Bioengineering Institute appoints first business manager

The Auckland Bioengineering Institute now has a dedicated business manager to help take its growing range of world-leading technologies – from wireless heart pumps to software for modelling the body parts of individual patients – to the commercial market.

Dr Kevin Daish, who holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, started in the newly-created role this week. Dr Daish has more than 19 years’ operations, sales and marketing experience as a senior manager in the biotechnology and life sciences areas. His appointment at the institute has been made through The University of Auckland’s commercial arm, Auckland UniServices Ltd.

Dr Daish has come to New Zealand from the United Kingdom where he was working as the global marketing director for the medical technologies and services giant GE Healthcare.

Auckland Bioengineering Institute technology development leader Dr David Budgett says Dr Daish has the right skill set to review and drive commercial initiatives based on the institute’s technology.

“Kevin’s role will include building strategic commercial alliances to take the institute’s technology to market, aligning commercial outputs with research outputs from grant-funded research, and managing intellectual property. Initially, half his time will be focused on business development with one of the institute’s spinout companies, eBonz, which creates anatomically-based 3D models of joints in the human body.”

Dr Budgett says funding from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology’s New Economy Research Fund (NERF) has led to the creation of platform technology that supports multiple commercial outcomes, for example companies like eBonz, which are now coming up with exciting new products for the healthcare industry.

“An American healthcare equipment company that markets electrotherapy devices to treat arthritis, VQ Orthocare, has recently signed a deal to invest in eBonz. Kevin will help us respond to opportunities such as these by working on patents, licensing deals, research contracts and spinout companies.”

Another area identified by the institute’s Industry Advisory Board as having great commercial potential is Associate Professor Merryn Tawhai’s work on modelling the human lung. Dr Tawhai is exploring intelligent ways of targeting the delivery of medicine to the lung based on individual patient measurements. She and her team have also recently developed a detailed model of a newborn baby’s lung.

Dr Duane Malcolm, a lead research scientist in the development division at eBonz, says it’s invaluable to have someone like Dr Daish onboard to accelerate the business application of their scientific work.

“At times there’s a big gap between the cutting-edge research done here and the user-focused needs of the market. Kevin will help us to fill that gap.”