Housed in a high-profile purposed-designed centre on the campus of St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, ACMD will be a fully integrated medical, engineering, scientific and commercial research centre that accelerates tangible outcomes for today’s health challenges. Its 11 storeys will incorporate laboratories, break-out rooms, lecture theatres and spaces that allow researchers to meet together and discuss their work.

One of the key features of ACMD is the co-operation and collaboration of its partners. The Bionics Institute is proud to be a partner in ACMD, along with St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne; the University of Melbourne; St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research; Centre for Eye Research Australia; Australian Catholic University; Swinburne University; RMIT and University of Wollongong.

ACMD is led by CEO Dr Erol Harvey, who splits this role with his position as Head of Development and Research Translation at the Bionics Institute. ACMD will facilitate each of the stages associated with bringing a research idea into clinical practice. Basic science often leads to a discovery that is refined through further research. Once clear clinical objectives are defined, design and experimentation is used to further develop the approach. The results are tested, the approach is clinically verified, and with the support of investors and commercial entities the innovation is validated and transferred to manufacturing and clinical practice.

The hands-on training model at ACMD will equip the next generation of students, clinicians and researchers with the necessary skills and a greater understanding of emerging technologies in medicine. This will produce clinicians with an interest in applying outcomes and discoveries to patient treatment, engineers with insight into how their discoveries might be used in clinical applications and scientists who are technically skilled and workplace ready.

The collaborative multidisciplinary structure of ACMD will reduce operational expenditure and increase staff and capital efficiencies with shared laboratory support, IT infrastructure, technical support platform technologies and flexible laboratory designs all contributing to these efficiencies. By nurturing partnerships with healthtech and medical device manufacturing industries, ACMD will create significant high-value employment opportunities.

Content for this article and image have been reproduced with the approval of ACMD.