Rodney Hicks: Cheers to all our supporters and colleagues for a safe and prosperous 2024

Rodney Hicks, Professor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne and Monash University, shared on LinkedIn:

“On New Year’s Eve 2021, I walked out of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, immensely proud of the impact that I had had on both the Cancer Imaging service and the organization as a whole in my 30 years of working there. It would have been easy for me to walk into a number of new roles in industry or private practice, as a graceful and potentially lucrative pre-retirement job, but I was attracted by the opportunity to be involved in the next revolution in molecular imaging technology, extended field-of-view PET/CT.

So, in early 2022, what had seemed like a crazy dream was made possible through my friendship with Peter Gordon, as we gathered investors and formed our company PreMIT Pty Ltd and later its affiliate Precision Molecular Imaging and Theranostics Pty. Ltd. and built the Melbourne Theranostic Innovation Centre (MTIC).

By New Year’s Eve 2022, we had secured premises, demolished existing offices and built a bespoke imaging department on the 8th floor of a building in the Parkville biomedical precinct and ordered a Siemens Biograph Vision Quadra. We had already succeeded in building an outstanding team of nuclear medicine technologists, nurses and administrative staff who had left secure positions in prestigious institutions join our startup and share in this exciting adventure.

By New Year’s Eve 2023, the crazy dream didn’t seem nearly as mad. We had installed the 10th Quadra in the World in January 2023, and have a group of loyal referrers, who provide their patients access to the benefits of rapid scans of outstanding quality at remarkably low radiation doses, and a rapidly growing portfolio of industry groups seeking to do research with us.

However, the thing that has always driven me, and I know motivates our team, is providing excellent care to our patients and developing methods to improve their outcomes. The wonderful feedback that we are getting from our patients is reassuring me that the risks we took are paying off.

Cheers to all our supporters and colleagues for a safe and prosperous 2024, and we wish our patients a speedy return to the best level of health they can achieve.”

Source: Rodney Hicks/LinkedIn