For the past 30 years, as a specialist in paediatric orthopaedics, Dr Bruce Foster has devoted his medical career to understanding the structure and function of bone growth. He and his team developed new treatment strategies for bone deformities and skeletal diseases in children that currently have no cure. His special interest in leg lengthening and spinal deformities has seen him practice all around the world. Currently Deputy Director of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, Bruce operates outreach clinics in the Northern Territory, Kangaroo Island and at the Flinders Medical Centre. Determined to find better, less painful ways to help straighten and lengthen the limbs of children affected by crippling growth problems, Bruce set up the Bone Growth Foundation in 1991 which funds research and treatment for a quarter of a million Australian children afflicted with bone impairments. Bruce has been instrumental in the trialling of an innovative internal limb lengthening procedure – the Fitbone – and is one of the few surgeons in the world able to fit this device.