Stelect

Marc Stringer, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer

Stelect is a multi-award-winning Melbourne-based innovative medical device company developing a novel coronary imaging solution to aid clinicians with the process of selecting stents for patients suffering from coronary heart blockage.

Stelect’s imaging capabilities provide an inside-out view of the artery, allowing for accurate blockage dimensioning and characterisation. By integrating with a balloon catheter, Stelect minimises the disruption to current procedural workflow and allows for greater reimbursement.

The novelty of the Stelect device lies within Stelect’s sensors themselves, the smallest commercially available sensors for intravascular imaging and our ability to integrate these sensors onto existing catheters.

About Marc

Marc is a Co-founder of and the COO at Stelect, a med-tech startup spun out of the University of Melbourne's BioDesign Innovation program. Marc leads Stelect's IP strategy, business expansion and electronics development. Marc holds a Bachelor of Science Degree and a Master of Electrical Engineering at The University of Melbourne.

Pathway: MedTech’s Got Talent Actuator

VR CORP

Dr Tia Cummins, Founder

VR CORP’s mission is to empower and save the lives of uniformed service personnel through the prevention, detection and intervention of service-related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). They do this by combining the best of virtual reality, biofeedback technology and neuroimaging with the brightest, most innovative minds in Australia.

PTSD is a chronic condition that can last a lifetime if not treated properly. It is associated with a number of physical and mental health disorders, including depression, substance abuse, diabetes and dementia, and has a substantial economic burden. Service-related PTSD is a highly complex disorder, and often difficult to treat, with symptoms leaving many individuals unable to return to work.

VR CORP is creating a patient-centred therapeutic tool that can be paired with traditional therapy, and tailored to each end-user’s needs, alleviating PTSD symptomology in Australian veterans and first-responders.

About Tia

Dr Tia Cummins is neuroscientist specialising in the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in veterans. Tia completed her PhD at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience & Mental Health, University of Melbourne, where she studied the effects of TBI and PTSD on Alzheimer’s disease in Vietnam war veterans. With a background in psychology, and having served in the British Army Reserves for three years, Tia has a keen interest in military mental health and the consequences of military service on the ageing brain.

Pathway: TRAM

BindiMaps

Mladen Jovanovic, Co-founder & Chief Operations Officer

BindiMaps is an indoor navigation tool which has been optimised for people who are blind or are living with vision impairment. BindiMaps delivers real-time navigation information via a smartphone application to reduce cognitive load, whilst providing general safety information, hazard warnings and evacuation and accessibility routes.

It is currently in the process of scaling nationally to deliver vision to the millions of people around the world who are living with vision impairment. Since launching in 2017, the company has raised over $1m in seed investment.

About Mladen

Mladen is an innovator, entrepreneur and social justice advocate, passionate about solving some of the world's biggest problems while adding significant business value. He is experienced in sales, startup businesses, innovation, strategy, marketing, accounting, public speaking and simply getting things done.

Pathway: MAP

Life Whisperer

Dr Michelle Perugini, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, Life Whisperer and Presagen

Presagen specializes in rapidly creating and commercialising globally scalable image-based medical diagnostics software, using its advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform and specialist multi-disciplinary team. Presagen partners with medical institutes to co-create web-based medical imaging software for specific diagnostic problems which can be delivered at scale and at low cost. This allows medical institutes to monetise their data and improve outcomes for patients globally.

Presagen’s first product is Life Whisperer. Life Whisperer uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assist clinicians identify viable embryos in IVF, and to ultimately improve outcomes for couples wanting to have children. An international clinical study involving 12 IVF centres across the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia has demonstrated that Life Whisperer’s AI performs 30% better than highly skilled embryologists when identifying viable embryos from medical images. Life Whisperer is delivered to clinics via a scalable web-based tool and can be easily accessed on-demand by any clinic globally.

About Michelle

Michelle has a PhD in Medicine and was a stem cell biologist for a decade. She founded her first AI business 10 years ago which was acquired by Ernst and Young in 2015.  She is now co-founder and CEO of Presagen. Michelle is also a dedicated mentor and advisory board member for many startups, and an Advisory Board Member to the University of South Australia Business School.

Pathway: Springboard Enterprises

Acusensus

Alexander Jannink, Founder

Acusensus provides technology to encourage behavioural change to reduce the prevalence of distracted driving. Acusensus uses sophisticated camera technology aimed at reducing road trauma by detecting driers distracted by their phone.

After decades of improvements in road safety, the past five years have seen increases in the number of people killed and injured on many developed world roads. In the corresponding period there has been a vast expansion in the number of drivers interacting with a phone while behind the wheel. At any given time, 3% of drivers are manipulating a phone, at any point on the road network. Alexander was affected personally by the devastation of senseless road death caused by one of these drivers.

The team joined the Melbourne Accelerator Program in 2018, and have achieved outstanding results since, having been awarded the New South Wales contract to supply distracted driving enforcement camera systems, a world first deployment of this new technology.

Acusensus has raised a seed stage investment of $600k, and the team has grown to almost 20 people across casual and full time staff, as well as receiving both local and global recognition of their world first technology across some of the world’s largest media networks.

About Alexander

Alexander had spent a decade working in the road safety space developing intelligent transportation systems and safety camera systems before starting Acusensus. With the realisation that distracted driving was a leading and unaddressed cause of road trauma, Alex sought to provide a technological solution to reduce the prevalence and tragedy of this problem.

Pathway: MAP

Smileyscope

Dr Evelyn Chan, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer

Smileyscope is a digital therapeutics company using virtual reality to reduce pain, anxiety and restraints during medical procedures. Founded by Evelyn Chan and Paul Leong, Smileyscope’s first product helps keep children calm and still for needles and blood tests, making it safer and easier for clinicians to perform these feared procedures.

The team entered the Melbourne Accelerator Program in 2017, with a vision to make healthcare a better place and a mission to transform the experience of paediatric needles, a $3 billion market per annum in Australia and the US alone.

Since then the company has either won or been shortlisted for over 20 awards in healthcare, design, technology, social enterprise, and transformed the patient experience for over 5,000 paediatric needle procedures. Smileyscope is one of the global leaders in the emerging field of digital therapeutics, developing evidence-based software interventions to prevent, manage, or treat medical conditions. Smileyscope is rapidly expanding into developing digital therapeutics for other paediatric and adult medical procedures.

About Evelyn

Dr Evelyn Chan is a medical doctor, BCG consultant and Rhodes Scholar. She has over a decade of healthcare experience spanning bedside medicine, global health, research and policy. She developed Smileyscope because she’s passionate about transforming paediatrics, and developing innovative solutions to enable healthcare to be patient-centred, sustainable and equitable.

Pathway: MAP