omi?????new deal puts retractable syringe on the m

New deal puts retractable syringe on the market PRINT FRIENDLY EMAIL STORY
PM - Thursday, 18 December , 2003 18:46:00
Reporter: Ian Townsend
MARK COLVIN: It's taken six years, but a Brisbane boilermaker, turned inventor, has signed a deal today to put his retractable syringe on the market. And it's likely to make him a motza. Bruce Kiehne's signed a deal to start distributing his safety syringes in a global market worth billions.

Ian Townsend reports from Brisbane.

IAN TOWNSEND: Bruce Kiehne's on his way to becoming a rich man, but that wasn't why he set out to make a better syringe.

BRUCE KIEHNE: The whole thing started six years ago, I became a born-again Christian and we approached a guy who had a derelict building down the road – it was an ex-shopping centre – and it had been smashed up and beaten up, and it was a squat for homeless people and junkies.

And we went and seen the landlord and asked him that if we cleaned up, could we use it as a local community church? And he agreed to that because it was going to have demolition order on it anyway.

So we cleaned it up, and I was cleaning the inside – me and the other people cleaning the inside, my brother-in-law and my daughters were outside cleaning the outside of it and my brother-in-law beat my 8-year old daughter to a chip packet that was laced full of syringes and stuck himself in the hand. That's when it started.

IAN TOWNSEND: So disturbed was he by the incident that he gave up work as a boilermaker and sold his house and car to concentrate on inventing a safe syringe. And he did it. He then founded a company called Occupational and Medical Innovations Limited and today signed a deal with syringe supplier Terumo to distribute the syringes initially in Australia and new Zealand, just in time for trials next year.

A Chinese company's already been enlisted to make the syringes – eight billion of them a year in a potential global market of 30 billion syringes. Keith Taske is the Chief Executive of Occupational and Medical Innovations.

KEITH TASKE: Well, it means the eradication of needlestick injuries if the use is complete of the actual safety device, because the needle itself after use, retracts into the barrel – indestructible, it can't be touched.

IAN TOWNSEND: It works like this: once the syringe is fully depressed, the needle springs back up where it can't hurt anyone accidentally. It can't be re-used. The safety syringe is being followed by another of Bruce Kiehne's inventions, the safety scalpel. And there are other products in the pipeline.

BRUCE KIEHNE: It sort of really hit home. We've done a couple of major deals with, you know, B Braun Australia, and American razor companies – huge deals for our other products, but today to see the needle being launched in all Australia, it's… six years just hit me today.

So, it's not over yet – this is just the start of OMI, this is only just the top of it. OMI will be one of the world leading safety device companies in the world. People laughed at me when I said that six years ago, and now they're not laughing anymore.

MARK COLVIN: And he's laughing all the way to the bank, or will be. Bruce Kiehne, the Brisbane inventor of the safety syringe, talking to PM's Ian Townsend.