Mapping Change: Navigating Tomorrow in Women's Health
Learn more about RANZCOG's Annual Scientific Meeting, focusing on the dynamic landscape of women's health and its challenges.
We look for medicine to be an orderly journey, but it is actually a winding path through uncharted wilderness.
Atul Gawande
Tasmania, our wild and windswept island state. Here, dramatic landscapes, rapidly changing weather - and the occasional challenging road - remind us that even the best journeys require preparation, flexibility and a good sense of direction.
Our theme, “Mapping Change: Navigating Tomorrow in Women’s Health”, reflects the extraordinary pace and breadth of change across our specialty. Over three days, we’ll consider where we are now, what is shaping our practice and what lies ahead—with plenty of opportunity to question, debate, learn and share ideas along the way.
Our program brings together an exciting mix of clinical updates, challenging conversations and fresh perspectives from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and around the world. We have secured some of the leading minds in obstetrics and gynaecology, including international experts who will join us from all corners of the globe.
Plenary sessions will explore pertinent topics such as leadership in adversity, misinformation, social media, ethics and the law, alongside a broad concurrent program spanning high-risk obstetrics, persistent pain, endometriosis, fertility, menopause and multidisciplinary care. We’ll tackle common clinical questions, examine the challenges of rising obesity and an increasingly complex information environment, and look at how technological advances are transforming obstetric, fertility and surgical care.
There will be plenty to take back to practice, whether you’re looking for a practical update, a new perspective or simply a good discussion with colleagues. And, of course, there will be the kind of corridor conversations that happen when several hundred O&G clinicians find themselves in the same place—with decent coffee.
And then there is Tasmania…
Come for the CPD opportunities, stay for the whisky. Breathe the clean air and soak up the bright light of a Tasmanian spring. Wander Kunanyi, lose an afternoon at MONA, explore Salamanca and sample some of the island’s extraordinary food and wine. Hobart in October is crisp, golden and gloriously inviting—a small city that punches enormously above its weight for culture, cuisine and wilderness.
So, pack your walking boots and an open mind. Join us in Tasmania for three days of great science, stimulating conversations, new connections and a little adventure.
We’ll help you get your bearings.
Dr Alex Frain and Dr Carly Sands
RANZCOG ASM 2027 Organising Committee Chairs
Day Summaries
Day One: Setting the Bearings: Understanding the Realities of Women’s Health
Day one sets the bearings by examining the current clinical landscape of women’s health: the everyday realities, risks, lived experiences and practical issues that shape care. The day opens with leadership and the need to guide teams through complexity, including the impact of birth trauma.
Across the concurrent sessions, delegates will explore obstetrics in practice, recognising risk in gynaecological oncology, pelvic floor health and continence across the life-course, postnatal recovery and complication management, regional and remote health, fertility and reproductive care, common gynaecological presentations, the experience of care through the lens of birth trauma, and emerging research through free communications.
The focus is on understanding the terrain as it is, so clinicians can make clearer decisions about where the profession needs to go next.
Day Two: Shifting Currents: Rethinking What Is Possible
Having set the bearings, day two explores the shifting currents reshaping women’s healthcare: changing evidence, patient expectations, technology, workforce needs and health system pressures. The day opens with social media, misinformation and their influence on women’s health, setting the scene for a broader examination of how clinicians respond when the information landscape, expectations and models of care are changing.
Across the concurrent sessions, delegates will consider sexual health, training and early career development, lessons healthcare can draw from its own past, advances in endometriosis diagnosis and treatment, contemporary ultrasound and diagnosis, diverse patient experiences in paediatric and adolescent gynaecology, obesity, pelvic pain and emerging research through free communications.
The focus is on challenging assumptions, applying new evidence and identifying better ways forward. Day Two asks delegates not simply to respond to change, but to understand the forces shaping care and reconsider what may now be possible.
Day Three: New Latitudes: Charting the Future of Women's Health
Day three looks beyond the current landscape to the decisions, skills and partnerships that will shape the future of women’s health.
The day begins with ethics and legal decision-making, then moves into menopause care, clinical education and high-acuity judgement, maternal medicine, multidisciplinary practice, surgical innovation, AI, and global perspectives.
The focus is not simply on new technology or future trends, but on how the profession leads responsibly: making sound decisions, teaching well, collaborating across disciplines, and preparing health systems for what comes next.
Mapping Change: Navigating
Tomorrow in Women's Health
Women’s healthcare exists within a diverse and evolving landscape. Scientific advances, emerging technologies, shifting patient expectations, workforce pressures, health policy reform, and new models of care continue to reshape the environment in which we practise. As clinicians, educators, researchers and leaders, we are required not only to respond to change, but to understand the terrain before us, recognise emerging risks and opportunities, and help chart the course ahead.
The theme of the 2027 RANZCOG Annual Scientific Meeting, Mapping Change: Navigating Tomorrow in Women’s Health, reflects both the complexity of contemporary practice and the spirit of exploration needed to shape the future of women’s health.
As a binational College, the meeting will also recognise Māori as tangata whenua of Aotearoa New Zealand and the importance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, mātauranga Māori and whānau-centred approaches in shaping equitable care for wāhine Māori. Aboriginal and Māori perspectives will be embedded throughout the program, recognising that the future of women’s health must be informed by Indigenous knowledge, leadership, partnership and self-determination.
Hosted in Lutruwita/Tasmania, the meeting draws inspiration from a place defined by landscape, story, movement and connection to Country. For tens of thousands of years, Tasmanian Aboriginal people have lived with, cared for and understood these lands and waters, building knowledge systems that continue today.
From the summit of Kunanyi / Mount Wellington overlooking Hobart, to the wilderness of Cradle Mountain, the rugged coastlines of Bruny Island, the pink granite peaks of Freycinet and the vast Southern Ocean beyond, Tasmania invites us to consider where we stand, the direction we take and how we navigate what comes next.
Across three days, delegates will explore the changing landscape of women’s healthcare and consider how we collectively respond, adapt and lead. Beginning with Setting the Bearings, we will examine the realities of current practice and the factors shaping care today. Through Shifting Currents, we will consider how innovation, evidence, systems and patient expectations are reshaping the direction of care. Finally, in New Latitudes, we will look beyond the current landscape to consider the decisions, skills, partnerships and leadership required to shape the future of women’s health.