SAHMRI's unveiling kickstarts SA's new health and biomedical precinct THE vast new health and biomedical precinct on North Terrace which is now home to SAHMRI promises to give SA critical mass to attract the best and brightest researchers. This will in turn lift Adelaide's already strong reputation as a centre for medical excellence while delivering an economic boost. Several billion dollars being poured into the precinct will see hospitals, universities, medical schools and research centres closely linked with a strong focus on turning academic research into cures and treatments. As well as attracting highly skilled workers, the precinct already is attracting millions of dollars in research grants to the state. The precinct between North Terrace and the Torrens will include: THE $2.1 billion, 800-bed new Royal Adelaide Hospital due to open in 2016; THE $200 million federally funded South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI); THE proposed $200 million but as yet unfunded SAHMRI 2 which would include the CSIRO Division of Animal, Food and Health Sciences' Nutrition and Health Sciences Research Program, and the CSIRO's Preventative Health Research Flagship; THE $120 million University of Adelaide Integrated Clinical School, covering medicine and nursing. The Federal Government is contributing $60 million matched by the University, however plans for a new dental hospital and to also shift the School of Dentistry from Frome Rd to the precinct, driving the total cost to $200 million, have been put on hold due to lack of funds; THE $100 million University of South Australia's Centre for Cancer Biology and Interprofessional Health Clinic, funded by $40 million from the Federal Government matched by the University, with the outstanding $20 million still being sourced. There are also proposals to build a new $600 million Women's and Children's Hospital on the site, on land originally earmarked for future expansion of the new RAH. UniSA's large City West Campus is directly across North Terrace, while Flinders University will have strong connections to SAHMRI. The new precinct is the largest greenfields healthcare precinct in the southern hemisphere and SAHMRI alone will have 25,000 sq m of purpose built research facilities housing 600 researchers. The planned SAHMRI 2 next door, to be built over the next five years, would house 500 people with 21,550 sq m of floorspace. The overall precinct will provide jobs for at least 8000 staff including 1500 world class medical researchers, as well as having some 6000 students breathing new life into the West End. The precinct aims for seamless interaction between students, researchers, teachers, doctors and patients to give state-of-the-art health care while supporting top quality teaching and world class research. Having the three universities, the CSIRO, SAHMRI researchers and clinicians working in such close proximity, with cutting edge equipment including South Australia's first cyclotron to manufacture radioisotopes for clinical use and medical research, will support clinical trials and help turn research into cures. Or to put it another way, it will accelerate the transformation of medical research ideas from bench to bedside. The reputations of the institutions involved already are strong. The co-location of clinical, research and teaching facilities at the RAH's existing Frome Rd campus has been one of its great strengths. Co-location of these institutes at the new site, along with the CSIRO, in brand new purpose built facilities, will build on that strength in the highly competitive field of biomedical research. For example, the CSIRO is ranked in the top 1 per cent of global research institutions in 14 of 22 research fields, and the top 0.1 per cent in four fields. As well as improving and even saving lives, this research has enormous economic implications. More than 150 companies have been derived from CSIRO world-leading research, and the economic impact of these is estimated at $1 billion a year, with annual sales of $120 million and hundreds of jobs. Add to that the research grants flowing to the precinct as well as the high skilled/high paid workforce and you have a massive economic ripple effect for South Australia. Theme leader of SAHMRI's Mind and Brain Theme, Professor Julio Licinio, from Flinders University, said the new precinct would transform research in SA. "Decades ago Adelaide and South Australia were ahead of Brisbane and Queensland in terms of amount of medical research and consequently medical research related dollars brought in to each state," he said. Sadly, that is no longer the case today because for the last 15 years Queensland has created an amazing new medical research infrastructure that has attracted the brightest and the best from across Australia and the world. Research in South Australia really needs to be transformed in order to maintain competitiveness nationally and internationally. The new medical precinct will do just that, and in a way it will leapfrog the state from a situation of being behind others to jumping straight ahead of the curve and leading the nation in terms of geographical and conceptual integration of research and clinical care. Given the relatively small population base of South Australia, we absolutely cannot afford internal fragmentation, if we are to be competitive with other centres in Australia and the world. The only viable way forward is for all stakeholders in South Australia to work together creating novel cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional structures that can make a substantial contribution to advance medical science and thereby improve the health and productivity of the state. Increased medical research will contribute to advance the state economically not only in terms of direct dollars brought in by research, but also by the creation of a new type of advanced economy. A classic example is Pittsburgh in the USA, which underwent a downward period in the 1980s as its "rust belt" industries gradually declined. That city and region have for the last 20 years reinvented themselves as an area of high tech and advanced biomedicine, anchored by a medical precinct that has been growing immensely over the last two decades. This could and should be an inspiration for South Australia to reinvent itself as a hub of biomedical and technological innovation, anchored by this amazing new medical precinct on North Terrace.