Adelaide Health and Medical Research: A Life Sciences Hub in the Making

The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, opened in 2014 on North Terrace adjacent to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, has become the anchor of Adelaide's emerging health and life sciences precinct. The institute's research programs, spanning cancer, heart disease, infectious disease, and the neurosciences, have attracted researchers of international calibre and produced research outputs that have established SAHMRI's reputation within a decade of its foundation as a serious contributor to the international medical research community.

The Adelaide BioMed City precinct, clustering the Royal Adelaide Hospital, SAHMRI, the University of Adelaide medical school, the Women's and Children's Hospital, and the research institutes that connect these organisations, creates the critical mass of clinical and research activity that productive medical research ecosystems require. The physical co-location of researchers with clinicians, and the patient populations that provide the research subjects and the clinical questions that motivate investigation, provides the conditions for research that improves healthcare.

The Flinders Medical Centre precinct in Bedford Park, the southern hub of Adelaide's health research system, provides the complementary research infrastructure for the university hospital environment where Flinders University's medical, nursing, and allied health research programs interact with the clinical services of the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network. The two-hub model, with SAHMRI and RAH in the north and the Flinders precinct in the south, gives Adelaide a medical research geography that serves the whole metropolitan population.

The commercial life sciences sector that has developed around the research precincts provides the translational pathways that transform medical discoveries into clinical applications and commercial products. The South Australian Government's investment in life sciences commercial development, including support for spinout companies from the research institutions and attraction of international life sciences companies to the precinct, has created economic activity that complements the research mission and demonstrates the economic returns from health and medical research investment.

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