Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct's game-changing medical breakthroughs revealed
From world-first breakthroughs in spinal cord repair, artificial heart technology and stroke intervention to Artificial Intelligence – a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem based in Southport has burst onto the global stage. READ OUR SPECIAL REPORT
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From world-first breakthroughs in spinal cord repair, artificial heart technology and stroke intervention to Artificial Intelligence - a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem based in Southport has burst onto the global stage.
The Gold Coast is at the forefront of innovation, bringing lifesaving technologies to the world via the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct (GCHKP).
Twenty-four years in the making, the precinct started as a vision between state and local government as a way to diversify the city’s economy – pushing it beyond tourism and construction into health, education and technology.
Now anchored by Griffith University, Gold Coast University Hospital and Gold Coast Private Hospital, more than $5bn has been invested into the 200ha vicinity as a collection of the city’s greatest minds bring trailblazing tech to the forefront – including the world’s first titanium heart thanks to BiVACOR.
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GCHKP director Craig Rowsell said BiVACOR’s work was world-leading with its Australian headquarters right here at the GCHKP.
“The world’s first rotary pump Total Artificial Heart (TAH) is being built from the Gold Coast,” Mr Rowsell said.
“It’s fascinating, they’ve now had six patients who have successfully had the artificial heart before they were able to get a transplant heart, which is world-leading and we can’t wait to see where this technology goes.”
In May the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH) received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation.
The device is designed to replace both ventricles of the native heart and replace heart function in people with end-stage heart failure.
With five successful patients in the USA, the first Australian patient was implanted with the heart in November 2024.
The patient was the first to be discharged from hospital, and was supported by the device for 105 days until a transplant heart became available.
BiVACOR director and Griffith University emeritus professor Geoff Tansley said the end goal for this breakthrough technology was seeing it eventually negate the need for human heart donors entirely.
“In the 1960s the National Institute of Health in the USA started an artificial heart program and the idea was that we’d be able to get a device into people’s chests that wouldn’t need a transplant,” Dr Tansley said.
“There were a few devices that would develop from that, but they were all beating like the natural heart, and to get something to beat like that means it had the propensity to wear out.”
Dr Tansley said that meant longevity and durability with those devices proved to be an issue.
Cue TAH inventor, Queenslander Daniel Timms, whose dad tragically died from heart failure.
“Daniel did his PhD in biomedical engineering in the early 2000s, looking at mechanical support, and decided that if we have a single rotating impeller that can speed up and slow down, we can still get that pulsatility that you’d normally get with a beating heart, without it wearing out,” Dr Tansley said.
The implant pumps blood around the body using that special mechanism which avoids any mechanical wear between parts, using magnets to suspend the motor’s rotor, meaning no rubbing or wear over time.
“We’re looking to be planting hundreds of these a year,” Dr Tansley said.
“We’ve got to get through our FDA and TGA trials to be able to sell these devices onto the market which is hopefully a couple of years away.”
The director said their GCHKP base was a no-brainer.
“It’s an exciting environment – you’ve got the university close by, you’ve got two hospitals close by, this whole infrastructure and ecosystem around start-ups, medical devices and health,” he said.
“And a specialist laboratory at Griffith University which is one of only a few in the world which specialises in the sort of work the TAH needs.”
Precinct director Mr Rowsell said BiVACOR were one of 40 companies in the GCHKP, many developing homegrown technologies launching nationally, internationally and in the case of this start-up – straight into space.
Director and co-founder of Starbound Space Solutions Dr Sheila Gough Kenyon, along with her husband Shaun, developed their AI space company right here on the Gold Coast.
“Essentially we transform tacit wisdom,” Dr Gough Kenyon said.
“So engineering mission experience from the space industry into workable knowledge that can help people with their documentation around space missions, avoiding obstacles when it comes time to get things like launch permits, export permits, and making sure people have their paperwork in order so as not to hit any regulatory hurdles.”
Starbound Space Solutions do that through their creation of Pythia AI which elicits and curates expert knowledge, and Virgil AI – a customer facing space helpful agent who can answer your space related questions.
The company recently won company research team of the year at the Australian Space Awards 2025, and still in its infancy, was recently awarded Australian Research Council Linkage funding in partnership with Griffith University worth $1.2m.
Set up in October 2023, Dr Gough Kenyon said the start-up was growing rapidly.
“We’ve had a lot of support here on the Gold Coast,” she said.
“It’s really exciting and it’s validation of some of the great work we’re doing with artificial intelligence and semantic technologies research group at Griffith.”
Recognised as Asia–Pacific’s newest innovation hub, the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct already contributes $3.4bn each year into the city’s growing economy.
Providing more than 15,000 jobs, home to 1000 researchers and 20,000 students the GCHKP is still under development, with almost $250m of private development underway and a 9.5ha of development ready sites.
Precinct director Mr Rowsell said this is where innovation happens.
“When you think about how innovation happens, obviously collaboration and leveraging each other’s skill sets is really important,” he said.
“And that’s where we’ve been able to co-locate our city’s biggest hospitals, our city’s biggest universities, and our biggest co-working innovation space all together, highly supported by government.
It really is a great central location for technology companies to really base their business and scale their business.”
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