Anne O’Neill saw brilliant Australian medical innovations lost to overseas interests that were willing to get them to market. So, she set up a means of mentoring researchers and connecting them with industry and government funding to keep them here.
To O’Neill, collaboration is not just key to a strong research culture – it’s the guiding principle upon which science is built. A veteran of the NSW health arena, with more than two decades of experience in the health, medical research and policy sectors, O’Neill’s focus is to break down barriers to collaboration in health governance.
“Collaborative cultures improve health outcomes and enhance the implementation of policy and change,” says O’Neill, who serves as Director of Enterprise, International Partnerships and Clinical Trials in the Office for Health and Medical Research at NSW Health.
It’s a topic that O’Neill has been interested in since early on in her academic career. As a Master’s student at Sydney University, she wrote a thesis identifying potential strategies for overcoming common barriers put up by local hospitals and health services to embracing change. The answer? Collaboration.
“We achieve this collaboration by implementing local autonomy. You may have the best idea in the world on a policy level, but if it’s not able to be implemented on a practical or systemic level, if you’re not involving nurses, doctors and healthcare professionals in the decision making, then it’s not going to work,” O’Neill told The Brilliant.
“Even if it seems like a no-brainer to make a certain systemic change, the translation of research and evidence into practice requires an implementation outline: collaboration between multidisciplinary teams and government,” she adds. “Not everyone gets this. They wonder why you need a plan to implement a plan.”
Embracing discovery and innovation
It’s this collaborative approach, as opposed to the often budget-driven, prescriptive and non-negotiable attitude of government departments and their attendant bureaucracy, that O’Neill has honed over the past 25 years.
At the Office for Health and Medical Research at NSW Health, O’Neill is responsible for leading the development and implementation of major policies and programmes to enhance medical research capacity in NSW.
In particular, she’s focused on the spearheading of commercialisation initiatives, including the NSW Medical Device Fund (MDF) and NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program, both of which aim to fast-track innovative ideas that have the potential to revolutionise the healthcare sector, improve patient outcomes and provide economic opportunities for emerging health-tech businesses in NSW. Both programmes have been critical to accelerating the development of intellectual property (IP) in NSW, and keeping it there.
O’Neill says she’s very invested in mentoring the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. She is also responsible for developing international partnerships in medical research and commercialisation.
“I’m at the nexus of championing things – research and innovations, such as revolutionary medical devices, that struggle to be translated commercially,” says O’Neill. “In part, it’s about accelerating and de-risking the process. Until recently, the commercialisation and de-risking processes had been done offshore.”
O’Neill stresses that, in Australian health and medical research, particularly in the health system and public research organisations, there has been a struggle to work effectively with industry, or even to make the connection.
“The health system is cautious about being seen as unduly influenced or tainted by industry,” says O’Neill. “So, when it comes to funding research, there is immense pressure on scientists and researchers to be seen as objective and impartial and they are therefore hesitant to engage industry support.”
“Because of this, we have lost Australian innovations to overseas interests that are willing to get them to market,” says O’Neill. “This means we have lost a significant return on investment, not only to governments that supported the initial research, but to the Australian population.”
Collaborative commercialisation
It was the vision of the first Minister of Health and Medical Research in 2011, the Honourable Jillian Skinner, to ensure that medical research became part of the core business of not only the Ministry, but of the state health system. Skinner established the Office for Health and Medical Research in NSW Health and made the call to set up the MDF. O’Neill was tasked with orchestrating the latter.
“Previously, medical research at a state level was funded on a budget cycle and an election cycle, not on a strategic or priority basis,” says O’Neill. “So, this was a positive and timely change. I was given the freedom to set something up that hadn’t been done before. Over the past 10 years, we have granted $80 million in funding to the sector, and in turn, this has raised an additional $900 million in government grants and private capital.”
O’Neill explains that the government doesn’t take an equity stake in projects supported by the MDF. “This undiluted funding has proven to be very attractive to other funders and investors, as it means there is less red tape to follow for investment in promising technologies, in turn accelerating development and ensuring that they come back into the public health system and are made available to all Australians,” she says.
Ensuring a home advantage
O’Neill is committed to building the capability and career paths of early- to mid-career researchers and entrepreneurs. “They have brilliant ideas and solutions to real-world problems, but they may not know how to make them a reality or understand how to navigate the system,” she says.
“I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to develop a programme to address this in 2014, called the NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program, in partnership with Cicada Innovations,” says O’Neill. “This programme gives our talented researchers an alternative pathway from an academic career, where it has become increasingly difficult to get tenure. This means that we not only keep this talent in Australia, but also their IP and the next generation of technologies and innovative businesses.”
To date, Medical Device Fund recipients have treated more than 311,000 patients, conducted more than 200 clinical trials globally, achieved more than 80 regulatory approvals, sold more than 650,000 devices into health systems in Australia and across the world, and grown their businesses by nearly fivefold.
One success story is that of CleanSpace Technology, which received a grant in the third (2015) and seventh (2019) round of MDF for their reusable respirator to help pandemic preparedness. The technology has since gone to market, and has been deployed in hospitals across Australia, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea, the US and Europe. CleanSpace’s headquarters, IP and manufacturing remain in NSW, creating a local ecosystem around their technology.
“Every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, and COVID-19 had a significantly positive impact on this business and their technology,” says O’Neill.
Going forward, O’Neill wants to see Australia grow its international ties as a big player in industry and research collaboration, driving more Australian medical innovations to market.
“Working with government to reach an understanding that research and development can be a value-add to the health system, and not a simply a cost, is a critical change in thinking and culture that I believe we’ve made significant headway on over the last few years in NSW,” she says.
Story by Laura Macfarlane