ACID Project Wins National Award for Collaboration

23rd November 2006

For immediate release

The Australasian CRC for Interaction Design's diversionary therapy project with the Royal Children's Hospital has won a prestigious national award for collaboration.

The 2006 Business/Higher Education Round Table Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Collaboration were announced in Melbourne on 14 November.

In the category of Best R&D Collaboration Involving a CRC, ACID and the Royal Children's Hospital received an honourable mention in recognition of their partnership in developing unique and easy-to-use devices that deliver better treatment outcomes for children with serious burns by diverting their attention during painful procedures.

Project Leader Associate Professor Sam Bucolo of ACID said the collaboration with the hospital has delivered a world-first device, proven in clinical trials to significantly reduce pain scores in paediatric burns patients.

"By working together, ACID and the hospital were able to look at the problem from new angles and develop a solution with a wider scope and better results than would have been possible by either organisation working alone," he said. "The team included people from a range of disciplines including medicine and clinical practice, computer science, industrial design, ethnography, and the creative industries."

Assoc Prof Bucolo said the innovative nature of the collaboration led to both organisations developing new knowledge. "As a result, interactive creative content has been incorporated in clinical procedures, tested and proven in clinical trials," he said.

ACID CEO Professor Jeff Jones said the honourable mention recognised the quality of the design process used by ACID and the Royal Children's Hospital.

"The B-HERT Awards recognise innovation, the strength of the relationship between the collaborators, cultural impact on the collaborators, outreach, and outcomes," he said. "The diversionary therapy project has been just one of ACID's successful collaborations and we're using our learnings from the project as the basis for future work."

ACID has recently established a spin-off company, Diversionary Therapy Technologies Pty Ltd, to further develop and commercialise the devices developed in this project.

The award of Honourable Mention was the highest B-HERT award made in the category of Best R&D Collaboration Involving a CRC this year; no winner was announced in this category.

For more information:
Jason Pickersgill, ACID. T: 07 3337 7929 or 0432 163 886. E: jason@acid.net.au