Compumedics' dual-helmet brain tech hits a nerve in China's neuroscience boom
Compumedics dual-helmet MEG lights up Tianjin labs
ASX health stocks surge deeper into China
A few years back, China kicked off what might be one of the most ambitious science missions you've never heard of: the China Brain Project.
This is a full-scale national effort to figure out how the brain works, fix what goes wrong when it doesn't, and use all that insight to build the next generation of artificial intelligence.
Launched in September 2021, the project strings together 59 headline studies, backed by about RMB 3.2 billion ($680 million) under a framework cheerfully called 'one body, two wings.'
The 'body' focuses on fundamental neuroscience, how we learn, think, feel and remember.
One 'wing' tackles brain disorders like epilepsy, autism and dementia, aiming to improve diagnosis and treatment.
The other 'wing' is all about brain-inspired tech: building machines that mimic how humans learn and adapt, rather than just crunching data the old-fashioned way.
But to get from elegant theory to real-world breakthroughs, scientists need to see the brain in action.
Not just its structure, but its split-second activity as thoughts, memories and decisions light up the neurons. That's where brain imaging comes in.
MRI gives you high-res still shots of the brain's anatomy – useful, but static.
MEG, or magnetoencephalography, is the opposite: it captures the brain in motion, recording real-time electrical activity down to the millisecond.
MEG listens to the brain's own magnetic murmurs, but legacy systems come with two big drawbacks.
One-size-fits-adults helmets leave a child's head rattling around like a pea in a tin, so the sensors sit too far from the brain and the signal fizzles.
Even worse, most MEG systems burn through liquid helium to keep the sensors cold.
And when that coolant runs low, the whole scanner has to shut down until a refill arrives, usually in the form of a specialised delivery, which isn't always quick or easy.
China's new brain labs wanted something nimbler.
Enter an Australian outsider.
Compumedics lands world-first dual-helmet MEG
Compumedics (ASX:CMP), a med-tech company based in Melbourne, spent nearly ten years developing a new kind of MEG system with its research partners at Korea's KRISS institute.
The result is the Orion LifeSpan, a scanner that holds two helmets, one for adults and one for children, inside a single cooling chamber (called a dewar).
It uses advanced, patented sensors known as DROS-SQUIDs to pick up the brain's magnetic signals with high precision.
Unlike older systems that need constant helium refills, Orion recycles almost all its coolant, so it can keep running around the clock without shutting down.
It also has a 'hyperscanning' mode, which can record the brain activity of two people at the same time. That's useful, for example, if you're studying how a child's brain interacts with their parent's during a shared task.
Tianjin Normal University (TJNU) secured the first Orion in late 2024. After months of tests, the university gave formal acceptance and called it the most advanced MEG lab on the planet.
'The Orion LifeSpan MEG recently installed by Compumedics at TJNU has been a revolution in our ability to study mental processes of both children and adults, or even the two simultaneously," said Vice-President Professor Xuejun Bai.
'The system has already proven itself to be extremely sensitive, accurate and reliable.'
TJNU researchers sat a four-year-old under the Orion LifeSpan MEG and fed 200 quick tones into one ear, while the scanner captured her brain's magnetic response.
With the paediatric helmet snug to her scalp, the auditory peaks popped up about 90 milliseconds after each beep – clear, high-amplitude waveforms that lit the display like a studio-grade equaliser.
Then the team simply rotated Orion's dual-helmet dewar to bring the adult dome into place, and ran the exact same test.
This time the signals barely rose above the noise floor; the larger helmet kept the sensors centimetres farther from her brain, and most of the field strength bled away before it reached the coils.
That side by side comparison, all on a single machine, delivered what Compumedics later called 'the first time a single MEG system had given high-quality scans for both children and adults.'
Compumedics has proven that shortening the brain-to-sensor gap and boosting the signal-to-noise ratio can unlock the precision that paediatric neurology has long been waiting for.
China's brain labs line up
The TJNU showcase set off a modest domino run.
Tsinghua University signed on, a second Tianjin facility followed, and Hangzhou Normal University ordered its own Orion LifeSpan package.
The four contracts total roughly $20 million, with Hangzhou's unit slated for delivery in early 2026.
Compumedics isn't claiming to own the market; it's simply first out of the blocks.
MEG scanners are still rare in China compared with the country's vast MRI fleet, and Orion's dual-helmet design halves both the hardware bill and the room it needs, exactly the kind of maths provincial governments like as they race to build new neuroscience centres.
None of it turns Compumedics into a household name overnight, but it does explain why four Chinese universities have already signed purchase orders.
And as the China Brain Project accelerates, the real-time windows provided by MEG are likely to move from niche to mainstream.
China becomes launchpad for ASX health plays
With its sheer scale, ageing population and a government rolling out the red carpet for cutting-edge medical tech, China has become a proving ground that's increasingly hard for ASX health outfits to ignore.
Compumedics isn't the only Aussie med-tech with serious skin in the China game.
Telix Pharmaceuticals (ASX:TLX), for instance, is running several China-based Phase III registration studies.
The ZIRCON-CP trial of its kidney-cancer imaging agent TLX250-CDx is being conducted at Beijing Cancer Hospital and other leading oncology centres, in conjunction with strategic partner Grand Pharmaceutical Group.
The first Chinese patient was dosed late-2024, and the study remains active in 2025.
Cochlear (ASX:COH) continues its three-decade clinical presence in China.
In June, the company launched its Nucleus Nexa smart implant within the Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone, a government-sanctioned hospital hub that fast-tracks novel devices and collects clinical evidence for mainland approval.
EZZ Life Science (ASX:EZZ), meanwhile, has quietly pulled off one of the sharpest China plays on the ASX, turning a niche Aussie wellness brand into a breakout star.
In FY24, revenue surged 79% to $66.4 million, with a clean $10.4 million in EBITDA and zero debt on the books.
And 80% of that cash came straight out of Greater China, thanks to a killer e-commerce strategy across Douyin, Tmall, Kuaishou and O'Mall, where its anti-ageing pills and children growth chews have become chart-toppers.
Parents in China can't get enough of EZZ's kids' range, and the company just dropped a fresh $21 million deal to push into Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore.
At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Compumedics and EZZ Life Science are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.
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ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
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The Australian
14 hours ago
- The Australian
Shocking footage shows autonomous vehicle dragging scooter
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ABC News
17 hours ago
- ABC News
The measure of success: How Australia can become a long-term civilisation - ABC Religion & Ethics
Many of today's most fraught geopolitical and economic dilemmas come down to this deceptively simple question: What time-frame are you using to judge success? Patrick McGee's recent book Apple in China offers a vivid illustration. Its subtitle — 'The Capture of the World's Greatest Company' — frames Apple Inc. as the victim, and Chinese communists as the captors. McGee's narrative begins with the Apple of Steve Jobs, a company that fused technological ambition with an artistic sensibility. Jobs once said: 'Technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that makes our hearts sing.' Apple's DNA was edited under his successor, Tim Cook. Cook became extraordinarily efficient at monetising Jobs's heart songs. Shareholder value soared. It was a great time to be an Apple investor. Cook leveraged partnerships with businesses like Foxconn, a Taiwanese contract electronics maker whose efficient factories in China enabled Apple's extraordinary margins. Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on 10 June 2024. (Photograph by David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images) One lauded architect of this success was Apple's Vice President of Procurement, Tony Blevins. His negotiation strategy was legendary, playing suppliers off one another to extract the maximum concessions. Blevin's tenure came to an abrupt end in 2022 when he was terminated for making jokes about fondling big breasts — perhaps not surprising given his preferred moniker, 'the Blevinator'. If a significant share of Apple's profits came from the sweated labour of Chinese workers, we should ask what China got out of all this? These benefits become apparent only if you are able to look at the deals celebrated by the Blevinator and Apple shareholders in the long term. One hint lies in frequent references by Chinese officials to China's 5,000 year continuous civilisation in their engagements with Westerners. This is where time-frame becomes everything. Milton Friedman famously argued that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. That principle dominated Apple's approach to China. But China wasn't playing Friedman's game. Viewed in the time-frame of 5,000 years, Apple's greedy engagement with China looks like an imagined decision by British radar pioneer Robert Watson-Watt to sell his intellectual property to a German business in 1935 because its offer significantly exceeded what any Briton would pay. Just as fragments of Neanderthal DNA survive in modern humans, fragments of Apple's DNA survive in today's Chinese tech giants. China didn't just get factories. It got experience. It got exposure to Apple's standards, its design philosophy, its logistical precision. Huawei, Xiaomi and other Chinese firms may now express that inherited DNA more confidently than Apple itself. We know that the Neanderthals went extinct. We can speculate about how Apple will weather today's tariff wars. Trade wars are awkward for any multinational tech company, but particularly so for one straddling the war's principal antagonists. A 5,000 year time-frame or a 65,000 year one? It shouldn't be surprising that political use of a 5,000-year-old Chinese civilisation has prompted sceptical replies. Rather than engaging with that debate, Australians should ask a different question: If China adopts a 5,000-year perspective, what might Australia do with a 65,000-year perspective? Indigenous Australians represent the oldest continuing culture on Earth. That longevity reflects not only resilience but a distinctive mode of thinking — one that is radically long-term. Instead of viewing this as an anthropological curiosity, Australia could view Aboriginal ideas as a strategic resource. Governments and corporations strategise in election cycles and financial quarters. How might curbing consumption now increase the prospects, financial and otherwise, for Australians living in a sixty-millennia distant future? The fact that seems like an absurd question strongly suggests the short-term bias in our political culture. Aboriginal rock paintings at Arkaroo Rock (Akurra Adnya), Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia. (Photograph by Auscape / Universal Images Group via Getty Images) We wonder how Australia can compete in tech. It could be useful to find a Brisbane version of OpenAI's Sam Altman or an Adelaide equivalent of Nvidia's Jensen Huang. But, once identified, the best place for them is likely California. To adapt bank robber Willie Sutton's line about why he robbed banks, that's where the venture capital is. Aspirational billionaires who relocate to California may not have much use for the 65,000-year time-frame. Who uses that as a guide for their investments? The true value of the Aboriginal time-frame is closer to home. For example, it challenges the lucrative short-termism of Australia's mining industry. Gina Rhinehart, mining magnate and Australia's richest person, would likely find herself having to donate to a lot of politicians if she sought to become a Californian billionaire. She and her business are tethered to the land. What if those same politicians required her to compromise with the 65,000-year time-frame of indigenous Australians? Doing so would involve accepting the ideas of indigenous peoples as a strategic resource alongside the minerals under their lands. The Uluru Statement from the Heart invites Australians to walk together 'in a movement of the Australian people for a better future'. It is more than a plea for recognition or reform. It is a strategic proposal grounded in the radical continuity and wisdom of a culture that has endured for sixty millennia. To heed this call is to imagine a political and environmental future measured not in electoral cycles but in millennia. Seen in this light, the Statement is not just a moral appeal — it's a reminder of Australia's unique potential to be a long-term civilisation. Nicholas Agar is Professor of Ethics at the University of Waikato in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of How to be Human in the Digital Economy and Dialogues on Human Enhancement, and co-author (with Stuart Whatley and Dan Weijers) of How to Think about Progress: A Skeptic's Guide to Technology.
