Prime Minister announces Medical Technologies Innovation Partnership

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last week announced the Medical Technologies Innovation Partnership - the first of the Australian Innovation Partnership program. The program is intended to create partnerships between government, business and the research community that will create new high-skill jobs for the future.

The Medical Technologies Innovation Partnership would be based in Macquarie Park, in proximity to medtech company Cochlear and the Australian Hearing Hub. The Prime Minister recently visited the Hearing Hub with Minster for Innovation Kim Carr and local candidate Jason Yat-sen Li.

The Australian Innovation Partnerships will build on the first two Industry Innovation Precincts, in food and manufacturing, established under the $1 billion Plan for Australian Jobs package announced in February. The Labor government will provide an additional $12 million in funding to expand the original 10 precincts to deliver 12 new Australian Innovation Partnerships.

The partnerships will build national networks of partners, from different sectors, with the aim of helping businesses and researchers to collaborate, share knowledge and deploy technology, enabling translation of research into commercial outcomes. This will, in turn, increase the competitiveness of Australian industries and create more jobs.

The funding commitment has been welcomed by the Medical Technology Association of Australia (MTAA), which has long been advocating to improve manufacturing and export capabilities for the medical technology industry. In June, MTAA and its partners applied for funding to establish a medtech precinct under the Industry Innovation Precincts program to strengthen the collaboration between researchers, industry, educational institutions and end users.

The MTAA claims that Australia’s medical technology industry already has a world-leading research capability, contract design and engineering capabilities, and commercialisation support - but has been lacking an entity to draw the medical technology network into a cohesive, industry-led strategy. The Medical Technologies Innovation Partnership is said to provide that strategy, responding to the needs of a sector which had an estimated turnover of over $10 billion in 2011-12 (and over $300 billion worldwide).

The remaining innovation partnerships will be headquartered in cities and towns across Australia, each containing a national reach to maximise the opportunities for business growth and job creation. They will be announced soon.

Image credit: Effy Alexakis.