BODY OF WORK

Australian innovators have a long history of advancing the world’s biomedical capabilities. The future looks just as bright, with engineers hard at work on devices that will help improve the lives of people around the world. From eyes to ears, head to heart, and 3D printing to ultrasound, here’s a snapshot of Australia’s biomedical body of work.

Click the red dots to explore.

Spray-on Skin

Layer By Layer

Spray-on Skin

Layer By Layer

WHEN? 1993

WHO? Fiona Wood and Marie Stoner

WHY? Scarring and recovery time for severe burn victims can be greatly reduced if replacement skin is provided within 10 days. However, previous techniques required 21 days to produce enough cells to cover major burns.

WHAT NEXT? Wood and Stoner explored tissue engineering techniques to significantly reduce the time it takes to culture skin cells from 21 days to five. Rather than having to place whole sheets of skin, cells can be sprayed onto the affected area. It’s now used under the commercial name RECELL and is approved for use in Australia, the US, parts of Europe and China.

Ceramic Bone Scaffolds

The Imitation Game

Ceramic Bone Scaffolds

The Imitation Game

WHEN? 2018

WHO? Hala Zreiqat

WHY? Metal grafts can help millions of people around the world who suffer from broken bones or bone loss. But they come with downsides: they can cause discomfort, and they are sometimes rejected by the patient’s immune system. More natural materials like ceramic can eliminate these issues.

WHAT NEXT? Ceramic implants have been successfully tested on sheep and rabbits. Human trials are next. They’ll begin with smaller jobs like spinal defects and broken jaws before moving on to load-bearing bones in the legs and hips.

CPAP Sleep Apnea Mask

Snore No More

CPAP Sleep Apnea Mask

Snore No More

WHEN? 1981

WHO? Professor Colin Sullivan, University of Sydney, and Dr Peter Farrell, Baxter Centre for Medical Research (BCMR). Farrell later founded ResMed, which currently manufactures CPAP sleep apnea masks.

WHY? Almost 25 per cent of men and 9 per cent of women aged 30 and over have sleep apnea, but many don’t know it — 80 per cent of cases go undiagnosed. It can also lead to serious health complications, like increased risk for heart attack, stroke and diabetes.

WHAT NEXT? Another Australian company, Oventus, is developing a 3D printable sleep apnea mask that can be customised based on patient CT scans.

Biopen

Healing With The Stroke of a Pen

Biopen

Healing With The Stroke of a Pen

WHEN? 2018

WHO? University of Wollongong, University of Melbourne, St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne

WHY? Each year, more than 100,000 knee and hip replacements take place to treat arthritis. Treating damaged joints and cartilage with stem cells could save time and money while improving the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people.

WHAT NEXT? An ageing population means the incidence of joint injuries is likely to go up. Developers are working on improving the prototype device and ink recipes.

Cochlear Implant

The Sweetest Sound

Cochlear Implant

The Sweetest Sound

WHEN? 1967

WHO? Graeme Clark, Cochlear

WHY? Graeme Clark’s father was deaf, and Clark saw firsthand how this affected his life. Clark spent 10 years researching electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve via an implant into the inner ear. The first person received a Cochlear implant in 1978. Now, Cochlear implants are helping people around the world hear.

WHAT NEXT? More than 250,000 devices have been implanted in people aged between a few months to almost 100 years old. The Cochlear company continues to fine-tune the technology to help users better block out background noises. They’ve also added the ability for users to connect their Cochlear implant to their mobile device. Over time the company hopes to integrate AI and remote aftercare.

Portable ‘Iron Lung’

Breathing Easier

Portable ‘Iron Lung’

Breathing Easier

WHEN? 1937

WHO? Edward and Donald Both

WHY? Many polio patients died after their chest muscles became paralysed. The cast-iron breathing cabinet, or ‘iron lung’, saved lives, but it was complicated, expensive and so heavy that some floors struggled to support them. Then along came the Both brothers, who in 1937 during a polio outbreak in South Australia created a cheap, lightweight and more portable alternative. This meant people could move out of hospital and get treatment in their own homes.

WHAT NEXT? Although polio is all but eradicated in many countries and other breathing apparatus are now popular, some polio survivors still use Both respirators. Fun fact: Edward Both also invented an electrocardiograph machine.

3D-Printed Ribcage

The Skeletal Wonder From Down Under

3D-Printed Ribcage

The Skeletal Wonder From Down Under

WHEN? 2016-17

WHO? Anatomics and CSIRO

WHY? A Spanish man and a US woman lost parts of their rib cage due to disease. Although they had implants, those were extremely uncomfortable. 3D printing allowed for them to receive customised rib cage prostheses that moulded to their bodies.

WHAT NEXT? There has been an explosion of interest in 3D printing for biomedical applications — and Australia is leading the charge. Other Australian innovations include a 3D-printed vertebra and a titanium heel. “We are absolutely punching above our weight internationally,” said Stefan Gulizia, Research Group Leader in the Manufacturing Business Unit at CSIRO.

Pacemaker

Set the Pace

Pacemaker

Set the Pace

WHEN? 1926; 1963

WHO? Dr Mark Lidwell and Edgar Booth; Telectronics

WHY? In 1926, pacemaker pioneers Dr Mark Lidwell and Edgar Booth built what many consider to be the world’s first portable pacemaker. It was used to resuscitate a stillborn infant in 1929.

WHAT NEXT? Australian company Telectronics, founded in 1963, built on previous technology to advance pacemakers, including:
- Narrowing the electric impulse to 0.5 milliseconds;
- Encasing the pacemaker in titanium instead of epoxy;
- Creating a pacemaker that responded in real time to a user’s physical exertion;
- Isolating the battery to remove the problem of leaking mercury-zinc batteries.

Ui Octoson Ultrasound Scanner

Making Waves

Ui Octoson Ultrasound Scanner

Making Waves

WHEN? 1976

WHO? Ausonics, CSIRO Ultrasonic Research Centre

WHY? Ultrasound technology has revolutionised pre-natal care, giving expectant parents and doctors a peek at how bub is doing. The technology is also used to diagnose tissue injuries and other medical problems.

WHAT NEXT? The Octoson was the first medical instrument to provide good images of internal organs without exposure to X-rays. In the following decades, newer and smaller ultrasound devices were developed that enabled real-time viewing of what’s going on in the body. It remains an important diagnostic technique to this day.

Bionic Eye

The Eyes Have It

Bionic Eye

The Eyes Have It

WHEN? 2019-

WHO? Dr Ali Almasi, National Vision Research Institute

WHY? “The holy grail is to create a bionic prosthetic vision device that can restore vision to those who are vison impaired … it will create a better quality of life for people,” Almasi said.

WHAT NEXT? A working prototype exists and has given some sense of vision to patients. Next steps include creating an electrode array that allows for very high-resolution stimulation of the retina.

A small patch of healthy skin from a burn victim is used to grow new skin cells.
Skin cells are cultured and then dissolved with an enzyme.
This solution is sprayed over the burned area to encourage skin regeneration.
The result is quicker healing and less scarring than traditional skin grafting and meshing techniques.
Ceramic implants are 3D printed and customised to each patient.
They have the same strength as bone and mimic its natural architecture. This allows them to integrate better with surrounding tissue.
Because ceramic is more porous than metal, blood and nutrients can flow through and encourage bone growth.
Over time, the implant dissolves and is replaced by real bone.
Sleep apnea is caused when the muscles at the back of the mouth relax too much and block the airway.
The CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) mask opens the airway by blowing pressurised air through the nose.
Air flow rate and pressure are customisable, and the sleep mask uses a soft silicone membrane to mould to the user’s face.
The BioPen is a handheld device that lets surgeons ‘draw’ stem cells onto injuries.
The BioPen extrudes a special ink made from biopolymers and stem cells extracted from the patient’s body.
The ink creates a scaffold on damaged bone or cartilage. A UV light solidifies the ink to keep the embedded cells safe. Once implanted, the cells multiply and transform into bone, muscle and nerve cells to repair the injury.
Also known as a bionic ear, the Cochlear implant replaces acoustic hearing with electrical hearing.
An external microphone and sound processor picks up noises and converts them into a digital signal.
This is transmitted to an array of electrodes placed in the cochlea (a spiral shaped cavity containing the ear’s sensory organ) to stimulate the cochlear nerve, which then sends a signal to the brain.
Cochlear’s implants are multi-channel, meaning they can stimulate different areas of the cochlea at different times to differentiate between high, mid and low frequencies.
Iron lungs work through negative pressure ventilation.
A rubber diaphragm around the patient’s neck makes the central chamber airtight. Air pressure in the machine is decreased to induce inhalation, and then re-pressurised for exhalation.
What made the Both respirator different was it used a plywood cabinet connected to a motorised pump — and it had wheels! It cost one-tenth of other iron lungs and was easier to maintain.
It also had a novel bivalve design, which allowed access to the patient through a side port.
High-res CT scans created a 3D reconstruction of the patient’s chest. These were used to model the device.
The ribcage is made from 3D-printed titanium.
A porous polyethylene material provides a bone-like architecture to encourage tissue integration.
Pacemakers are devices that help regulate cardiac rhythm.
The first pacemakers were set up to continue to generate an electric pulse at regular intervals. The earliest, from 1926, plugged directly into a power point, with one electrode attached to a skin and another to a needle plunged into the cardiac chamber.
Modern pacemakers are battery-powered electronic circuits implanted in the body to stimulate the heart.
Pacemakers can have between one and three electrode leads. They can also work just when needed, or at a fixed rate.
A technical breakthrough called ‘grey scale imaging’ made it possible to pick up fine differences in ultrasound echoes bouncing off soft tissue.
To use the UI Octoson scanner, a patient lies on a water bed covered with a flexible membrane.
Ultrasonic waves from eight speakers are beamed through the water and reflect off the patient’s body and internal organs.
The echoes are interpreted as a picture on a TV screen.
In some forms of blindness, photoreceptors die but leave other nerve cells intact. While those nerve cells can’t detect light, they can respond to electrical stimuli.
This bionic eye isn’t really an eye: it’s an array of electrodes that sits on the retina and stimulates the optic nerve.
An external camera converts light into pixels.
These pixels are translated into electrical signals, which travel up the nerve via the electrodes and into the brain.