Its inno­v­a­tive fleet of trucks with cus­tom-designed clin­ics has trav­elled over a mil­lion kilo­me­tres, deliv­er­ing crit­i­cal health care to near­ly 20,000 peo­ple, help­ing patients avoid 40 mil­lion kilo­me­tres in trav­el for appoint­ments, and sav­ing more than 800 lives. We sat down with Heart of Aus­tralia Founder, Direc­tor, and Cardiologist, 

Dr Rolf Gomes on the organisation’s 10^th anniver­sary, where he reflect­ed on the program’s achieve­ments and its new­ly announced nation­al expan­sion, includ­ing the roll­out of the Nation­al Lung Can­cer Screen­ing Program.

As Heart of Aus­tralia cel­e­brates its 10^th anniver­sary, the organ­i­sa­tion has already had a pro­found impact on Queensland’s remote com­mu­ni­ties. Its inno­v­a­tive front-line med­ical ser­vice has deliv­ered spe­cial­ist health­care ser­vices to the regions, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, car­di­ol­o­gy, urol­o­gy, neu­rol­o­gy, gas­troen­terol­o­gy, diag­nos­tic test­ing and more. 

So when the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment announced in May 2023 that it was estab­lish­ing the Nation­al Lung Can­cer Screen­ing Pro­gram (NLC­SP) and it need­ed to find a way to deliv­er the pro­gram to peo­ple who don’t live in the cities, Heart of Aus­tralia and its trucks with soon-to-be-patent­ed bat­tery-oper­at­ed CT scan­ners was the solution. 

When the Gov­ern­ment men­tioned the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mobile CT scan­ners to make the screen­ing pro­gram acces­si­ble to coun­try Aus­tralians, it was a case of the ​“right place, right time, right tech­nol­o­gy,” recalls Dr Gomes.

“Two years ago we launched our mobile CT scan­ner which allows us to do hos­pi­tal-grade CT scans in the mid­dle of nowhere, which is actu­al­ly quite unique. 

“What it means is you can dri­ve that truck out to any­where in the mid­dle of the desert, in the cane field, at the show­grounds, and peo­ple can walk up the stairs and have a CT scan of their chest or a CT scan of any part of their body. It’s a hos­pi­tal grade CT scan­ner. You don’t need to have any ded­i­cat­ed, fan­cy pow­er sup­ply at the oth­er end…”

As Dr Gomes talks about the Heart of Aus­tralia trucks’ mobile CT scan­ners, he proud­ly states that the first one was actu­al­ly man­u­fac­tured in Queens­land, and the world’s first bat­tery-oper­at­ed CT scan was actu­al­ly per­formed in a car park in Narang­ba, a sub­urb of More­ton Bay. 

Lung Can­cer is Australia’s fifth most com­mon can­cer and the lead­ing cause of can­cer death.

Cur­rent­ly, only 26% of lung can­cer patients sur­vive beyond five years, pri­mar­i­ly because the dis­ease is often diag­nosed too late.

“By find­ing this dis­ease ear­li­er, we can sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve sur­vival rates,” explains Dr Gomes.

The Heart Trucks, of which there have been six gen­er­a­tions, were all designed, and man­u­fac­tured or mod­i­fied in Queens­land too, fea­tur­ing all the things you’d expect from a med­ical clinic.

One of the key advan­tages of Heart of Australia’s mobile clin­ics is their abil­i­ty to pro­vide imme­di­ate care. And in the case of diag­nos­tic test­ing for the Lung Can­cer Screen­ing pro­gram, the trucks serve as a hybrid of a mobile radi­ol­o­gy ser­vice and a com­pre­hen­sive diag­nos­tic test­ing facil­i­ty, allow­ing spe­cial­ists to con­duct var­i­ous tests on-site. This elim­i­nates the need for patients to make mul­ti­ple trips and wait weeks for results.

“So the beau­ty of hav­ing the trucks is you have your entire tool­box with you,” Dr Gomes notes. 

“When I’m in real­ly remote and iso­lat­ed loca­tions, which I often am, and talk­ing to some­one about pain in their chest, I don’t have to say, ​‘I’ll write a refer­ral for you to then ring up and make a 3‑day trip to have a stress test and run on the tread­mill for nine min­utes.’ I can instead say, ​‘Why don’t you step in the room next door?’ And I can do the stress test because I have the tread­mill and the ultra­sound machine and everything.

“You can close that loop very quickly.”

This imme­di­ate access to diag­nos­tic tools stream­lines the health­care process, allow­ing for quick­er diag­noses and treatment.

As part of the $45 mil­lion in Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment fund­ing, Heart of Aus­tralia will expand its spe­cial­ist care to all states and ter­ri­to­ries, tak­ing their fleet of trucks from six to eleven, ensur­ing that ​‘far-flung’ com­mu­ni­ties of Aus­tralia receive the crit­i­cal care they need. The program’s expan­sion from Queens­land to oth­er regions is par­tic­u­lar­ly cru­cial for First Nations com­mu­ni­ties that face high­er lung can­cer rates and have lim­it­ed access to med­ical facilities.

“This nation­al expan­sion is a tes­ta­ment to the suc­cess of our mod­el and the unde­ni­able val­ue of deliv­er­ing spe­cial­ist health care in rur­al and remote Aus­tralia,” Gomes proud­ly states.

Key to the program’s suc­cess in address­ing health­care dis­par­i­ties, has been the increas­ing involve­ment of med­ical spe­cial­ists. Gomes acknowl­edges that it used to wor­ry him when he’d trav­el to coun­try med­ical prac­tices and dis­cov­er the same issues.

“You’d hear the same sto­ry – ​‘that we used to have a gyne­col­o­gist, but then they retired’. Or ​‘we used to have an oph­thal­mol­o­gist, and their city prac­tice became too busy,” Gomes says.

“We want­ed to estab­lish a sus­tain­able mod­el that could con­tin­u­al­ly pro­vide spe­cial­ist ser­vices to region­al areas, ensur­ing that they don’t lose access as providers retire or relocate.”

Gomes explains that what has start­ed to take shape is a sus­tain­able path­way to bring spe­cial­ists to the regions in the land ver­sion of the Roy­al Fly­ing Doc­tor Ser­vice, but not for emer­gency retrieval.

“Ini­tial­ly, when I start­ed the pro­gram, it was myself and two oth­er car­di­ol­o­gists. But now we’ve got over 30 spe­cial­ists. They’ve heard about the pro­gram. They’ve picked up the phone or sent an email say­ing, ​‘We’ve thought about doing this ourselves.’”

Along­side spe­cial­ists, one of Heart of Australia’s fun­da­men­tal work­force roles his­tor­i­cal­ly was a hybrid role called a Med­ical Aide. This role did every­thing from recep­tion sup­port, help­ing a patient with an ECG, dri­ving a sup­port vehi­cle, and shut­tling staff between airports.

As Heart of Aus­tralia pre­pares to expand its reach, the work­force is broad­en­ing to include nurs­es, car­diac ther­mo­g­ra­phers, res­pi­ra­to­ry tech­ni­cians, radi­og­ra­phers and more. Dr Gomes invites health­care pro­fes­sion­als, espe­cial­ly those look­ing to make a dif­fer­ence in rur­al set­tings, to get involved: ​“We are real­ly look­ing for any­one who would like to get out of the city, who’d like to do some­thing for coun­try Aus­tralians where those ser­vices are real­ly appreciated”.

With the first of the new Heart of Australia’s trucks launch­ing in August 2025 and sub­se­quent trucks rolling out every three months, Heart of Aus­tralia is set to tru­ly trans­form health care access across the nation. 

Reflect­ing on the expan­sion into oth­er states, Dr Gomes proud­ly remarked, ​“So it’s great to see it become the Heart of Aus­tralia. Our team has worked so hard over the last 10 years. I’m a car­di­ol­o­gist, but when you’re cov­ered in grease and sweat, reach­ing for your stetho­scope in the mid­dle of nowhere because an hour ago you were help­ing a dri­ver under the truck change a flat tyre, you know, the work’s pret­ty real.”

The Nation­al Lung Can­cer Screen­ing Pro­gram will be avail­able for eli­gi­ble peo­ple from July 2025.