About the Conference

Aims of the Conference

The international conference 'Medical Bionics - a new paradigm for human health' will be an opportunity to bring together leading experts and our younger researchers from Australia and overseas for the first time to explore the exciting future of medical bionics and how it could be used to address some of our most important medical challenges. As with the Bionic Ear, success in this field is critically dependant on a multi-disciplinary approach, strong collaborative linkages and a clear focus on outcomes. The breadth of specialties attracted to such a meeting will be impressive - engineering, audiology, neurobiology, psychophysics, biomaterials, nanotechnology, clinical and the biotechnology industry. It will be an opportunity to share knowledge and experience, develop collaborative linkages and inspire the next generation of our best and brightest young people to take up a career in this exciting field.

Themes of the Conference

Medicine has traditionally treated diseases through drugs and/or surgery. However the enormous and growing needs of patients for whom there is no cure using either of these approaches, is driving the need for better implantable or wearable bioelectronics that could function either as prosthetic or assistive devices. More recently, solutions using man-made materials and devices, alone or in combination with biological substances, have been proposed as prosthetic substitutes or prosthetic interfaces to the body. This is the emerging field known as Medical Bionics.

These devices may be passive, as in the case of artificial joints, or 'smart', as in the case of prosthetic interfaces to the nervous system, such as the Bionic Ear. In order to make smart prosthetics function optimally, the challenge is to not only understand the normal biological network but also how the diseased network functions and what the consequences, both upstream and downstream are due to the loss of the original tissue (e.g. nerve, bone, etc.). In other words, what was the normal biological signaling (i.e. neural code), what is left of it in the abnormal state, and then how to replace this lost function through a 'smart' device. Current devices are far from such sophistication and remain a challenge that only the convergence of medicine, science, and engineering will be able to address.

In summary, the conference will examine the following themes:

• Overview of medical bionics: design, development & commercialisation;
• Smarter materials: intelligent polymers and nanotechnology in medical bionics;
• Smarter devices: the role of ICT in medical bionics;
• Neural interfaces for CNS and spinal cord stimulation;
• Neural interfaces for sensory information (including auditory prostheses and retinal prostheses);
• Cell based therapy: application in medical bionics;
• Surgical and ethical considerations for medical bionics; and
• Future directions in medical bionics.

Scientific Advisory Committee

• Professor Robert Shepherd (Chair) Director, The Bionic Ear Institute
• Professor Anthony Burkitt, Professor of BioSignals, School of Engineering, University of Melbourne
• Professor Frank Caruso, ARC Federation Fellow, School of Engineering, University of Melbourne
• Professor Nigel Lovell, Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South Wales
• Professor Iven Mareels, Dean, School of Engineering, University of Melbourne
• A/Prof. Peter Seligman, Senior Engineer, Cochlear Limited
• Professor Stan Skafidas, Program Leader - Sensor Networks, National ICT Australia
• Professor Gordon Wallace, ARC Federation Fellow & Director, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong

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