It may not be as big yet as dairy or lamb, but Aotearoa New Zealand is becoming a hotbed for medical technologies, with the sector worth an estimated $2.1 billion.

Currently, much of that worth is in a single company, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. However, up-and-coming companies, often university spinouts, are claiming larger slices of the pie – and the pie is growing.

In 2010, there were 40 to 50 companies in New Zealand’s medtech scene. Today there are more than 200. A Deloitte strategic and economic report estimates that by 2050, the sector’s growth will have produced a cumulative additional $4.2 billion in GDP and nearly 8,000 full-time jobs.

However, achieving the sector’s potential will take coordination, capacity building and investment. Medtech-iQ Aotearoa aims to bring all that together.

“The intention is that regional hubs are connected to their communities, so co-creation work will be distributed,” says Erin Quirke, the UniServices senior project manager coordinating the project. “The sum will be much bigger than its parts.”

Though Medtech-iQ Aotearoa is still in its early stages – it held its first showcase at the Beehive on 23 February, hosted by Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall – its roots stretch back to at least 2012, when the Consortium for Medical Device Technologies (CMDT) was launched.

The CMDT is a national industry-research network led by the universities of Auckland, Canterbury and Otago, Victoria University of Wellington, Auckland University of Technology and Callaghan Innovation. These core partners have been driving the evolution of the project ever since.

The CMDT led to the development of the national MedTech Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE), which opened in 2015.

“The MedTech CoRE seeded a lot of research that created partnerships and got people working together,” says Hunter.

The CoRE ran until 2021 and resulted in 18 deep-tech spinouts. By 2021, 14 companies from this cohort had delivered more than 100 new jobs and were collectively valued at $102 million.

The next step in the project’s evolution was the Te Tītoki Mataora MedTech Research Translator, which started in 2021. Te Tītoki Mataora links two programmes that respectively focus on accelerating research and capability building to encourage collaboration for the development, testing and translation of ideas into sustainable clinical solutions.

Medtech-iQ Aotearoa represents an even bigger vision for the future, with greater involvement for the public and private health systems, investors, industry, and Māori and Pacific communities.

“It’s intended to be inclusive, not exclusive,” says Hunter. “Anyone who feels they can contribute or wants to benefit is welcome.”

Planning is already underway to progress the development of a number of spaces and buildings at the City, Grafton and Newmarket Campuses which will enable Medtech-iQ and bring about this step change in innovation capability and ensure our partners can co-locate in proximity with ABI and medical professionals. This work will deliver on the commitments made in Taumata Teitei, Vision 2030 and Strategic Plan 2025 and Te Rautaki Tūāpapa, the University’s Estate Strategy 2021 – 2030.

The vision to create physical space for medtech isn’t limited to Auckland. Some of the other hubs already have physical space while others are looking at creating it, says Siew.

In a field like medtech, New Zealand’s traditional disadvantages of distance and size don’t matter much. In some ways, smallness might be an advantage, because people are connected to each other and inclined to work together, says Hunter.

“They’re not in competition with each other. They’re in competition with international companies.”

There are areas where New Zealand already leads the way, both on the research side, where for example, ABI’s work in computational physiology and digital twins is well-respected around the world, and on the commercial side, where start-ups such as Alimetry have won international prizes.

“Medtech-iQ Aotearoa’s nationally connected regional hub model is the final piece of the puzzle to set the scene for New Zealand’s medtech industry to really scale and accelerate,” says Siew.

“The next stage is attracting international partnerships and investment, and you can’t do that easily unless you’re visible. If we can make the whole of New Zealand visible as a medtech leader, our growth potential will be huge.”