High tech lab-to-market challenges
Bill Dyck
Science and technology broker Bill Dyck spoke at the Biosecurity Summit on the topic: “From innovation to operation – taking research from the lab to the supply chain”.
Mr Dyck, who helps match end-user requirements for technology and scientific advice with research and technology providers, asked summit delegates to consider these questions:
- Have we got our supply chain priorities all wrong?
- Are sea containers “sacred cows”?
- Why aren’t we making better use of available technologies?
- Why do we struggle to implement technology?
He said there were new technologies that could speed up and improve biosecurity processing in the supply chain, but incentives and motivation were required to find, test and prove them.
Container x ray
Many research products were outstanding in their own right and worked well as pilots, but often the challenge was applying them in real operational situations. Not only did technology need to work well, it had to fit into supply chains and not slow down existing processes.
Mr Dyck said many technologies failed to become commercialised. There were concerns among biosecurity technology developers in New Zealand about lack of incentives for scientists, lack of commercial expertise and government bureaucracy holding them back.
Iso-Trace
Considering whether technology could help reduce sea container biosecurity risk, he said:
- X-ray “backscatter technology” was great for finding terrorists and bombs, but might not be the answer for biosecurity.
- Iso-Trace, developed at the University of Otago in 2004, had been proven as a successful biosecurity tool, but was now back in the lab. (Iso-trace uses the natural variations in the level of different isotopes in water in different areas to provide unique chemical fingerprints. For example, it was used to identify that the Painted Apple Moth caught in Auckland after MAF’s extensive eradication programme was a new arrival in the country.)
- SIFT-MS (Specific Ion Flow Tube) to show that mass spectrometry miniaturisation for commercial use was another University of Canterbury-related development. Branded SYFT, it is now used in Australia, Canada, Belgium, France and Germany for fast detection of minute amounts of trace gases in the air, including drugs, tobacco, explosives, bacterial infections and fumigants.
SIFT
Mr Dyck said the question for SYFT in New Zealand was to prove it worked for biosecurity purposes, and whether to focus on getting it accepted here or in overseas markets.
- Bill Dyck has been Chief Executive Officer of his own company since 1999 and contracts to the New Zealand Forest Owners’ Association as their Forest Health Administrator. He was previously General Manager of Forestry for Carter Holt Harvey.
Page last updated: 14 January 2009