Medtech is a diverse sector, with clinicians and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds coming together to develop medical devices and diagnostics.
Anything that can be used to diagnose, prevent, treat and monitor medical conditions comes under the medtech umbrella – from wound dressings to catheters, pacemakers to baby incubators, Covid tests to blood pressure monitors.
Medtech is an industry that relies on collaboration between research and industry to identify and solve challenges, and develop devices to improve health outcomes.
This is an area South Australia excels in, and we have a long history supporting the medtech sector.
The Adelaide BioMed City research precinct supports more than 2,000 researchers and 10,000 staff across hospitals, universities and research, fostering high-impact translational research collaborations between researchers, clinicians and students, together with entrepreneurs and leading industry players.
Its proximity to and connections with researchers and companies at the Lot Fourteen and Tonsley innovation precincts is taking collaboration to the next level.
All three South Australian universities are active in the medical device research space.
Flinders University has its own dedicated Medical Device Research Institute (MDRI), while the other two have medical devices and medical engineering as part of other research institutes, including the University of South Australia’s Future Industry Institute (FII) and Centre for Cancer Biology (CCB), and the University of Adelaide’s Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) and Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML).
The South Australian Government continues to support the Medical Device Partnering Program – an initiative of the MDRI – which has been based at Tonsley since its inception in 2008.
The Government is fast-tracking South Australian innovations in the global marketplace by investing a further $900,000, matched by more than $1.7 million from Flinders University, research and industry partners, to support the continuation of the MDPP and continue to fuel the medical device innovation pipeline at Tonsley.
The MDPP fosters collaborations between researchers, industry and end-users to create medical technologies where there is both identified clinical need and viable market potential.
The additional funding will allow the MDPP to further develop the state’s sovereign medtech capability, retain its team of world-class medical device and technology experts, and scale its global impact.
With its strong capability in digital technologies, South Australia is positioned to have a major impact on medtech mega trends such as the digital evolution, healthy ageing, precision healthcare and global biosecurity.
