NRC's champion of medical diagnostics wins back-to-back awards honouring achievements

Dr Ian Smith

After nearly 60 years with the National Research Council (NRC), Dr Ian Smith is showing few signs of slowing down. As the influential DG of the Winnipeg-based Institute for Biodiagnostics, Smith has championed the development and commercialization of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy and contributed to the growth of a biomedical cluster in the prairie city.

Smith's many accomplishments were recently acknowledged not once but twice with his induction into the Order of Canada and his selection as a recipient of the 2008 Outstanding Achievement Award of the Public Service of Canada.

A Winnipeg native, Smith first arrived at the NRC in Ottawa as a student in 1960 and formally joined the agency in 1967. As head of the IBD since its formation in 1992, Smith continues to push for the adoption of new technologies in the medical profession and the creation of start-ups to sell Canadian-made inventions to the world. In the process, he has helped to make IBD one of the most successful of the NRC institutes when gauged by commercial success.

"We really go for it. For every project we have, there's a target, an end result for the science and in the market. We wouldn't try and invest in something that was maybe slightly better than something that's already been done. We look for disruptive technologies," says Smith. "For example, we think we have a way to make MRI machines that don't make noise. The gadget that makes the noise is the gradient coil and it's quite expensive. If we can make them without the gradient coil … you reduce the cost by about 20%."

IBD has spun off about six companies and arguably the biggest success story to date is IMRIS (Innovative Magnetic Resonance Imaging Systems Inc), a developer, manufacturer and marketer of surgical imaging systems. That success didn't come without its downside, however. As with most spin-offs, the talent behind the technology goes with it, resulting in the loss of a senior researcher from IBD's ranks.

"The chief scientific officer of IMRIS, John Saunders, he went with the company and that was sad," says Smith. "On the other hand, we have very good relations with him and we're sort of in their heads about the future. We're helping them to find their next line of products."

In addition to growing companies organically, IBD has been instrumental in attracting some of the biggest players in medical devices to Winnipeg. These include General Electric and Seimens, both of which collaborate closely with the NRC. The relationship with Seimens is probably the most extensive, with IBD sending prototypes to Germany to ensure that devices being developed meet with the company's criteria for quality, robustness and reliability.

"If we're lucky, we license that to them and if we're even luckier, we manufacture it in Winnipeg for them as an OEM (original equipment manufacturer). The ideal would be as OEM to all of them but that hasn't happened yet," says Smith. "You can build a corona around yourself if you spread out and bring people to Winnipeg who didn't even know where it was before. I'm very happy about that aspect of the cluster effect. There are the active players (like GE and Seimens) and then there are the suppliers – machining, plastics, composite materials. All that stuff is done in Winnipeg."

Establishing a powerful web of players in the region hasn't been without its challenges. From the time Smith was selected to head up the IBD to today, convincing people to relocate in the windy city has remained a number one priority.

"Even though the IBD staff have approximately 40 different native languages, the biggest challenge over the years has been recruitment. To scientists from Hungary or Siberia, Winnipeg is in the middle of nowhere," he says. "We actually spend the money to bring them here and show it to them – their colleagues, the golf courses and the churches."

Other challenges include demonstrating to medical people that science has a role to play in medicine, convincing medical people to work with the researchers and overcoming the resistance of the provincial government to support IBD's research — although. Smith says the current NDP appears to be more willing to support science than its Conservative predecessors.

Through it all, however, IBD's budget has continued to grow, from an initial $2-million A-base to $12 million today, augmented by another $6 million from various sources. That budget also covers IBD's two satellite facilities in Halifax and Calgary which each employ about 25 people. Calgary specializes in stroke and high-end MRI equipment while Halifax emphasizes functional imaging of brain repair.

So does Smith plan to stick around a while longer? "As long as I'm having fun and healthy. I'm still having so much fun."

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