Revolutionising medical treatment
A typical father and son project might mean restoring a classic car or completing a home renovation but this Christchurch pair have set their sights a little higher.
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several million, they can do it but they can’t talk to their allied disciplines.
‘‘That goes back to the farming industries, where people had to build their own machines and those skills of being able to build anything are all part of that.’’
Anthony agrees.
‘‘If you go to really large research institutes, they can be really skilled but they tend to have big silos. In New Zealand we tend not to operate that way.
‘‘I think we are the sweet-spot in terms of size, where there is enough skill around that there are experts but we are not so big that we can’t talk to each other.’’
Almost 15 years since the father and son team decided to embark on the research, they have made huge advances but there is still work to be done.
‘‘If you look at where we were in 2006 or 2007 we were able to measure four colours but we had to do them one after the other, not simultaneously,’’ Anthony says.
‘‘We scanned the abdomen of a mouse, a pretty small object, and it [took] a day to image it and a month to do all the data reconstruction to get a picture to look at.’’
Day-to-day, Anthony is the company’s chief medical officer and scientific lead.
Phil is the chief executive but, according to Anthony, he still ‘‘does a lot of the technical work’’.
Working with family members can bring its challenges but Anthony says one of the advantages of partnering with his dad is the ‘‘innate trust’’ they have.
‘‘It is actually a real pleasure,’’ he says.
‘‘I am quite lucky, I did not start working with him until I was in my early 30s, which meant I had done all of my qualifications, established my own life.
‘‘He had done many things himself and been pro-vice chancellor of the university and wanted to get more into practical applications so we founded this project together and that has been really nice.
‘‘You are always going to have problems in any relationship but the fact that it is a family member gives you structure where you can actually work through problems and solve them and know that you are on the same team.’’