Bionic Ear Institute
East Melbourne, Victoria
[check against delivery]
It is my pleasure to announce this morning that Australia is about to get its own international medical bionics conference.
The inaugural conference, hosted by the Bionic Ear Institute, will take place at Lorne in Victoria this November.
I hope it will be the first of many.
The theme of the conference is “Medical Bionics – A New Paradigm for Human Health”.
Conferences like this one are vital to the process of creating and sharing knowledge.
They bring together scientists from different disciplines and scientists at different stages of their careers.
They inspire curiosity, encourage collaboration and allow Australian researchers to showcase their findings and skills to the world.
The Lorne conference will attract experts in biotechnology, engineering, ICT, polymer science, nanotechnology, medicine and more.
The information they exchange and the relationships they form may ultimately lead to new life-saving and life-enhancing products. They may even lead to whole new industries.
Science, research and innovation have the power to create great prosperity.
Just as importantly, they have the power to transform and enrich people’s lives.
Anyone who doubts that need only look around us today. It’s great to be here with so many people who have benefited directly from cochlear implants.
The bionic ear is an Australian icon that is improving the hearing of 100,000 people around the world. It’s inventor, Professor Graeme Clark, is also the founder of the Bionic Ear Institute.
Not quite so famous but equally important is the digital signal processing software developed by Dynamic Hearing, a company spun out from the CRC for Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid Innovation.
Their success is a reminder that Australia is very, very good at medical science.
Most people know that the vaccine against cervical cancer was originally researched in this country.
Many know that we have won six Nobel prizes in medicine, and that the most recent went to:
• Peter Doherty in 1996 for his work on the immune system
• and Barry Marshall and Robin Warren in 2005 for work that has revolutionised the treatment of ulcers.
But who can say what the next big breakthrough will be?
The health stream at the Australia 2020 Summit shook the tree when it suggested we should aim to create a bionic eye within twelve years.
At least three Australian research teams are already working on bionic eye technologies, including one here at the Bionic Ear Institute.
My guess is that the group most likely to succeed will be the one with the best networks, the best links to other researchers and institutions in the field, and the strongest commitment to collaboration.
Of course, if the three groups end up working together, then everybody wins.
There is no question that collaboration will be the key to future advances in all branches of medical science, including medical bionics.
The problems we face these days are so big, the technologies so complex, and the costs so high that we will have to concentrate our efforts and resources if we want results.
We only have so many dollars for medical research, and the last thing we want to do is squander those dollars on duplication and half-baked ideas.
Which brings us back to the inaugural Australian Medical Bionics Conference.
It will map the scientific frontier, giving participants and observers a clear sense of where we are heading – and the most fruitful paths we might take to get there.
Australian medical bionics will be wiser and more focused for it, and I applaud the Bionic Ear Institute for making it happen.