From Remote Australia to Real-Time Care

At Women’s Health Circle, delivering expert care doesn’t stop at the clinic door. Dr. Cecelia O’Brien and her team travel hundreds of kilometers across Queensland’s most remote communities - places where accessing high-quality obstetric and gynecological care can be difficult or impossible.

Without Dr. O’Brien’s fly-in-fly-out approach to delivering care in rural and remote communities, women would have to travel via airplane or car for several hours facing significant financial and transportation barriers. Thanks to Trice, those challenges are being met with innovation, compassion, and speed.

The Challenge: Distance and Connectivity

Dr. O’Brien, a passionate advocate for equitable women’s healthcare, grew up in the small country town of Inverell, New South Wales. Her first hand experience with healthcare disparities inspired her mission: to bring service to women in their communities that is equitable to that available in metropolitan areas.

But delivering that care comes with logistical and technical barriers -vast distances, unpredictable severe weather, and mobile network outages in places like Mornington Island, particularly during the wet season. Despite these obstacles, Trice has enabled Dr. O'Brien to reach patients who were previously underserved: "Trice has provided a solution to one of the challenging issues in outreach ultrasound, getting images into PACS and getting them reported in a timely fashion." From communities only accessible by light plane to remote clinics where connectivity is scarce, Trice ensures continuity of care -despite geography or weather.

The Solution: A Powerful Partnership with Trice

Introduced through Trice Australia distributor, John Grimshaw of Zone Imaging, Dr. O’Brien was immediately impressed by its excellent image quality, fast upload speeds, and seamless accessibility. Now, with Trice integrated into their workflow, ultrasound scans captured in the field are securely uploaded and reported. This means patients don’t have to wait weeks for essential care.

"The very fast upload speed (even with minimal mobile reception) and the transportation of the data into our ViewPoint database in our rooms (on the Mainland) has been amazing. Then women who live remotely, are getting fetal medicine tertiary level scanning and reporting within 24 hours of our visit."

Real Impact: Better Care, Happier Patients

For patients, the impact is immediate. The ability to receive images instantly after a scan creates a personal and emotional connection - one that’s easy to share with loved ones. Dr. O’Brien says that for her, the most incredible part is watching all of the family come in and meet a little baby on the screen for the first time. There’s so much joy.

"The patients love Trice – they love getting the link straight after the scan and sharing photos with family and friends."

But it’s not just about sharing images with patients, Trice also makes it easy for clinicians to collaborate- even when working remotely.

"The consultation function has been wonderful for sending images and reports for a second opinion. Often, if I am away and remote reporting, the fact that each image comes to a unique, secure link to mobile phone is wonderful. So I can literally report on the run!!"

Trice’s Consult feature supports clinical confidence and continuity of care - regardless of location. Trusted technology. Human results.

A Vision for the Future

Looking ahead, Dr. O’Brien sees even greater potential. Her outreach program, Care on Country, is expanding access to specialized maternal health services in Indigenous and remote communities.

With Trice’s cloud-based platform, she envisions that, "One day, we will have our teams be able to travel to multiple remote communities at once, beaming images back to our headquarters in Townsville for review and reporting. From there, we can assist and support women, their families and the health care teams to provide the highest quality and equitable pregnancy and gynaecology care."