First Responder – 2025 Michael Bryce Patron’s Award

THE MICHAEL BRYCE PATRON’S AWARD IS PRESENTED ANNUALLY BY THE PATRON OF GOOD DESIGN AUSTRALIA.

IT RECOGNISES AND CELEBRATES THE BEST AUSTRALIAN-DESIGNED PRODUCT, SERVICE OR PROJECT IN THE ANNUAL AUSTRALIAN GOOD DESIGN AWARDS WITH THE POTENTIAL TO SHAPE THE FUTURE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS OF OUR PLANET.

IN 2025, THE AWARD WAS PRESENTED FOR THE FIRST TIME BY THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF AUSTRALIA, HER EXCELLENCY THE HONOURABLE SAM MOSTYN AC, WHO IS THE NEW PATRON OF GOOD DESIGN AUSTRALIA. 

Every two seconds, someone in the world has a stroke – an event that can change lives in an instant. Fast diagnosis and treatment are critical for better outcomes, but both rely on being able to see what’s happening in the brain first. 

Mobile Stroke Units (MSUs) have helped make this possible by bringing imaging and treatment to patients when every moment counts. While MSUs were a breakthrough, they’re costly and difficult to scale. EMVision set out to change that with First Responder. 

First Responder is a portable neurodiagnostic device that enables rapid identification of strokes and traumatic brain injuries (TBI). It was created by the EMVision Design and Research Team to be lightweight, intuitive, and affordable.

First Responder was honoured with the 2025 Michael Bryce Patron’s Award. Robert Tiller, Head of Design at EMVision Medical Devices, shared the story of perseverance, invention, and empathy behind the device. 

The EMVision Design Team, led by Robert Tiller (first on the left)

Time is brain

Strokes are on the rise and they have devastating effects on patients – 60% of whom suffer permanent disabilities. First Responder supports better patient outcomes by delivering a diagnosis within five minutes.

“Treatment within the first hour or two [of a stroke] is absolutely crucial to achieving a positive outcome,” said Robert.

“We are bringing the scanner to the patient.”

The First Responder scans patients on-site and communicates results to neurologists via telehealth. This enables paramedics to quickly identify the type of stroke or TBI a patient is experiencing – a crucial step for safe, effective triage and treatment.

Robert described the innovation as “empowering clinicians at the first point of care”. The advancement will prevent delays that can cost lives.

“Time is brain,” said Robert. 

“The earlier we can intervene, the greater the chance of recovery – and the lighter the impact stroke has on patients, families, and society.”

The EMVision Research Team

The economic impact of strokes


Strokes have a devastating economic impact. Robert noted that in 2021 the annual cost of strokes was around US $891 billion globally, and this is projected to rise to US$1.6 trillion by 2050.

By reducing reliance on costly hospital imaging, First Responder minimises the burden on hospitals and health systems. The device itself is also significantly more affordable than existing solutions. MSUs cost up to US$1.7 million and require specialist crews, while First Responder costs approximately US$50,000 and can be operated by trained personnel. 

“If you can treat the patient quickly, you reduce that burden profoundly,” Robert said. 

“The EMVision First Responder takes that same principle [as the MSU] – bringing the scanner to the patient. But, it’s more affordable, lightweight, and deployable anywhere.”

The Governor-General of Australia presents the 2025 Michael Bryce Patron’s Award – First Responder


User needs as the golden standard

First Responder began as a University of Queensland research project and was commercialised by EMVision Medical Devices, which opened its Sydney head office in 2020. Over the years, the EMVision Design and Research Team led rigorous user research and testing. They ensured First Responder could integrate seamlessly into paramedics’ workflows. 

Robert said user needs were treated as the ‘golden standard’ throughout the design process. The collaborative conceptual development process involved meeting paramedics ‘on their terms, in their environment’ and shadowing retrievals. 

During the research process, Robert was amazed by paramedics’ skill and resilience. 

“Even though [paramedics] will figure out how to use it and get around it, we were determined to make this seamless and as invisible to them as possible,” Robert shared.

While some needs changed across different states, one was constant. First Responder needed to be lightweight, fast, and easy to use. Robert said it was important that users didn’t need to think about how the kit works, explaining, “You just want to use it when the time comes.”

Balancing functionality and portability 


The EMVision Design and Research Team overcame significant technical, ergonomic, and usability constraints when designing First Responder. Robert said miniaturising the technology was a response to user needs.

“We’ve done lots and lots of user research with paramedics, both road and air… to determine their workflows and how a scanner like this would fit,” he explained. 

“Miniaturisation is really a result of needing to respond to ergonomics…patients needing to be scanned are not in the best of health if they’re suffering a stroke.”

The design journey was a balancing act between competing demands: power, performance, size, portability and speed. 

“As soon as someone says, ‘I want it to run for an hour,’ that’s another kilo of batteries you have to put into the product.”

“It’s been quite a challenge to balance all the demands from different stakeholders to create something that ultimately ticks the boxes for everyone.”

The team also faced practical design challenges, like developing a flexible cap to fit a wide range of head sizes, avoiding wrinkles during liquid filling, and ensuring the device could operate reliably across road and air ambulance environments. Every decision had to maintain diagnostic accuracy, meet regulatory standards, and support paramedics’ workflow without compromise.

In the end, the EMVision Design and Research Team not only met their ambitious target weight of 12 kilograms, but also integrated proprietary antenna and signal analysis modules, along with a fluidics system. The innovation represents a significant milestone in portable, AI-driven diagnostics.

“When I started with the company eight years ago, that technology was the size of a small desktop computer… and we’ve now worked on a device that is the size of approximately half of a mobile phone.”

2025 Michael Bryce Patron’s Award – First Responder

Reaching remote and underserved communities 

First Responder places life-saving stroke and TBI care within reach, offering advanced neurodiagnostic technology at an affordable price.

“Wherever you are – rural, regional, remote – you should get access,” explained Robert. 

“First Responder is easy and safe to use. This empowers local clinics or practitioners to perform scans on-site.”

Additionally, integrated telehealth systems enable scan data to be shared instantly with specialists across the country.

“You could put one of our scanners anywhere…and action a code stroke immediately.” 

By ‘decentralising big ticket equipment’, First Responder makes life-saving stroke and TBI care more accessible than ever.

The 2025 Australian Good Design Awards Ceremony, where 2025 Michael Bryce Patron’s Award – First Responder was announced

AI-driven diagnostics technology 

First Responder uses a proprietary AI engine, which is trained on clinical data to deliver rapid neurodiagnostic analysis. The engine plays a crucial role in the device’s speed and output.

“Without AI, the computing and data processing power needed would be overwhelming to try and affect the same outcome,” Robert said. 

With more than 35 years in the industry, Robert has seen firsthand how AI can elevate design and development, enabling levels of precision and efficiency that were once out of reach. 

While he sees AI as a powerful tool, he believes the essence of good design still lies in human creativity and intuition, and in how humans guide AI.

“You can make [AI] do amazing things, but it’s only as good as what you ask it to do.”

“AI is the sum of what it can learn, how it learns, and how it’s been told to learn,” he explained. “In the creative industries, original thinking, the generation of new ideas, imagery, and models are critical.  I do not think Ai will deliver true creativity.”

Describing himself as an old-school designer, he joked, “You can mark those words in 50 years, you’ll be able to say how ridiculously wrong I was.” 

From concept to reality 

For Robert personally, the most rewarding part of the project has been seeing the research evolve into a life-saving device.

“Reshaping and lifting that research out of a university laboratory, shaping the science into an application as profoundly important as stroke treatment and diagnosis, was very rewarding.

“It’s not often in your career that you get to work on something that is genuinely new,” he said. “This just didn’t exist 10 years ago…watching the transition from benchtop to product in an entirely new technology is very satisfying.”

Good Design Australia congratulates the EMVision Design and Research Team on their pursuit of excellence – in service of stroke and TBI patients, their communities, and Australia’s first responders.

Mark Burry AO – 2025 Australian Design Prize

THE AUSTRALIAN DESIGN PRIZE WAS ESTABLISHED TO RECOGNISE INDIVIDUAL DESIGNERS WHO ARE MAKING, OR HAVE MADE, A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT IN AUSTRALIAN DESIGN OVER THE COURSE OF THEIR CAREER.

Professor Mark Burry AO is one of Australia’s most influential design thinkers. He is an architect by trade, but a true designer in his work. Mark is an educator and research leader who has spent his career connecting architecture, technology and design research, thriving where they meet.

Burry’s skills have taken him from the Sagrada Família in Barcelona to being the Founding Director of Swinburne’s Smart Cities Research Institute. Across all of his work, his bottom line is simple.


Design should serve people and be made with them. 

A geometrical beginning 

We sat down with Professor Mark Burry AO about his career, spanning complex geometry, parametric thinking and city-scale participation. 

“I’m supposed to be semi-retired,” he laughed, “but I’m busier than ever.”

Now based in Adelaide, “Australia’s best kept secret” as per Mark, Professor Burry looked back on a career that began in Barcelona in 1979. As a young architect from New Zealand, he joined Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece as an intern, the Sagrada Família.

“It’s the only time I’ve actually been in the shadow of a genius,” he reflected. 

“Gaudí was able to embrace every attribute of architecture with equal flair, aesthetic, philosophical, engineering, the science of materials, composition. You can’t help but be changed by that.” 

At the time, the team was rebuilding from fragments, boxes of broken plaster models, geometry puzzles and memories of Gaudí’s methods. Burry was tasked with translating them into information modern builders could use.

“I had to find the geometries that would intersect and give curves exactly as we could see in the models. Doing it by hand would take weeks. Then I thought, ‘surely that’s what the computer should be doing’.”

When existing architecture software fell short, he turned to tools used by boat and aircraft designers. 

“I adapted it so that it was architecturally focused. That’s how I got into computation, because I had a complex project that demanded it.”

The Sagrada Família. Image: Supplied

The father of parametric design

By necessity, Burry became one of the first architects to use parametric design – a flexible, data-driven approach now standard in contemporary practice.

He explained the principles of parametric design as: 

“A table has characteristics we call parameters: the length, width and height. A parametric design is a flexible model where those dimensions can change. If you say, ‘What if it was 100mm wider?’ I just type in the revised dimension, and the model reworks itself.”

That same principle, designing for adaptability, can be applied to cities.

“Everybody works parametrically now.

“That’s why I moved into smart cities and big data. The same techniques can be scaled up to more complex systems, for what I call ‘parametric urbanism’.”

Mark’s work in parametric design was ahead of its time. 

By combining geometry, computation and creativity, he helped shape a new way of thinking that is now embedded in architecture across the world. His pioneering approach to digital modelling has become part of everyday design practice.

Founding the Smart Cities Research Institute

At Swinburne University of Technology, Burry founded the Smart Cities Research Institute, later evolving into the Innovative Planet Research Institute. His title remains Adjunct Professor of Urban Futures. 

The Institute’s ethos was to move beyond consultation into genuine collaboration.

“It’s cities and places moving from being designed for people, to being designed with people,” he explained. 

“It’s not citizen engagement. It’s citizen participation.”

Through data and design, the Institute worked to dissolve gaps between disciplines to create more cohesive visions of urban life.

“Urbanism is a mix of not just design, but sociology, history, philosophy, economics and engineering, all the things you need to know about to understand how a city really works.

“The role of the Institute was to make sure people weren’t stuck in their silos. If you came from a design background, you’d have access to data scientists, sociologists, health experts and traffic engineers, so together we could form a more cohesive view of what the city should do.

“If you leave the city in the hands of traffic engineers,” he added as an example, “you get cities that prioritise cars. We accommodate cycling rather than celebrate it, when in fact every person on a bicycle is taking a car off the road.”

One of the Institute’s key outcomes was the creation of iHub, a state-of-the-art collaborative facility designed to help participants make smarter, data-driven decisions in urban planning, policy and design.

“It’s a facility with super high-definition monitors. Anyone in the space can put what’s on their laptop or tablet up at the same time,” Burry explained.

“In the old days, designers would put their work up together, not a sequence of slides, but a story. With today’s technology, we can do that digitally. You can see everyone’s ideas at once.”

Back to his roots

While his leadership at Swinburne’s Smart Cities Research Institute focused on urban futures and citizen participation, Professor Burry’s personal research continues to return to a deeply human scale of affordable, community-led housing.

“In my own research, I’ve gone back to my roots, finding affordable housing solutions for people from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

“I started my career in the Western Isles of Scotland, the most outlying islands to the west. In the 1980s they didn’t even have a secondary school. Kids had to travel nine hours to the mainland and live there for the term. People were still living in single-room homes with no sanitation, unbelievable in the UK at that time.

“We were building housing, and that’s when I first learned it’s better to work with the community than for the community, if you really want them to have ownership and appreciation for whatever architectural solution you’re giving them.”

Reimagining Australian cities

Burry is optimistic about what Australian cities could be, and frank about what holds them back. 

“Given the enormous talent we have, from engineering to design, we don’t see those talents being used to the max. We’re a bureaucratic society. We’re risk averse.”

He points to the importance of long-term thinking, citing examples like Adelaide’s O-Bahn Busway and early data-led planning research of Ernest Fooks dating back to 1946.

“We know what to do. We just haven’t worked out how to do it yet. Urbanism is long-term, but our political system is short-term.”

Mark Burry AO – 2025 Australian Design Prize. Image: Supplied

The edge of design 

For Burry, data matters most when it fuels imagination.

“Engineers will drill down to find the best outcome, that’s analysis. Designers synthesize. They use data to generate options and weigh the pros and cons.”

The designer’s edge, he revealed, is spotting the “unknown unknowns”: the patterns no algorithm can yet anticipate.

Across universities, cities and decades, his ethos is constant. Great design lives where history, philosophy and technology meet.

He recalled a time when he ran a transdisciplinary studio with architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, engineers, industrial designers, all working on an urban or architectural project. 

“Each learned what the other lacked. The architects were in awe of the fashion designers’ conceptual flair, and the fashion designers were fascinated by the architects’ ability to unpack ideas into concepts.”

That cross-pollination has shaped his practice and his advice.

“Be aware of the science and the engineering of design. You don’t have to embrace it, but if you’re going to reject it, do it knowingly.”

He also advised young designers who want to create work that has long-term impact to take history and philosophy seriously. 

“All designers should have an absolute grounding in the history of their field and the philosophical and, where relevant, sociological impact of what they do, as well as their creative brain. 

“To work without precedent, or without respect for the work that has gone before you, is risk and ignorance. You won’t get the most out of your talent.”

Identity and impact 

Though a registered architect, Burry sees himself first and foremost as a designer.

“I’ve spent my entire career thinking about design,” he reflected. 

Mark’s identity underscores a deep reverence for Gaudí, the artist who made architecture feel alive.

“He was a sculptor who realised sculpting alone wasn’t appropriate for buildings the size of cathedrals.

“So he turned to mathematics and geometry. That’s the balance I’ve always admired, art meeting logic.”

In many ways, Professor Mark Burry AO carries forward the same spirit that defined Antoni Gaudí’s life’s work. Both seek beauty through precision and find meaning in the meeting of art, mathematics and human experience.

Mark Burry AO – 2025 Australian Design Prize. Image: Supplied

The continuum of design

Mark Burry designs for the shared intelligence of our time, proving that when art and logic, past and future, human and digital meet, design becomes something enduring.

But beyond the technology lies his greater contribution, a belief that design is shared pursuit. 

Whether shaping basilicas, cities or systems, Burry’s legacy reminds us that we can’t create for people, because we are the people. Design, at its best, is something we build together.

Good Design Australia congratulates and thanks Professor Mark Burry AO for his lifelong contribution to advancing design as a collaborative, civic and human pursuit.