After more than twenty years of vision and persistence, the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD) was officially opened on Wednesday 10 June on the St Vincent’s Hospital campus in Fitzroy.

The first centre of its kind in Australia, where engineers, researchers and clinicians work side by side within a working hospital, the ACMD is named in honour of Venerable Mary Aikenhead, founder of the Religious Sisters of Charity, whose order established St Vincent’s more than 150 years ago. The opening brought the centre’s founding partners under one roof for the first time, behind a shared ambition: engineering the future of healthcare.

The evening began quietly. Ahead of the main proceedings, around forty guests gathered for a smoking ceremony led by Wurundjeri man Thane Garvey, opening the night on the Country on which the centre stands. Sister Libbey Byrne then offered a blessing, drawing a clear line from Mary Aikenhead’s mission of care to the work the building now exists to do.

At six o’clock, guests gathered for the official opening, led by master of ceremonies Professor Karen Hapgood, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Swinburne University, representing the centre’s research and academic partners.

The formal addresses opened with Richard Haddock AO, Chair of Trustees of Mary Aikenhead Ministries, who spoke to the centre’s foundations in the enduring mission of the Sisters of Charity.

ACMD Board Chair Brenda Shanahan AO followed. The figure most closely associated with the centre’s twenty-year journey, Ms Shanahan has long credited the “many angels at her shoulder” along the way, and has described the ACMD as not just a building, but “a foundation for the future.”

Following a short film, the Hon Harriet Shing MP, Victorian Minister for Health, acknowledged the State’s lead investment in the project, and Chris Blake, Chief Executive of St Vincent’s Health Australia, spoke to the role of the hospital at the centre’s heart. Ms Sarah Witty MP, Member for Melbourne, represented the Australian Government.

The centre was formally declared open with the unveiling of a plaque by Minister Shing, Ms Witty, Mr Haddock and Ms Shanahan.

The program closed with Meditations on an Irish Folk Tune, a chamber work composed by Kai Chen Lim and commissioned by A/Prof Lih-Ming Wong, who took the first violin. The Discovery Chamber Orchestra brought together musicians from the University of Melbourne Medical and Engineering faculties and staff from St Vincent’s. Built on an Irish melody in a nod to St Vincent’s heritage, and on themes of reflection, giving and self-sacrifice, the piece set the tone for the collaborative, ground-breaking work ahead.

Backed by more than $206 million in combined investment, from the Victorian and Commonwealth governments, the centre’s partners and philanthropy, the ACMD exists to do something practical: to speed the translation of biomedical research into the devices and treatments that reach patients, helping people stay out of hospital, or spend less time in it.

With the building now complete and researchers beginning to move in, attention turns to the work it was built for. The hard part, as Ms Shanahan has often noted, starts now: bringing together people who have never worked under one roof… and keeping them there.