How St John Queensland expanded healthcare access across remote communities

For more than 140 years, St John Queensland has been helping people across the state through critical health, training and community services. But as its reach extended into regional and remote communities, connectivity challenges were making it harder for teams to stay connected, work efficiently and deliver care where it was needed most.

From Brisbane's CBD to remote Indigenous communities like Cherbourg, reliable connectivity is essential to the organisation's mission. When staff are supporting patients, delivering first aid training or travelling long distances across Queensland, service interruptions are more than an inconvenience. They can impact safety, productivity and access to care.

Working with Optus, St John Queensland implemented a tailored mix of mobile, internet, satellite and fleet management solutions to better connect its people, services and communities. The result is a more connected workforce, improved operational efficiency and an expanded ability to deliver vital services across Queensland.

While many Queenslanders know St John Queensland for its first aid services and community presence, the organisation's work extends far beyond the sidelines. As a state-wide social enterprise, it delivers a broad range of community and commercial services across some of Queensland's most diverse and geographically dispersed regions.

With more than 170 staff and 500 volunteers supporting initiatives, including the St John Eye Van, first aid training, community transport services and workplace first aid programs, staying connected across urban, regional and remote locations is essential to delivering the organisation's mission.

As the organisation continued to grow, St John Queensland identified an opportunity to simplify the management of more than 200 devices and gain greater visibility across its mobile fleet. At the same time, its teams were increasingly working across remote communities where consistent connectivity is vital for safety, service delivery and customer experience.

Supporting people across such a vast geography presented several opportunities to strengthen operations:

• Supporting workforce safety: Teams regularly travel long distances across regional and remote Queensland, making reliable communication an important part of keeping staff connected and supported.
• Expanding access to training: St John Queensland's innovative Syndronic Experience platform delivers engaging, cloud-based first aid training. Strong and reliable connectivity would help bring these immersive learning experiences to even more regional communities.
• Enhancing service delivery: For mobile services such as the St John Eye Van, improved connectivity would enable information to be shared more quickly, helping streamline processes and support better outcomes for patients and healthcare providers.
• Patient delays: In the St John Eye Van, patient care plans couldn’t be sent to GPs in real time. This meant critical medical records sat on a laptop until the van returned to town.

For St John Queensland, the goal was simple: empower its people with the tools and connectivity they needed to safely and confidently deliver services across the state. By improving visibility across its mobile fleet and ensuring reliable access to critical systems in the field, teams could spend less time managing technology and more time supporting the communities that rely on them.

The impact would extend far beyond operational efficiency. It would help St John Queensland reach more communities, strengthen service delivery and create better experiences for the people it serves every day.

Patients in regional and remote communities could access essential healthcare services closer to home, including specialist eye care that helps detect and manage conditions such as diabetes-related vision loss. First aid students, from school-aged children to workplace participants, could benefit from engaging digital learning experiences regardless of location. Vulnerable community members relying on transport services could stay connected to the support they need.

At the same time, streamlined operations and faster service delivery would enhance experiences for commercial customers, helping generate revenue that can be reinvested into community programs and services across Queensland.

With the right foundations in place, St John Queensland would be able to focus on what matters most: expanding its impact and helping more Queenslanders, wherever they live.

To support its growing operations and community impact, St John Queensland was looking for more than connectivity solutions. It needed a technology partner that could understand its unique operating environment and help create a more connected, efficient and scalable foundation for the future.

Working closely with St John Queensland, Optus Enterprise took the time to understand how its teams work, where they deliver services and the challenges of operating across one of Australia's largest and most geographically diverse states. That collaborative approach led to a tailored solution designed to support the organisation's people, services and long-term goals.

The solution combined a range of technologies to help keep teams connected, improve visibility and enable services to be delivered more seamlessly across Queensland, including:

• Enterprise mobile plans, tailored to the needs of a purpose-driven organisation.
• Optus Evolve Internet, enabling connectivity across 12 sites statewide.
• Starlink satellite connectivity, providing reliable internet access for the St John Eye Van, service vehicles and training teams operating in regional and remote locations.
• Optus My Business Portal and Insights Plus, giving the organisation greater visibility and control across its mobile fleet and devices.

The partnership extended beyond technology. With more than 30 first aid training centres operating across Queensland, St John Queensland was also looking for opportunities to strengthen its presence in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley. As part of its commitment to supporting the organisation's mission, Optus provided access to training facilities within its Fortitude Valley office, helping create additional opportunities for education, collaboration and community engagement.

With a stronger technology foundation in place, St John Queensland has been able to extend its reach, strengthen service delivery and create greater impact for the communities it serves across the state.

Key outcomes include:

• 10 Indigenous communities now receiving regular care through the St John Eye Van program.
• Improved operational efficiency and cash flow through same-day service confirmation and invoicing.
• More than 200+ staff and volunteers connected with solutions tailored to the needs of their roles.
• 40,000 first aid students trained annually, including 10,000 primary school students across Queensland.

Perhaps most importantly, the efficiencies achieved have created opportunities for St John Queensland to invest more back into the communities it supports. By reducing operational costs and optimising services, resources can be directed towards expanding access to first aid education, healthcare initiatives and community programs across regional and remote Queensland.

Today, St John Queensland delivers first aid training to more than 30,000 Queenslanders each year, alongside a further 10,000 school students, helping build resilience, confidence and life-saving skills in communities across the state.

With the foundations in place for continued growth, St John Queensland is focused on expanding its reach even further, with plans to establish permanent locations in Mount Isa, Emerald and Roma.

These new locations will help bring essential health, training and community services closer to the people who need them most, strengthening St John Queensland's ability to support regional and remote communities across the state.

Supported by a trusted technology partnership, St John Queensland can focus on what matters most: delivering critical services, empowering communities and improving lives for Queenslanders today and into the future.