Events for Healthcare Startups and Creatives at Vivid Festival

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First published May 30, 2016

 

Vivid Festival, Sydney’s annual festival of light, culture and ideas, is back! Amidst the jampacked program of international music artists, brilliant light shows over the Sydney Opera House, and inspiring speakers, here’s our picks for people interested in startups, entrepreneurship, medicine and creativity.

Vivid Sydney 2016, Opera House, Lighting The Sails, Songlines. Artist: Donny Woolagoodja. 26/5/2016 Photo Credit – James Horan/Destination NSW

 

  • Sunrise Conference hosted by Blackbird Ventures. Not strictly medical, but very inspirational for the calibre of Australian success stories that are presenting- the likes of Atlassian, Canva, Planet Labs and Vinomofo and Stylerunner are on the lineup! Learn how they worked their way to success. The conference runs today and, if you missed out on tickets or can’t make it, they’ll be live-streaming from their website! Follow @blackbirdvc on Twitter and #TheSunrise with any questions.

  • Design for Social Innovation brings together people concerned with improving health outcomes for the elderly. Learn from insightful talks by speakers in this field.

  • Dare to Design Healthcare is a brainstorm session bringing together healthcare workers, designers, and anyone else who’s interested in designing better solutions for healthcare’s biggest problems. Attendees will be taught the principles of design thinking, and apply this to the workshop.

  • Rare Birds Convention: featuring speakers from across multiple industries- panel includes robotics engineer Marita Cheng, who does incredible work with engineering and healthcare.

Medical Startups at the Melbourne Accelerator Program Launch Party 2016

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First published May 26, 2016

 

The Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP) 2016 Launch Party last night was the first accelerator event we’ve attended, and it was a great introduction to Melbourne’s startup scene.

MAP’s Startup Accelerator awards each team with AU$20,000 equity-free, dedicated mentoring, office space, and opportunities to pitch across Melbourne, Sydney and even Silicon Valley. This year’s ten winning teams presented their 3-minute pitches to a packed Plaza Ballroom in Melbourne’s Collins St. In a nice gesture showing the warmth of the MAP community, each winner introduced the next presenter in relay team fashion.

Two of the winning teams were founded by medical doctors who are solving problems they’ve experienced first-hand with their patients.

 

“Imagine going to hospital, safe in the knowledge that medical errors are a thing of the past,” said Dr Chandrashan Perera, Ophthalmology registrar and founder of Nebula Health (formerly named Axon). Dr Perera explained how, in a landmark WHO trial, checklist implementation in clinical settings was shown to potentially reduce mortality by 50%. Nebula Health‘s IT platform builds upon this by generating workflows around each patient, which are then delivered to each carer at the right time. Nebula Health will do this intuitively so clinicians won’t be burdened having to learn another complicated software system in hospital. We can imagine the enormous benefits this could have with efficiency and risk reduction in surgical and other procedural specialties like cardiology and gastroenterology.

A/Prof Ajeet Singh from CNSdose is a psychiatrist and pharmacogeneticist who aims to tailor antidepressant prescriptions to a patient’s unique genetic profile.  Using precision medicine, a patient’s saliva sample is sent to an authorised lab and the results are sent to the doctor indicating which antidepressants are most likely to work. Prof Singh showed a remission rate of 72% in 148 patients studied through a randomised-controlled clinical trial published last August. “We have 3 value propositions; simpler prescribing for doctors, better outcomes for patients, and lower costs to society (in minimising prescribing costs),” he said. In a big win for their team, Prof announced that former Federal Trade Minister Andrew Robb has joined their advisory board. They are also working on distribution deals internationally. 

Another relevant healthcare startup, Kind aims to transform aged care in the community. Founder Lee told his moving story of how he was dissatisfied when he had to experience the aged care system with his mother. After speaking to others who felt the same way, he decided to create Kind, which will “connect carers with seniors in the community.” By focusing on safety and quality, performing rigorous background checks with potential carers, he looks forward to introducing Kind further once it goes live.

If you’re learning about startups, watching as many pitches as possible will help your knowledge. The other eight winners included:

  • Deliciou‘s healthy bacon-flavoured seasoning;

  • Allume‘s solar and grid-sharing renewable energy company;

  • Honee‘s booking and reviews platform for health, fitness and wellness businesses;

  • Onomap‘s customer data analytics platform;

  • Black’s community of hackers for a smarter world;

  • BajaBoard‘s multi-terrain skateboard; and

  • Shacky‘s tiny houses for farmstays.

As MAP Program Director Rohan Workman said, the Melbourne Accelerator Program is ranked 8th of 1200 university accelerator programs in the world. This year’s MAP winners have benefited from Australia Post’s extra funding of 2 additional winners (there were 8 recipients last year), and Entrepreneur-in-Residence Jeremy Kraybill told the room, “We want to get as many of you involved as possible.” Acknowledging the perceived glamour of entrepreneurship, he continued, “entrepreneurship has an extremely high sweat to fireworks ratio, and tomorrow that hard work continues for the ten teams tonight, and everyone in this room.” With MAP‘s array of free programs for the wider community, it’s an exciting time to be an entrepreneur in Melbourne, and we wish this year’s winners the best success with their work.  

 

 

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Melbourne Accelerator Program Launch Party: Event Tonight!

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First published May 25, 2016.

May 26 2016 Edit: We’ve now written about the event, learn more about what happened on the night here! 

Melbourne University’s Accelerator Program (MAP) has announced its ten participants for 2016. Tickets are available for their launch party tonight, where you can hear them pitch and learn about one of Melbourne’s leading accelerators for startups and enterprises.

Grab your tickets here. To learn more about the program, The Australian and Startup Daily have some great info on this year’s finalists.

Highlights from the Digital Health Show, Sydney 2016

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First published April 19, 2016

The Digital Health Show Conference and Expo at Sydney showcased a broad range of international digital health ideas. Presenters from medical and non-medical backgrounds shared their innovations via onstage panels and roundtable discussions. 

As Elaine Saunders of Blamey Saunders said, “Today, digital health is much more than reading off the internet or doing Telehealth.” Creating meaning through innovation, and marrying this with a viable product, generates synergy between patients’ and practitioners’ best interests.

Some themes that emerged from the Conference: 

  1. Digital health should unify shared goals for both practitioners and patients. Thomas Goetz (USA), former executive editor of Wired magazine, spoke of the difference between Passive Data (eg. phone sensors for pedometers), and Active Data (voluntarily entering your weight after stepping on a scale) in health. “Active data could potentially be more meaningful,” he said. His startup, Iodine, a search engine for side-effects of prescription medications, utilises active data through its Start app. Start lets users enter improvements and side-effects they experience from their antidepressants, generating a flowsheet over time that can be shared with their doctor.

 

2. Digital health can improve patient compliance and education by tracking goals and milestones on apps. This personalises each patient’s therapy; and potentially improves patient outcomes, speed to recovery, and reduces relapse rates. ImAblegamifies stroke rehabilitation via smart device apps, making participants 16 times more productive; DorsaVi’s ViMove wearable sensortracks lumbar muscle movement and posture to aid rehabilitation and avoid workplace injury; TrackActive’s exercise prescription app holds an exercise database so users can recall their prescribed exercises by video or saved instructions rather than on loose paper. Clinicians appreciate the integration of these apps and devices into their workspaces, improving interactivity between clinician and patient even outside of appointments.

 

3. Novel technologies can be integrated smoothly into user-friendly devices. Quanticare’s Footprintsoptical sensor can be attached to walking frames to analyse a person’s gait; ResApp uses the speech recognition technology behind Siri to diagnose respiratory infection via cough; Respirio uses nanotechnology to detect the presence of Influenza A and B in twenty minutes. Quanticare was founded by a physiotherapist, and Respirio by an Emergency Department physician, showing how inspiration from the frontlines of healthcare can inspire creativity.

4. Improving workflow. More innovation and more data can create more headaches for clinicians and workplaces struggling to manage the deluge of data. Medtasker aims to solve these problems by providing a secure platform for clinician communications at hospitals, meaning that clinicians will be able to locate the patient accurately, and triage pending tasks according to urgency.

5. Integrating convenience for patients and practitioners. Dr Noel Duncan of SiSU Wellness demonstrated SiSU’s health check computer station, which has previously been positioned at Crown Casino and Priceline pharmacies. Performing blood pressure, weight, BMI and heart rate checks via ultrasonic height scanning and bioelectrical impedance, it is partnering with the Stroke Foundation to conduct free blood pressure checks at Priceline pharmacies nationwide this month.  Dr Alan Greene (USA), Paediatrician, TED speaker and Scanadu founder, began his Australian visit by diagnosing an ear infection 7000 miles away in the States via telemedicine. He estimates that 90% of his interactions with patients occur outside his office. Although the American systems of telehealth differ to Australian models, Dr Greene’s talk painted an ideal picture of where digital health is heading for patients’ and practitioners’ benefits.

Overall, the DHS was an enjoyable experience, and for a newbie to the startup world, it gave a great overview of companies and founders who are realising their visions of creating a better world through digital health. It also gave me a better idea of the workings of startups and the stages that health startups go through to be approved in Australia and the US, such as prototyping; proof of concept clinical studies; and building a great team.

Other clinicians who attended similarly had a positive experience.

Dr Akshat Saxena from CancerAid said that “it was a nice mix of professionals, and a good place to link up and see what’s going on around Digital Health.” 

Dr Andrew Yap from Medtasker agreed that “it was a great opportunity to showcase Medtasker with other emerging healthcare companies. We made some great contacts and attendees were really enthusiastic about how Medtasker could improve patient safety and hospital efficiency. We want to thank the Digital Health Show organisers for all their efforts and we’d be keen to attend again next year.”

Dr Nelson Lau, GP who attended the DHS for the first time, felt that “it was a really informative event. The main talks gave an interesting overview on some of the potential pathways that digital health will branch out to in the future, while the roundtable sessions were a great opportunity to network with peers and have more informal discussions on collaboration possibilities. The exhibition hall was an interesting place to discover and play with emerging new technologies and platforms and it’s exciting to be at the forefront of the oncoming wave that will be sweeping over healthcare as we know it.

It was impressive to see so much time devoted to Geriatrics and devices for the ageing population, which we’ve featured in a separate post here.

The Medical Startup attended the Digital Health Show with a courtesy pass.

Did you also attend the Digital Health Show? Got any comments? Leave them below. Subscribe to our mailing list for future post updates.

Innovations for Aged Care and Senior Citizens at the Digital Health Show

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First published April 19, 2016

 

The Digital Health Show Conference and Workshophad some standout projects aimed at improving the lives of the elderly and more vulnerable in our communities. Innovation for our ageing population will help integrate our society’s communities, improving wellbeing across all age groups. Here are some highlights:

 

1) A/Prof Valerie Gay and Dr Peter Leijdekkers of UTS showed how their community model, Le Bon Samaritain, links elderly residents in the community with “Good Samaritan” neighbours who are alerted via smartphone app if the resident is in distress, via a Red, Yellow and Green light system. Using “tech to empower communities,” this will help engage neighbours with often isolated members of the community. From our experiences working primarily with the elderly, we’ve seen many preventable hospital admissions occur during heatwaves, floods and falls, and feel that systems like these will help improve safety in our communities.

2) Philip Goebel, Physiotherapist and co-founder of Quanticare technologies, demonstrated the Footprints sensor, that attaches to a user’s walking frame and analyses gait during everyday use. The Internet of Things Innovation World Cup Winner at Barcelona, Philip created Footprints in response to the feeling that “our healthcare system is very reactive; focusing on fall detection, rather than indicator of cause.” Footprints uses an optical sensor which analyses gait via spatio-temporal gait metrics. The data generated can assist with prescribing mobility aids and falls risk management.

 

3) The ePAT (Pain Assessment Tool) for Dementia uses facial recognition software assess pain accurately in dementia sufferers, who often cannot verbalise their pain. Founded by Professor Jeff Hughes, former head of Pharmacy at Curtin University, he described how, by using the inbuilt cameras on smart devices, ePAT can assess facial pain cues at the point of pain onset, as well as non-facial pain cues. The benefits for dementia sufferers and their carers, will extend to more accurate pain management in hospitals and the community, and is being looked into with pre-verbal children.

4) Eureka Connection: A/Prof Helen Hasan, Information Systems specialist from the University of Wollongong, hosted a workshop discussing Eureka Connection’s vision for bringing computers and smart devices to senior citizens. Starting with the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Helen’s passion for bringing tech literacy to seniors through home visits, community centre stations and education was reflected in the videos of seniors who were awed at sending their first email, receiving their first Skype call, and joining their first Facebook community group during a seasonal flood. As the elderly are at more risk of injury and isolation, tech education to encourage connectivity and social integration helps their wellness and physical health. Giving advice on how to set up a computer or smart device; selecting the right device for their needs, making it user-friendly by, for example, enabling large text; and helping them to reload credit and find hotspots are just some of the things this ambitious project hopes to achieve.


What are your thoughts on these projects for seniors? Comment below.

The Medical Startup attended the Digital Health Show 2016 on a courtesy pass. See our other highlights from the Digital Health Show here.

Upcoming Event: Melbourne Knowledge Week 2016

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First published March 22, 2016. 

The City of Melbourne has just announced its exciting program for Melbourne Knowledge Week, from 2nd-8th May, 2016. If you’re looking for inspiration or want to learn about emerging technologies in medicine, healthcare and beyond, our top picks for Medical Startups and entrepreneurs are below.

Bio 3D Printing
This session promises to explore the future of 3D printing in medicine, health, and related fields.

What Makes A Place Age-Friendly?
This free event will invite discussions on designing buildings and centres with different age-groups in mind. You can have a say in how our ageing population will need to be better facilitated into new housing, community, industry and health developments.

How To Make Apps That Matter
If you’re interested in app creation in the medical space, this free workshop’s for you. For people of all backgrounds and levels, no tech experience required.

Augmented Reality Case Studies: Neurosurgery and Beyond
An introduction to Augmented Reality and its potential applications in medicine and surgery.

Life in the Cyber-Physical World
Deakin University is letting its robots and emerging technologies interact with workshop participants, thus enabling discussions on the ethics of FitBit and other new technologies that cross between health and consumerism.

Breast Cancer: New Research, Future Treatments
Open to the public, medical and non-medical attendees will get to learn about the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute’s latest developments in breast cancer research, and future areas of development. There will be a chance for questions, and a tour of the Institute which can be booked prior to the event.

Accelerating Health Innovation through Imaging
A talk on biomedical imaging and the physics behind it.

Develop, Protect and Profit from your Idea
A must-attend free seminar on Intellectual Property for startups.

Massive Community Maker Day
An all-day event to conclude the festival, where you can meet other makers, have a go at 3D Printing, learn about soldering, build a robot, and create a wearable.

View the full program for Melbourne Knowledge Week here.