As Seen in GCHKP Biomed Capability Guide

The 200-hectare Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct (GCHKP) is at the centre of the city’s biomedical sector and the focus for research and development (R&D) in the industry.

With world-first facilities, leading translational research, and a rapid post-COVID expansion of clinical trial capability and new developments, the GCHKP is fast emerging as an Asia-Pacific hub for medical technologies.

Home to two major hospitals, including the Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH), two significant biomedical research institutes and comprehensive health education at Griffith University, and boasting three clinical trial units, the GCHKP also includes exciting biomedical start-ups.

The Lumina commercial cluster offers 9.5 hectares of development-ready land for co-location of life sciences, health and technology businesses. This opportunity is taking shape with projects like the new Proxima and RDX Lumina underway.

Our 20,000 students at Griffith University’s Gold Coast campus and the Queensland Academies Health Science campus, represent the skilled workforce of the future. Global health and biomedical brands doing business in the GCHKP include pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, healthcare technology leader Philips and US-based medtech company BiVACOR, which has developed a world-first rotary total artificial heart that is set for human clinical trials by 2025, and which bases a key team in the GCHKP to work alongside specialist mechanobiology researchers. From the founding of Griffith’s Institute for Glycomics 23 years ago, to the establishment of the university’s medical school in 2005, the opening of GCUH and the launch of Australia’s leading healthtech accelerator LuminaX in 2021, growth of the GCHKP as a biomedical hub has been steady but impressive. www.gchkp.com.au

Leading growth in the GCHKP’s cuttingedge infrastructure is the NeuTex image-guided surgery training and robotics centre, the world’s only facility of its kind outside a hospital dedicated exclusively to training and R&D, which opened in May 2023 in partnership with Philips.

Co-founded by globally renowned interventional neuro-radiologists Dr Hal Rice and Dr Laetitia de Villiers, NeuTex attracts specialist doctors from across the Asia-Pacific to learn the latest stroke and brain aneurysm procedures and trial new medical devices developed by global companies. Together they have conducted the largest caseload of robotic aneurysm repairs globally.

‘We’re expanding R&D in the neurovascular field while also broadening training in other surgical specialties such as cardiovascular and spinal and eventually orthopaedics,’ says Dr Rice. ‘That includes utilising personalised 3D-printed models to revolutionise training and a future where AI and robotics will enable remote procedures, virtually anywhere in the world.’