers how partners have used emerging technology to raise the innovation level of their customers, on projects under two years old. PZ is shortlisted alongside eight others, including DXC Technology, Insight Enterprises and Versent.
The first three finalists are in the "Personal Innovation" categories. ARN's criteria for these described standout individuals who contribute to customer, company and channel success through a transformative approach to their role, whether that role is marketing, technical or management.
Personal Innovation: Marketing Excellence
Demelza Green, Co-CEO.
Personal Innovation: Technical Excellence
Paul Seymour, Co-CEO.
Personal Innovation: Management Excellence
Bay McGovern, Principal Product Owner.
Enterprise Partner and Emerging Tech, in the Same Year
Enterprise Partner and Emerging Tech usually go to different kinds of companies. Enterprise Partner recognises the safe pair of hands: the partner large organisations trust with systems that can't afford to break. Emerging Tech recognises the partner doing something new with the technology, usually a younger or smaller company that hasn't yet earned the aforementioned kind of trust. Given that, it's rare to see one company earn a spot on both finalist lists.
The work behind it:
- A finance app rescue for a global bank: first MVP in two weeks, six production apps delivered fully agentically in eight weeks total, 640 automated tests. The case study →
- A multi-year partnership inside the Queensland Government: one identity for every Queenslander, and Daniel's Law delivered within its immovable legislative deadline. The case study →
- A mainframe migration quoted at $15M, delivered with agentic AI for $800K. How the economics changed →
This is the fifth consecutive year Patient Zero has featured in the finalist lists, following a Tech Innovation win in 2022 for the delivery model the company still runs on, and Demelza Green's Management Excellence win in 2024.
“Five finalist positions in one year, across the company and three of us individually, says something about the whole team, not any one of us. We've spent the last couple of years changing how software gets delivered, and it's good to see that recognised. The clients whose work sits behind those nominations are the reason any of it exists.”
Winners Announced 28 October, Gartner on 16 September
Winners are announced at a black-tie dinner on Wednesday 28 October at Ilumina in Sydney, where the Hall of Fame inductee will also be revealed.
Between now and then, Demelza and Paul are on stage at the Gartner IT Symposium on the Gold Coast on 16 September, presenting Rogue Agents: Sovereignty, Token Economics and Open Weight Models, where they unpack some of their work recognised in the nominations.
The full finalist list is on ARN.
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