KEY POINTS:
Making money from science is a long, slow, risky and expensive process. Think no further than Botry-Zen, Blis and A2 - still chewing through capital half a decade after the late biotechnology entrepreneur Howard Paterson started them on the commercialisation pathway.
Yet few in New Zealand would suggest we shouldn't keep trying. While catchphrases such as "knowledge wave" and "new economy" might provoke a justifiably cynical yawn these days, it's widely accepted that New Zealand's future economic wellbeing will rely on an innovative science sector capable of producing high-value products and marketing them worldwide.
Although we have yet to see the research-driven "economic transformation" that politicians talk about, the spirit of entrepreneurship in New Zealand's scientific institutions has never been stronger.
There is also an infrastructure for commercialisation that did not exist 20 years ago. Universities now have technology transfer offices to bridge the gap between the lab bench and the marketplace, Crown research organisations have business development staff scouring for commercial opportunities, the amount of venture capital available is increasing, and science no longer regards it as heresy to seek profit from research.
Between 1995 and 2000, New Zealand universities and research institutes created an average of four new companies a year; between 2001 and 2005 that annual average rose to 13 a year.
Names such as Neurenz, Proacta, Protemix and Living Cell Technologies, formed to take some of New Zealand's world-leading medical research to market, have become familiar to business readers in recent years. But what of the next generation of Kiwi science with commercial potential?
Robot boning up on the problems of setting breaks
If the idea of a robot repairing your broken tibia (shin bone) sounds like some kind of Jetsons fantasy, then think again.
If Auckland university researcher Dr Shane Xie has his way, robots could be fixing the long bones of the leg within a few years.
Xie, a lecturer in mechanical engineering and a member of university's mechatronics research group, is leading a team developing a prototype robot that could greatly increase the accuracy of bone setting, speed up operating times, reduce the exposure of patients and surgeons to x-rays, and cut the rate of hospital readmissions resulting from poorly aligned bones.
Fractures to the long bones of the leg the femur and tibia are among the most common injuries, with research suggesting as many as one in 10,000 Americans suffer such breaks.
In people under 25 and in elderly people over 65, the rate is three times higher, so the potential market for technology that improves patient outcomes is huge.
Current surgical practice involves attaching the patient's foot to a traction machine to realign the broken bones. Multiple x-rays are taken and projected on to a computer monitor during the operation to aid the surgeon in positioning the bones.
The system has significant drawbacks - the surgeon and patient are exposed to radiation for long periods, the traction machine can apply force in only one axis and often fails to realign bones accurately, and manipulation of the bones damages surrounding soft tissue - thus prolonging recovery time.
Xie says orthopaedic surgery lends itself well to robotics because bone is rigid, behaves predictably in a clinical setting, and is easily imaged. "With robots you can control things very precisely, compared with a manual operation which can have errors on the scale of millimetres.
"With robots you can control the precision down to nanometers."
His team is aiming to develop a system that is semi-automatic, with the surgeon planning and controlling the realignment of the bones through a computer, while the robot performs the laborious task of manipulating the bones into the correct position.
A compact portable robot is under development by Xie's team, although it won't be a two-legged, two-armed human look-alike that stomps around the surgery. It will be a parallel robot with a fixed bottom plate attached to the surgical table, and a movable top plate to which the fractured bone is attached. Six legs connect to the top plate and enable the bone to be manipulated through six axes into the correct position.
A key part of the research effort is being driven by PhD student Andrew Graham - a joint runner-up in the Future Science category of the MacDairmid young scientist of the year award - who is modelling the inter-relationship between the bones and the muscles of the leg.
This information will be central to the robot's control system, telling it exactly how much force to apply to bring bones into alignment.
A software capable of building a three dimensional image of the bones based on x-rays - which the surgeon can use to plan and control the operation - is also being developed.
Xie says he hopes to be trialling the technology by the end of next year. "We are building up a test surgery bed, and we will be able to mimic the surgery in the lab before trying to sell to hospitals."
The system, robot and supporting imaging and control software could cost around $250,000 apiece, he said.
Because long bone injuries are common all over the world, there should be strong demand for this type of device, says Xie.
He believes the surgical robot could halve surgery time, significantly reduce the number of staff required and benefit health systems.
