The fourth major building in the Adelaide BioMed City precinct, the University of South Australia Cancer Research Institute opened earlier this year, while the $240 million SAHMRI 2 building, featuring the Southern Hemisphere’s first Proton Therapy Unit, is expected to open in 2020.
Their presence in the northwest corner of the Adelaide CBD follows the opening of the eye-catching South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) in late 2013 and the completion of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and University of Adelaide Health and Medical Sciences building in 2017.
Medical conferences now account for about a third of the newly redeveloped Adelaide Convention Centre’s business and it has booked over a dozen medical conferences with more than 1000 delegates each to be held in the next two years. These include the 38th Australian Dental Congress in May 2019, which could welcome up to 4000 delegates, and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ) in August 2019. The CSANZ event will also be held at the centre in 2021 and 2023.
Adelaide Convention Centre general manager Simon Burgess says the proximity to SAHMRI and its world leading heart research had been crucial in securing the CSANZ deal, and that having the health hub as a neighbour along the city’s Riverbank has led to an estimated 10 per cent increase in medical conference inquiries.
“If we could choose neighbours that’s what we would have chosen – the largest biomedical precinct in the Southern Hemisphere,” Burgess says. “What it’s actually done is help us focus our research, specifically over the key themes they are focusing on. Any conference organiser coming here has the opportunity to work with UniSA and SAHMRI and the University of Adelaide or anyone in that whole precinct in terms of getting speakers, getting delegates and incorporating tours as part of the program.”
The Adelaide Convention Centre hosted the 12th AusMedtech Conference in May, with more than 300 delegates and numerous international speakers gathering for the year’s largest meeting of the medtech industry in Australia. AusBiotech CEO Glenn Cross says Adelaide’s Riverbank precinct has the ideal mix of facilities for hosting medical conferences.
“In terms of Aus biotech, we’re always pleased to bring our major conferences to South Australia, we think the convention centre and the precinct around it is world class,” Cross says.
