Working with the Royal Flying Doctors Service
Growing up in North Carolina, I received repeated education about the Wright Brothers’ contribution to aviation. As a kid, I was so fascinated about the rapid advancement to what is now the modern plane that when I heard that I was part of the Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS) team, one of the first things I did was google the aviation history of Australia.
Planes are only one contributing factor that makes up the tremendous value Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS) brings to Australia. This year, RFDS commemorates 90 years of service, and I am glad to be part of that year of celebration.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service is one of the largest and most comprehensive aeromedical organisations in the world, providing extensive primary health care and 24-hour emergency service to people over an area of 7.69 million square kilometres.
Monday morning, the CSC team headed to the University of Queensland (UQ) for the IBM Corporate Service Corps Australia Kickoff Event with both the Royal Flying Doctors Server and World Wildlife Fund in the beautiful and green Global Change Institute’s Living Building.
The event’s speakers were:
- Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Global Change Institute’s Director (@ UQ)
- Anne McNeill, IBM Corporate Service Corps
- Thu Tran, Australian Business Volunteers (CSC partner) Program Director
- Prof. Linwood Pendleton, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Global Lead for Ocean Science
- Dr. Martin Laverty, Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS) CEO
Hearing from Prof. Linwood and Dr. Martin was incredibly inspirational. Their passion in their work truly showed when they were giving introductions to their organization and the challenges they had in hand for us to approach on marine conservation and healthcare innovation. It is an honor for the team to be given the opportunity to work with both organizations. After the speakers, each IBM CSC team member introduced themselves and there was time for everyone to enjoy tea/pastries and network. For the afternoon, the team split up to our host organization. WWF stayed at University of Queensland and RFDS headed to the airport!
RFDS has two locations in the Brisbane International Airport. One is the Brisbane RFDS Base for emergency aeromedical needs including retrieval and inter-hospital transfer. The other is the RFDS Queensland office. RFDS treated us to both locations — I may have been a little too giddy during the plane tour!
After all the excitement of the planes, RFDS and IBMers had our first face to face deep dive discussion on the projects at hand. A lot of the RFDS members flew into Brisbane to meet us and it was a very productive introduction meeting. Throughout the afternoon, everyone at RFDS made us feel really welcomed.
The two projects we have been presented with are:
- Data Collection & Analysis: Enhancing patient and performance reporting (this is my sub-team)
- Telehealth Technology: Enhancing delivery of services to remote and rural communities
These first two days have been jam packed with information / discussions, design thinking exercises, and further flying into the healthcare mindset. In the coming days, we will be talking to more people at RFDS to listen to their stories and expertise. By the end of the week ,we will all be agreeing to our statement of work’s for the remaining 3 weeks.
For WWF, Prof. Linwood recently wrote a great LinkedIn article about the work the IBM CSC team will be exploring.
CSC Australia 1 Team has a Medium Publication to follow CSC members from both teams!
RFDS CSC member, Samir Mehta, now has a Medium page (check it out!). Samir is part of the telehealth technology sub-team.
