Some Recent New Industries

The philosophy of Nucleus Limited is growth through innovation. Nucleus was founded in 1965 to develop, manufacture and market innovative medical technology. It has specialised in developing products from original Australian research and taking them to world markets in more than 50 countries. From a staff of 2 in 1965, Nucleus has grown to over 2000 people world-wide, of which 750 are employed in Australia. The group is presently expanding at a rate of over 20 per cent per annum. The six subsidiaries which comprise the Group conduct their own research and development, manufacturing and marketing activities. These include Telectronics, Ausonics, BGS Medical Cochlear, Domedica and Medtel.

Telectronics is a significant innovator in the pacemaker field and is rated number two in the world market. Technological innovations made by Telectronics and which are now considered world industry standards, include a half millisecond-wide pacemaker pulse which permitted significant energy conservation without affecting the stimulation threshold and in 1969 the development of the monolithic integrated circuit pacemaker. Both reliability and complexity were increased and the unit size decreased. In 1970 Telectronics developed the first hermetically sealed titanium pacemaker in conjunction with research with the CSIRO. This eliminated corrosion and extended the life of the pacemaker from a 100 per cent failure rate in three years, to a lifetime of over 20 years.

More recently, Telectronics was the first to combine the pacemaker and defibrillator in one programmable unit. The Telectronics defibrillator is a new generation of intelligent heart pacemaker. Designed to prevent what is known as 'Sudden Death Syndrome' which often happens after a first heart attack, it has the potential to save thousands of lives lost through sudden cardiac attacks. It is more advanced than other pacemakers in that it is more intelligent, capable of monitoring specific areas of the heart and administering a more finely tuned regime of treatment. It is comprised of a miniaturised pacemaker with a micro-electronically controlled pulsing mechanism which initially comes into action to assist the heart to return to its normal beat. If this fails the defibrillator automatically comes into action and shocks the heart back to normal rhythm.

In 1970 Medtel (then known as Scientific and General) produced the first push button energy selectable automatic external defibrillator with automatic synchronization, and in 1971 it was the first to produce a cardiac monitor with automatic rate meter sensitivity, permitting the automatic detection of heart rate without manual adjustment. Medtel was also the first with automatic balancing for blood pressure transducers and the first impedance respiration system with automatic balancing, the latter permitting automatic adjustment. More recently, the Commander ST cardiac monitoring device just released by Medtel is the first monitoring and trending cardiac monitor, for the monitoring of ischaemic episodes.

The subsidiary, Ausonics, was formed in 1975 to manufacture diagnostic ultrasound equipment. 1975 saw the fruition of research with the Australian Department of Health Ultrasonics Institute to develop the first commercially practical water path ultrasonics. Subsequently Ausonics developed the most compact real-time ultrasound machine which is particularly valuable because of its portability.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering