The Australian medtech community celebrated and championed eight early-stage start-ups at the recent AusMedtech 2022 Early-Stage Investment Forum.
AusBiotech’s AusMedtech Early-Stage Investment Forum has empowered local research institutes, universities, hospitals and pre-series A companies with a boost on their pathways to commercialisation.
Dr Ricardo Garcia-Rosas, Co-founder and CEO of Virtetic was awarded first prize for the Best Translational Research project, which recognised their start-up’s game-based virtual reality therapeutics medical device for people living with limb loss. The company’s mission is to help people transition to life with a prosthesis and regain their function and independence faster.
The expert panel also gave a special mention to Mojtaba (MJ) Golzan from the University of Technology, Sydney for his medical device, A-Eye. The technology utilises a smartphone and is a smart and non-invasive alternative to brain and spinal cord injections. Its founder has secured a fast-tracked application into Medtech Actuator’s Origin accelerator.
Medtech Actuator’s Origin accelerator surrounds start-ups with the ecosystem support they need to bring their medtech, healthtech or biotech innovation to the patients and clinicians who need it most. Through intensive mentorship, industry collaboration, up to AUD$200K initial capital injection and capital raising support, founders can achieve in 12 months what can typically take three years or more.
Virtetic is an alumnus of Medtech Actuator’s Accelerator after completing the programme in 2021, which assisted the team to build their understanding of medical technology commercialisation and to develop a plan to do this for their technology.
The Forum presenters included:
- Albert Chong, Triphasic Cardiac Pump: Physiological blood pump for open heart surgery
- Wojciech Chrzanowski, The University of Sydney: EV-Phage Bio-bots
- Dr Ricardo Garcia-Rosas, Virtetic: Game-based virtual reality therapeutics for people living with limb loss
- Mojtaba (MJ) Golzan, University of Technology Sydney: A-Eye: a smart and non-invasive alternative to brain and spinal cord injections
- Timothy Hughes, CSIRO: Injectable hydrogels for localised delivery of therapeutics
- Nafiseh Mirabdolhosseini, Western Sydney University: A novel endoscopy system for early identification of abnormalities in the distal oesophagus
- Chris Pymble, Graphics et al.: Graphics et al. - Simplify Complex Concepts
- Lorace (Tianshu) Zhang, Vysum: A handheld eyedrop delivery device for improved glaucoma treatment
The Forum was supported by Davies Collison Cave and offered the early-stage projects and technologies the opportunity to gather feedback from an expert group of panelists. This included, Dr Emma Ball, Head of Illumina for Startups Australia, Dr Buzz Palmer, CEO, Medtech Actuator, Alistair Smith, Principal, Davies Collison Cave, Dr Amandeep Hansra, Managing Partner, Caligo Health and Kathy Connell, Senior Director, External Innovation Partnering, Johnson & Johnson Innovation.