When manufacturing began closing down in South Australia, especially automotive manufacturing, it left a void that needed filling.

Struggling with higher unemployment rates and growing challenges in traditional economic outlets, Adelaide looked towards reinvention. As a city Adelaide’s 1.7 million population is large enough to be a hub, yet small enough to remain agile, and boasting the lowest cost of living of all capital cities (according to the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling) makes Adelaide a natural drawcard for talent.

“We’re seeing the economy, not just in Adelaide, but Australia-wide moving more and more in to being digitally-enabled and service-oriented,” says Yvette van Eenennaam. “Adelaide had a big proportion of the local economy dependent on manufacturing, when that began closing we needed to tap into more digitally enabled and service enabled industries to deliver on R&D and transform from “rustbelts” to “brainbelts" to look at new ways of driving innovation and economic wealth.”

Yvette, General Manager at Adelaide BioMed City is helping achieve this by driving and supporting multi-institute and the multidisciplinary collaboration through the long-term development, and continued investment into Adelaide BioMed City, a $3.6 billion initiative that co-locates institutions from research, education and clinical care and industry into a tight-knit and collaborative precinct in the heart of Adelaide.

A World-Class Health & Innovation Hub

Adelaide BioMed City, located at the western end of North Terrace in Adelaide CBD, is one of the largest health science clusters in the southern hemisphere of its kind. The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, The University of Adelaide’s Health and Medical Sciences facility, The University of South Australia’s Health Innovations site, the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, the world’s most expensive, and one of the most digitally advanced hospitals, and the new $1.95 billion Women's and Children's Hospital utilise their proximity to collaborate on research, education, clinical care and business development.

“Our mission is to be a globally recognised partnership leading in research, education, clinical care and population health. The overarching goal is to build impact, leverage investment and inform evidence-based healthcare and innovation in ways that could not be achieved separately. Ultimately we’re looking to accelerate health and wealth outcomes through collaboration,” explains Yvette.

“We aim to achieve these in two ways. Firstly we know that Adelaide, as a small, but technologically innovative city, offers a number of benefits (Adelaide is the first Internet of Things region in the Southern Hemisphere and has invested, from the top down, in making Adelaide a Smart + Connected Community.) Making a major focus of mine branding and positioning BioMed City as a place where the world’s leading talents can innovate, sound in the knowledge that their efforts are supported by world-class spaces and technologies.

Secondly I have a key focus on encouraging the integration of emerging technologies in our healthcare ecosystem which pose enormous benefits. If you look at artificial intelligence and machine learning connected to the Internet of Things, robotics, remote monitoring, all of those really are able to improve our healthcare significantly and drive wellbeing for the communities we support,” adds Yvette.

Driving Collaborative Innovation

While collaboration has been an integral part of research for a long time, the nature of collaboration appears to be evolving from one of conducting research within departments/disciplines/institutions to newer areas necessitating partnerships across departments/disciplines/institutions and increasingly context (e.g. academic, government, private industry).

This type of interdisciplinary/multi-contextual collaboration has stoked the pace of research and encouraged the development of innovative spaces that more effectively facilitate new ways of working. More than this though, research facilities have become more than spaces where research is conducted; they have become hubs for scientific communities where ideas flourish and partnerships are formed.

Often, however, establishing and maintaining fruitful collaborations is hard work and can be a drain on scientists’ time and in a sector as expensive and integral as healthcare, where medical research innovation and clinical trials are literally a matter of life and death, facilitating research innovation is key. Which is why Adelaide BioMed City is working hard to foster the entire research continuum from basic discovery, clinical, public health to health services to improve the health of South Australia.

“Within our precinct we have the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, just a two minute walk away we have the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute - home to more than 600 researchers all working to tackle the biggest health challenges in society today, and within a mile we have the new Australian Institute for Machine Learning where a lot of engineering, robotics and digital technology innovation is underway,” says Yvette.

She adds; “it’s so much easier for our researchers and health care professionals to share knowledge and information when they work in the same space, but more importantly we’re able to get so much more bang for our buck through shared use of some of the extremely expensive equipment that’s needed for world-class research and healthcare. Proximity really is a key asset.”

Managing Stakeholder Expectations through a United Vision

Since its inception Adelaide BioMed City has continued to grow with partners including the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), The University of Adelaide, The University of South Australia, Flinders University, the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN), and just recently, the $550 million New Women's and Children's Hospital, and the newly built SAHMRI2 that will house the Australian Bragg Centre for Proton Therapy, the first proton therapy facility all partnering on the visionary project.

“Our relationship, with the government, our relationship with our health industry, and our relationship with consumers is close. It's a well-connected ecosystem that we’re working to develop,” says Yvette.

“The support and investment from the visionary South Australian State government and the Federal government really exemplifies how much faith there is in the precinct, and the transformative potential it has.” With so many partners, making this potential a reality requires careful stakeholder engagement and a uniting vision. As Yvette explains; “all of our partners share the same vision – to create health and wealth through collaboration. Everyone is an equal partner – each partner is contributing financially and through leadership commitments to achieving our goal.

We worked hard to create a culture and a mindset where our partners and all our employees understand that they’re contributing to a long-term vision. Of course each stakeholder has their individual short-term needs which must be met, but we’re building something that can grow exponentially. We need to overcome the short-term and focus on the big picture and on the wider potential. Having that alignment is key to the success of Adelaide BioMed City, to advancements in healthcare and to economic growth for South Australia,” concludes Yvette.