ANU academic Dr Philip Batterham has won the Commonwealth Health Minister's Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research.

Dr Philip Batterham is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Research Fellow at the ANU National Institute for Mental Health Research.

The award, which includes a $50,000 NHMRC grant, highlights a person's success as a young medical researcher, their achievements to date, and anticipates future contributions to health and medical research.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Margaret Harding said Dr Batterham's award was well deserved and reflected the strength and scope of early career research at ANU.

"On behalf of the University I would like to congratulate Dr Batterham on his award," Professor Harding said.

"It is wonderful recognition of his hard work and dedication to mental health research."

Dr Batterham said he was humbled to have his hard work acknowledged.

"There are so many great researchers out there so it's nice to be recognised," Dr Batterham said.

Dr Batterham, who was granted a NHMRC Career Development Fellowship in October, is developing an online program that aims to treat or reduce the symptoms of multiple mental disorders.

"Mental health problems are responsible for approximately 15 per cent of the total disease burden on the community. Despite the abundance of programs available to treat or prevent mental disorders, few interventions aim to reduce symptoms of multiple disorders," he said.

Often a patient will have more than one disorder, but no program currently exists to treat multiple disorders faced at once.

"During the Fellowship I am going to look at creating new online programs to address a range of different disorders simultaneously and use the assessment tools that we've developed to then tailor the intervention components to the individual's level of needs," he said.

If successful, Dr Batterham's online program could prove a significant boost to mental health services in rural and remote communities.