What It Really Took to Build QENDOCare
Not a soft launch. Not a lucky break. Just grit, grief, and getting it done.
When people hear “world-first multidisciplinary telehealth clinic,” they assume a team of suits in a boardroom. What they don’t see is me: in a hoodie, on my couch, juggling school drop-off, funding contracts, and endo flare pain — building something that was never supposed to exist. QENDOCare didn’t start with a policy brief. It started with a gap. A gap so wide that hundreds of thousands of Australians were falling through it every year.
This is the story of what it really took to build it.
No Roadmap, Just Rage and Vision
For years, I sat in rooms where people nodded about “consumer-led care” and then went on to do exactly what they were already doing. I watched people be harmed by systems that were designed to help them — or worse, be told the harm was all in their head.
So, we did what we always do: we built what didn’t exist.
QENDOCare is now the world’s first free, consumer co-designed, biopsychosocial telehealth clinic for people with endometriosis and pelvic pain. It sounds neat. Professional. Strategic. But what it really was — was messy, raw, relentless. It was me and a handful of people working ridiculous hours, fielding community calls, mapping intake flows in Canva, and getting knocked back from funding applications while reapplying the next day.
It was grief-fuelled and purpose-led.
We Started With Stories, Not Systems
This wasn’t built in a hospital boardroom. It was built in Facebook groups. In Zoom rooms. In hundreds of 1:1 calls with people crying because they didn’t know what else to do. We started with listening. And then we asked:
What would a clinic actually look like if it was designed around the lived experience?
What if referrals didn’t require someone to “prove” their pain?
What if the first appointment didn’t retraumatise them?
What if we didn’t just treat symptoms, but supported the whole person?
That’s where QENDOCare was born — not from a service design framework, but from asking better questions.
We Had to Fight for Every Inch
Let’s be clear: women’s health is still drastically underfunded. Endometriosis research and care has been historically dismissed, trivialised, or “pink-washed” without real infrastructure investment. So when we said we were building a telehealth clinic to provide multidisciplinary care for free — eyebrows went up. Gatekeepers got uncomfortable.
We weren’t backed by a hospital. We had no existing model to clone. We were launching something unproven, unfunded, and (for some) inconvenient.
We applied for dozens of funding streams. We wrote, rewrote, and rewrote again. Eventually, Brisbane South PHN said yes. But even then, we didn’t wait — we started the prep work anyway. We onboarded clinicians. Held co-design workshops with CALD communities, First Nations women, LGBTQIA+ patients, carers, parents, GPs. We built it brick by brick.
Burnout Wasn’t a Risk. It Was a Companion.
Behind the scenes, I was working 14-hour days. My inbox was full of appointment requests before we even launched. I fielded media, wrote policy briefs, hired team members, sent ED referrals, and still made it to bedtime stories with my kids.
I don't say that to brag. I say that because people look at QENDOCare now and see a polished service. But we started with burnout in our bodies and purpose in our pockets. We built while exhausted because the alternative — another year of people getting dismissed, gaslit, and isolated — wasn’t acceptable.
And Still, We Were Told It Wouldn’t Work
We were told:
“You won’t get clinicians to sign on.”
“You can’t coordinate that many streams of care.”
“You can’t deliver trauma-informed care via telehealth.”
“It’s too hard to scale.”
“The sector isn’t ready.”
But you know who was ready? The community. They were desperate for something that finally saw them.
What It Took:
✔ 3 years of unpaid and underpaid work
✔ 3500+ lived experience stories that shaped every step
✔ Partnerships across PHNs, GPs, psychologists, physios, dietitians, nurses, and support workers
✔ Governance, compliance, consent forms, privacy protocols, policy builds
✔ Stakeholder diplomacy, furious lobbying, and 3am pitch decks
✔ Faith
✔ A camping chair in every meeting we weren’t invited to
What It Gave:
🟡 A real solution for people living with endometriosis and pelvic pain
🟡 A new benchmark for consumer-led care
🟡 A pathway others can follow — and they are
🟡 A future where we don't ask "Can this be done?" but "Why hasn’t it already been?"
We Didn’t Just Launch a Clinic. We Laid Down a Challenge.
QENDOCare is proof that we don’t have to wait for the system to catch up. We can build the future while we’re still hurting. We can lead with compassion, and govern with rigour. We can listen to lived experience — and let it shape everything.
So no, QENDOCare wasn’t easy. It wasn’t quick. It wasn’t handed to us.
But it’s here.
And we’re just getting started
