Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service (NSCCH) administers over AUD $1.15 billion worth of health services in NSW and includes the Royal North Shore Hospital, a research hospital in association with The University of Sydney.

The Chief Executive of NSCCH is Mr Matthew Daly to whom the Office of Commercialisation reports, after reporting to the Intellectual Property Committee chaired by Professor Carol Pollock.

In 2001 NSCCH was the first NSW Area Health Service to pioneer the management, including commercialisation, of IP assets owned by the public health system.

The patents that are available for development through commercial partnerships are given in the Investment Opportunities Portfolio.

A summary of key achievements since 2001 include the published Investment Opportunities Portfolio, the establishment of an extensive corporate governance system for IP management and commercialisation, and preliminary licence fees from global firms Beckman Coulter and Nichols Institute Diagnostics; continuing development of Royal North Shore Hospital`s T-cell core peptide project by leading Australian biopharmaceutical company, GroPep; non exclusive licence fees from US company, DYAX Corporation; successful licensing of perfusion simulator technology to an Australian company, which is launching the product internationally in June; an Evaluation Agreement with a CRC for technology relating to improving embryo viability; royalty payments from American Diagnostics for work originally done in the Kolling Institute for Medical Research at Royal North Shore Hospital; and negotiations nearing completion for the licensing of Rehabilitation Glove technology from RNSH's Quadriplegic Hand Research Unit and the University of Wollongong, to a leading rehabilitation firm in the United Kingdom.

BioMed North has recently negotiated two Evaluation and Option Agreements for technologies relating to a new heart failure treatment and a treatment to prevent Type 1 Diabetes, with an Australian life sciences organisation. It has interested a global diagnostic firm in the Kolling's novel marker for Growth Hormone and is following its planned development of an immunoassay in 2006. The University of Sydney is commercialising a jointly owned project aimed at improving healing of chronic wounds from inventor Dr Chris Jackson; and the Institute for Magnetic Resonance Research is managing the Use of Magnetic Resonance to Detect Pain Project that originated from research by Dr Philip Siddall and Dr Annie Woodhouse from the Pain Management Research Institute at Royal North Shore Hospital.

A former Royal North Shore Hospital scientist, received almost $100,000 in an interim profit distribution from the commercialisation of his invention, patented in the nineties. Hospital research was also a beneficiary and further returns are anticipated from Milestone payments and royalties.

Peter Abolfathi, a PhD student in the Quadriplegic Hand Research Unit, won the 2004 Australian Museum British Council Eureka Prize for Inspiring Science for his work with Dr Tim Scott and Ms Veronica Vare on the Rehabilitation Glove Project. BioMed North supported Peter`s nomination and the technology is now being licensed to a British firm with development work done in Sydney.

Commercial agreements prevent the publication of more details.