Heart and Soul: Dr Daniel Timms on Creating the First Successful Total Artificial Heart

We meet Dr Daniel Timms, the Australian biomechanical engineer behind BiVACOR who has dedicated his life to developing a titanium Total Artificial Heart (TAH) to restore the lives of people with end-stage heart failure, a disease that impacted his own family.

It’s a 25-year quest that has taken him from a PhD at QUT, developing the device with his father in his parent’s kitchen in Queensland, to collaborating with experts around the world and expanding operations to the US on his mission to save lives.

In 2024 Daniel made history in Texas, with the first successful implantation of the titanium heart into a patient awaiting a heart transplant, as part of an FDA feasibility study. Since then, several patients have received the heart as a bridge to a heart transplant and now Australian patients will be involved in clinical studies.

MTPConnect’s Targeted Translation Research Accelerator program for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, an MRFF initiative, has supported BiVACOR ’s development of a more portable external controller to allow for long-term use with the heart.

News of BiVACOR’s innovation has spread around the world as patients have shared their story of second chances after receiving the implant. Now we hear Daniel’s story, how the TAH is designed, his inspiration and approach to innovation, collaborations with NASA and transplant surgeons around the world, his plans to expand operations in Australia and what’s next for the privately held company he has put his heart and soul into as he aims to develop the TAH as a long term device that patients can have for the rest of their lives.