Adelaide’s biomedical precinct including the SAHMRI and new RAH placing the city at the centre of global conference attention
RENATO Castello speaks with key players who are working together to make Adelaide the global destination for health and medical conferences.
SA Business
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OVER the next six years Adelaide will host nearly 70 medical and health related conferences attracting more than 50,000 delegates and generating more than $250 million in economic activity.
RENATO CASTELLO spoke with key players who are working to lure business off the back of Adelaide’s growing reputation as a science and research hub and the $3.6 billion biomedical precinct on North Tce.
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THE stress of big-city life was a constant factor in Marco Baccanti’s life before he came to Adelaide. The head of the State Government’s Health Industries SA, tasked with growing the state’s investment in the health sector, recalls with a palpable sense of relief when he arrived at Adelaide Airport three years ago for the interviews that would lead to his appointment.
“When I came for interviews, it was winter and the impression was a very clean, neat city, calm, big enough to be the capital but without all the stress,” he says.
“I was living in Dubai, in Europe, I frequented the United States – all my life has been living in the centre of a big city, travelling very frequently and you grow up with stress, you get the thieves coming to your home every couple of years and you feel insecure,” he says.
“Here everybody feels relaxed, is calm, you feel it and no pollution, that’s another important impression you have, if you live in Europe or in Asia you always smell smog everywhere.
“To come here and green around, it’s a really a very strong impact … it’s the sort of wow effect, the surprise from the very moment you land, you see the new airport, you see the taxi that is typically clean, which is something of an exception around Europe.
“People following the rules, nobody passing, stopping at the red (light) which is something unusual in southern Europe, in Asia and many other countries, you are relaxed and you feel you can convert your energy in a more effective way – that’s very positive and I think this type of feeling with all international visitors who come for a convention, it’s something you immediately detect.”
Glasgow-born Adelaide University Health Sciences Faculty Executive Dean Professor Alastair Burt – who arrived from the UK in Adelaide in 2013 – agrees although jokes that “I probably wouldn’t have behaviour at traffic lights in our marketing”.
It’s one of many moments of laughter shared by Mr Baccanti, Professor Burt, SAHMRI executive director Professor Steve Wesselingh, Adelaide Convention Bureau chief executive Damien Kitto and UniSA Pro-Vice-Chancellor Health Sciences Professor Robert Vink.
The quintet are working together in the serious and potentially gamechanging job of making Adelaide the destination of choice for global health and medical conferences.
They say Adelaide is more accessible by air then ever before, accommodation is cheap by international standards, the city is safe and the surfeit of bars and restaurants – and wineries – adds to the appeal for companies seeking a destination for conventions.
But there is a bigger asset positioning Adelaide as a preferred health convention destination: the $3.6 billion biomedical precinct taking shape on North Tce, including the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, SAHMRI, the University of Adelaide’s Health and Medical Sciences building and the nearly complete UniSA Health Innovation building.
“Adelaide becomes a new kid in the block, it becomes something new that was not available before on a global scale, because of this,” Mr Baccanti says of the precinct dubbed Adelaide BioMed City.
The precinct is a short stroll from Adelaide Convention Centre, within walking distance of more than 2000 hotel rooms Mr Kitto says
“Standing in the Panorama Ballroom, at the end of the pointy ship, or the pointy hull (of the Convention Centre) as I call it, to look out and see the three incredible buildings – it is a brilliant view,” says Mr Kitto, who is tasked with bringing more business events to Adelaide.
“It’s one thing to have a great convention centre and the hotels . . . but to actually have the medical and science precinct immediately next door where you can only take 10 to 15 minutes to go in, to see a colleague or take a group to tour through the labs or whatever you may be . . . nobody else has got that. Global competition in the business event sector is significant, without a doubt, and it’s the strength of this collaboration and partnership that pushes us ahead.
“But still we have to try hard and do a hard sell on the merits of the destination.”
Business delegates spend about $632 a day, according to Bureau figures – almost six times the spend of a leisure visitor.
Half of all conferences in Adelaide are health and medical related.
Professor Burt says the combination of the hospital, SAHMRI and the university buildings is “visionary”.
“The big conferences will include . . . opinion leaders in their field, and it’s actually opening their eyes to what we’ve already got here and are further developing with the precinct which is the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere,” he says.
“My colleagues back in the UK would bite my hand off to be in a precinct like this.
“A distinguishing feature from other precincts around the world is that most of those have evolved, whereas here it’s really there was a clean slate and investment along that whole precinct is quite remarkable.”
It’s a view shared by Professor Wesselingh who last yaer was reappointed boss of SAHMRI for another five years, which will take him through construction of the neighbouring Proton Beam Therapy Centre (dubbed SAHMRI 2).
“To have a cardiology conference down there,” he says, motioning to the Adelaide Convention Centre. “They just wander up and say ‘hello’ (to researchers) and wander up to the hospital and into the university buildings – that’s (possible) nowhere else.
“We all want to have organisations that are globally recognised, it’s in our strategic plan and I assume it’s in the universities as well. The best way to do that is to get people here and have a look and conferences absolutely do that.
“Adelaide should be a magnet for smart, talented people, that’s the sort of culture and industry we should be able to develop.”
He says the new RAH should not be underestimated in its capacity to raise Adelaide’s profile.
“We’ve all been told it’s the most expensive build in the last five years or so but it is technologically a pretty amazing building that attracts people,” he says.
“Plus Adelaide should be proud that people want to come and see the best hospital in Australia technologically.”
The immediate economic impact of hosting conferences is measurable through visitors spending at hotels and restaurants, but there are indirect benefits, Professor Vink says.
“There’s the marketing side of course . . . but for us from a scientific point of view . . . we actually recruit people who have been here; they’ve seen what we can do and they just go ‘we didn’t know about this’,” he says.
“And for us it’s been a great recruitment strategy for us to get some of the stars who are talking at conferences to consider coming to Adelaide.
“I remember hosting a few people for a conference and they came back with their families to do sabbaticals because they loved what they saw and wanted to share it with their whole family.”
Prof Vink says global uncertainty with President Donald Trump’s election and the Brexit meant many people were looking towards Australia as a stable destination.
Mr Baccanti says the “bottleneck to creating a critical mass” of business and investment in Adelaide has been a lack of “visibility”.
“If you are sitting on the board of a pharmaceutical company or a medical device company in the States or Europe and deciding where we should establish our operations, we never think about Adelaide,” he says.
“But now we can leverage this new critical mass.
“Now that we can leverage (the precinct) and raise awareness, we increase the probability to have spontaneous input of leads of companies that are now taking into consideration ‘Ah, Adelaide, I never thought about it before (now) I should consider it’.”
Mr Kitto says the health precinct represents SA’s economic future.
“It’s the whole supply chain of research, publishing, conferences . . . coming down to Marco attracting the investment,” he says.
“Medical conferencing and the medical and scientific industry has always been important here in Adelaide through the universities in particular and since Steve joined (SAHMRI) some five years ago.
“What we are trying to do now is really turbo-boost where we are at, with the great acknowledgement and the branding and the understanding of what this precinct is, we are becoming a real competitor not only domestically but internationally to host those conferences.”
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