Better Health Made Here

One of the challenges we face in Australia is getting more homegrown medtech products purchased and used by local hospitals and health services. 

MTPConnect’s Pathway to Market – Medtech Capability Uplift Program has been supporting seven market-ready Victorian medtech innovations to position themselves competitively for local health procurement opportunities. 

The recent Australian Medtech Manufacturing Alliance (AMMA) Medtech Showcase profiled Victorian-made products and innovations from 21 local manufacturers spanning surgical care and diagnostics to hospital consumables and equipment. From advanced lung imaging, a live patient monitoring system to solve pressure injury to a sophisticated AI screening tool to profile endometriosis, the lineup was impressive. 

Companies were given the opportunity to pitch to a room full of health system leaders and procurement specialists, including representatives from HealthShares Victoria, Monash Health and Western Health.

The Showcase highlighted ‘Better Health Made Here’ – and the MTPConnect Podcast was on the ground talking to companies involved about getting procurement ready, including those taking part in the Pathway to Market Program – 4D Medical’s Professor Tim O’Meara, Lenexa Medical’s Ajit Ravindran and Arelis’ Tori Fox - as well as Akeeko Medical’s Professor Joseph Ischia. 

The Pathway to Market program is an initiative of the Australian Medtech Manufacturing Alliance (AMMA), delivered by MTPConnect in partnership with BioMelbourne Network and supported by the Victorian Government. Victoria serves as the pilot state for this important, solutions-driven program, setting the foundation to drive a national agenda for medtech innovation and manufacturing, and get other states on board!

Transcript

Introduction

Natalie Vella 0:01

This is the MTP Connect Podcast, connecting you with the people behind the life-saving innovations driving Australia's growing life sciences sector from bench to bedside for better health and well-being. MTP Connect acknowledges the traditional owners of country that this podcast is recorded on and recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are Australia's first storytellers and the holders of first science knowledge.

Caroline Duell 0:34

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline Duell. One of the challenges we face in Australia is getting more homegrown MedTech products purchased and used by local hospitals and health services. This year, MTP Connect's Pathway to Market program has supported seven market-ready Victorian MedTech manufacturers to position themselves competitively for local health procurement opportunities. In May, we hosted the second Australian Medtech Manufacturing Alliance's MedTech Showcase with BioMelbourne Network, curating an exhibition of Victorian-made products and innovations from 21 local manufacturers, spanning surgical care and diagnostics to hospital consumables and equipment. It's all about driving better health made here. And the MTP Connect podcast was on the ground talking to companies involved, including those taking part in the Pathway to Market program, to find out how the support is making a difference for their businesses. Let's hear from some of these companies.

Arelis Urine Test For Endometriosis

Caroline Duell 1:54

I'm Tori Fox and I'm the CEO and one of the co-founders of Arelis and we are developing a non-invasive urine test to help diagnose endometriosis. And you're here at the AMMA MedTech Showcase today, but you've also been part of the MTP Connect Pathway to Market program. Tell us what that program has meant for you as an innovator.

Tori Fox 2:07

Look, it's been really fantastic. One, to connect with other people going through similar challenges, to be able to share our experience, but to again to really understand what industry needs and what hospital systems need for us to be really competitive. I think everyone's very honest about the challenges of being an Australian SME and how we can best connect to these big, you know, and compete with big in big providers. But there are structures in place. And I think as soon as you are aware of what structures and support is in place, we can really then tap into that to help accelerate our journey. I think it's really important to have a clear focus on fostering innovation and commercialization in Victoria. We've got such incredible capability, but sometimes translating that innovation into real-world solutions is a very rocky path for a founder. The MTP Connect program has been fantastic at helping Aralus become product tender government ready. We understand the structures in place. It's been fabulous, even understanding a lot more about Melbourne and Victoria's manufacturing capability and how we can best design our product to dovetail into existing structures. Because if we can lower those barriers to entry, then it's going to make that process a lot simpler.

Caroline Duell 3:18

Tell us about the mission of Aralus and your product. What are you bringing to market?

Tori Fox 3:22

Yeah, so we are on a mission to change the lives of the 380 million women and people in the world that have chronic pelvic pain. And we're going to do that with a non-invasive urine test to diagnose endometriosis. So currently, endometriosis affects millions of people and women of reproductive age, and it causes chronic pain, fertility issues. It dramatically affects people's quality of life. And the knock-on effects for that is significant. It's significant to families, individuals, but it's also really significant to our economy. So we're developing a non-invasive urine test that can allow people to understand the disease process for them and then they can make informed decisions about that. And it's a diagnostic, right?

Caroline Duell 4:03

So it's a diagnostic using AI technology.

Tori Fox 4:06

Correct. So it uses infrared light, and the way that infrared light reacts with a urine test or a urine sample is then read by our algorithm. So we're not looking for biomarkers, uh, we're actually looking at the whole spectral output of that test, and our pattern recognition AI then will look up very slight differences in the spectral reading and identify urine tests or a urine sample that has endometriosis compared to one that doesn't. So it's a bit like reading a fingerprint. And this has been developed on an international level. We're a global team, but we are truly solving a global problem. So our core IP was developed by Professor Frank Martin, who's a chemistry professor out of the UK. And then it was applied to women's health by a gynecologist, Professor Manish Singh. Now, Manish Singh used to be at the Gold Coast University Hospital. He's currently back in the UK. I think he's regretting that decision quite a bit, and he's planning on moving back to Australia. So while we're really, you know, we've got a global footprint, we are based in Melbourne and we are planning on expanding our RD capability and our manufacturing commercial capability from Melbourne.

Caroline Duell 5:09

Who are your customers then at the end of this journey? Who will be taking the test or using the test? Is it gynecologists? Is it emergency doctors? Is it GPs?

Tori Fox 5:20

Like everything in healthcare, it's multi-stakeholder engagement and it's very nuanced. So we ultimately think the test will be prescribed by GPs for patients to go and provide a sample, for it to be processed in a pathology laboratory. Now, in my experience, and I've worked in medical commercialization for a long time, if we can keep to regular clinical workflow, it just makes everyone's life easier and it makes it much simpler for people to adapt to the new technology. We don't need to be jazzy. People are used to providing urine samples, doctors are used to referring. It's a very simple process. We're just providing another tool in the tool belt for GPs to be able to help support these patients. But at the moment, we're working really closely with obstetricians and gynecologists because they are the custodians of the problem. They're the experts in the field, and we have world leading gynecologists here in Australia that are actually real, really focused on accelerating endometriosis treatment but also diagnosis.

Caroline Duell 6:13

It has been a very high-profile issue around unmet medical needs for women, particularly this pelvic pain and treatment of endometriosis. What's been the response from the medical sector?

Tori Fox 6:26

The medical sector has been incredibly supportive. I don't think there's any gynecologist out there that likes doing diagnostic laparoscopies. It's something that we understand we need to do better for women. We need to do better for their families. We don't know a lot about who responds to treatment and who doesn't. And at the moment, women and anyone born with a uterus, and I think it's important to be inclusive because it's so prevalent, anyone born with a uterus is sort of being ping-ponged between different systems, different healthcare providers. It's for a disease that's more common in women than diabetes. I think it's about time we do better. And I'm so encouraged by the groundswell of action and also the action of our government, which has been quite progressive and quite forthcoming in actually doing something for women. Like the pelvic pain, the pain inquiry, that was groundbreaking and a really tough read. But now that we are more aware of what's happening, we can finally do something about it.

Caroline Duell 7:25

So with this test that Aurelis is developing, is the idea that it it gives a clinician a sense of endometriosis being present, or can it diagnose levels of endometriosis? Like what does the test reveal?

Tori Fox 7:42

So at the moment, it will be a high-risk, low-risk score for a clinician to make a diagnostic decision. Now that's like all the other tests that are available. At the moment, endometriosis is diagnosed either from a scan, and scans have really some benefit, but they do have their limitations, or from surgery. The fact that we're diagnosing something so common with surgery is just crazy. So this is another tool in the tool belt for clinicians, and it will be different for different people. So endometriosis is not a static one point in time disease. It changes as someone gets older. If you are 17 with chronic period pain, you have treatment options to help prevent the stem of that disease. But if you're 35 and you want to have children, the treatment modalities or the treatment that you seek will be quite different. And so it's important to have clinicians involved and help guide patients, allowing them to make informed decisions that are important to them about their health.

Caroline Duell 8:36

So at what stage of development is your product? When would you sort of be hoping to be launched?

Tori Fox 8:42

Yeah, so we're kind of currently doing some more clinical validation here in Australia, both in Sydney and New Zealand, and we're also looking at some sites in Victoria. And it's really important to, as we continue to build our data set, that we're looking at diverse populations. We don't currently have any data in our original on Torres Strait Islander or our First Nations people. And so we need to make sure that the algorithm works the same for different demographics as it does for the training data set. So we're currently working through that, and we expect to have that data towards the end of the year, which should allow us to be in market mid-2027.

Caroline Duell 9:15

Wow, well, that's fantastic news. So obviously, this whole pathway to market program is perfect because you're really still, you know, in that development phase, but building in all of these elements of how you're going to get that diagnostic out into the market.

Tori Fox 9:30

Absolutely. It's such perfect timing for us. It's having those relationships and connections into big institutions like Monash, like Western Health, the capacity for MTP Connect to be the facilitator between the innovators and those the custodians of the problem, that's how we get real change. Working in silos, we're actually never going to get these technologies to the people who need them. So having people with lived experience, people with really deep commercialisation expertise, people that understand manufacturing sectors, but also biotechnology all come together to support both sides of the you know the startup ecosystem has been brilliant.

Caroline Duell 10:07

Well, on that note, um I'd like to thank you very much for joining the MTP Connect podcast.

Speaker 5 10:12

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

4D Medical diagnostic for respiratory diseases

Prof Tim O'Meara 10:15

I'm Tim O'Meara. I'm the Director of Government and Research Strategy at 4D Medical. I'm also an enterprise professor at the University of Melbourne.

Caroline Duell 10:25

And you're here today at the AMA MedTech Showcase as part of the Pathway to Market program that MTP Connect has been delivering.

Prof Tim O'Meara 10:35

It's a tremendous opportunity for us as a local company with some technology that's ready to go to actually find out how to get it into healthcare. One of the real stumbling blocks for innovators, it's not about ideas and it's often not about regulations, and it's not about developing products that will meet regulations. It's actually what happens next. How do you get health services to adopt your technology? It's very, very easy to do clinical studies. We've got some amazing clinicians. We all talk about how great Australia is at doing clinical research, and we are, and we should be very proud of that. But the part that's the real challenge for innovators is how do you then go from a study that demonstrates clearly your technology is of benefit to patients, and it may even demonstrate that it's at a lower cost to existing technologies, but how do you get that efficiently into healthcare services?

Caroline Duell 11:45

Tell us a little bit about 4D Medical and the innovation that you've developed out of Melbourne.

Prof Tim O'Meara 11:50

Well, 4D Medical is one of those companies that as Australians we should all be really, really proud of. It's been around since 2013. It was founded by a professor of aeronautical engineering at Monash University who was collaborating with some clinicians who were interested in how you measure airflow within the lungs. From that, some intellectual property was developed. The company was founded. We're now listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and we have been for about five years. We are now worth over $2 billion. What we do is we specialise in cardiopulmonary, so heart and lung diagnostic technologies, and we use existing resources within hospitals to collect the data that we analyze. What that means is CT scans. So there are close to 2,000 CT scanners around Australia. Even people in remote locations in Australia get access to a CT scanner. So they're widely available. If you can take a scan of someone's lungs and if you can do that while their lungs are functioning, what I mean by that is when someone inhales and someone exhales, if you can take scans while they're doing that, then the change in three-dimensional shape of their lungs is precisely in proportion to where the air is flowing. So now we can actually see inside people's lungs. Now we can see which parts of the lungs are functioning well and which parts aren't. That's so incredibly important in respiratory diseases because I know a number of people that will listen to this will have had this experience where a loved one is all of a sudden diagnosed with a very late-stage respiratory disease. And the prognosis for those people is really, really poor. In the field of respiratory medicine, we're not good at detecting disease early, okay? Because we're not good at looking inside people's lungs. We've relied on either structural assessment of what's happening in their lungs, or we've relied on proxy methods like how fast can you blow out in one second. Doesn't tell you anything about what's going on inside your lungs.

Caroline Duell 14:20

And your products at the moment, your technology platforms, are available in the US?

Prof Tim O'Meara 14:26

We have nine US cleared products. That's nine, which is exceptional. A number of those are also approved in Australia and a number of them are approved in Europe. Our lead product is something called CTVQ. And people that follow 4D Medical will be very, very, very familiar with this product. It measures not only ventilation inside someone's lungs, but also the flow of blood inside someone's lungs. So if someone comes into an emergency department complaining of shortness of breath, one of the first things we want to understand is are their lungs responsible for their shortness of breath? Or is it their heart? Or is it anxiety or is it or are some other factors? We can say almost immediately whether it's someone's lungs that are contributing to the shortness of breath. And that's 5% of people in emergency departments are there because they're short of breath. 10% of people that get admitted to hospital wards are because of shortness of breath, and 20% of people that that are in an ICU are because of shortness of breath.

Caroline Duell 15:36

So your challenge is how to get 4D medicals technology, you know, into the Australian healthcare system?

Prof Tim O'Meara 15:45

Yeah, as you say that, one of the real challenges is that as innovators you have to move really quickly. You know, and and as innovators who are listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, I often think we're in the business of trying to compress time, but then you bump up against a health service that understandably needs to be really conservative about the technology that they adopt. So, you know, they might view the world in in periods of three years to ten years, whereas we're more likely to view the world in periods of three months to a year. So so that's one of the real tensions is is how do you develop trust, respect, and credibility when you're operating in in a really different environment. And I think that's where things like today, the AMMA showcase enables us to connect with people and to start to build those relationships that we all know are incredibly important to making sure that at the end of the day our patients get the best technology that they can, and that we stop diagnosing people with terminal disease and we start diagnosing them at a time when we can stop the disease or reverse the disease.

Caroline Duell 17:07

Your technology, in terms of your customers, are they um imaging centres? Are they, you know, where you get your radiography and your CT scanning done, or is it more of a sort of an emergency hospital type scenario that that you're talking about?

Prof Tim O'Meara 17:24

Yeah, it's a super question. So radiology will be the ones that will perform the scanning, and then what happens with those scans is that they they send them to us via a secure cloud, so they're de-identified. We then process that using our software, we send it back to them, and they can then use our report on, for example, ventilation on perfusion as part of their radiology report. So radiologists are incredibly important, but radiologists need someone to refer to them. And that someone is typically an emergency doctor, typically a respiratory physician, or a GP. Let's not forget the important role that GPs play in managing chronic respiratory diseases in the community.

Caroline Duell 18:12

So what you've done is created it's like an additional service element, I guess. So someone needs to be referred for additional evaluation.

Prof Tim O'Meara 18:21

So we gave the example of you know, five percent of emergency department attendances are due to breathlessness. Four percent of GP consults are. So a GP will be trying to manage a breathless patient and be unsure about what's going on. Maybe they've got their their potential cardiovascular disease under control, the patient's still breathless. Are they just deconditioned? You know, maybe they're just getting a bit older, maybe that or and potentially if we don't ask the right question, we will never get the answer. So what we're able to do then is to help them understand whether the patient's lungs are functioning as they should be, or whether there is a disease developing. And again, I go back to this idea: the earlier we can detect those diseases, the earlier we can prevent progression.

Caroline Duell 19:14

And you've been uh with a group of MedTech manufacturing innovators for the last six months going through the Pathway to Market program. And what's your sort of take on this sort of program? Is this a valuable thing for Australia?

Prof Tim O'Meara 19:27

Incredibly valuable. And and I say that in the context of we've all got really busy lives and and we all could be doing other things with our time. I I think that this has been one of the most valuable programs we've ever been part of. Uh, and and today is a wonderful example. You know, we're down there as an exhibitor, and we've got people from Monash Health, we've got people from Northern Health coming up saying, we really like the sound of your technology. How about we connect and see how we can how we as a health service can introduce this technology, what needs to be done. That that just really warms my heart. It's um it's a tough journey being an innovator. Um we can't do this on our own. We're really relying on great partnerships, and and I feel that's what we're building on days like today.

Caroline Duell 20:22

Thank you, Tim, for joining the MTP Connect podcast.

Speaker 1 20:26

It's been my absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Akeeko Medical Stent Insertions In ED

Prof Joseph Ischia 20:31

I'm Joseph Ischia. I'm a urologist at the Austin Hospital. I'm an associate professor at the Department of Surgery at the University of Melbourne, and I'm the CEO and founder of Akiko Medical. And we have developed a device that can rapidly and painlessly insert a stent for people with kidney stone pain.

Caroline Duell 20:49

So this is a um an innovation developed in Melbourne based from your clinical experience.

Prof Joseph Ischia 20:56

It is. So in fact, I one of the problems with putting in kidney stones or stents for kidney stones is it's often done late at night or after hours because you've got to get into your slot in the emergency operating suite. So we would uh sit there, we'd come in at 11 o'clock at night, you'd be in the hospital for two hours for what was ultimately a 10-minute operation. So it's a lot of sitting around. And it was during one of those periods that I sort of sketched out an idea for what I thought would sort of bypass all this and could I do it in the emergency department when the patient first was referred to me. So I had a wonderful sketch and idea, but like all great medical entrepreneurs, it then goes in the top shelf of your top drawer of your desk and it sits there because you actually don't have the skills to do it. And it wasn't until four months later I had a really lucky meeting where one of my patients was an 81 year old man and he came to see me for his prostate trouble. And uh, as we were walking down the hall at the end of the consultation, he said, Oh, look, I've worked with doctors before doing medical devices. And I thought, this is a great opportunity. I'll ask him who I can meet in Melbourne to help me build a medical device. And he said, Oh, I'll do it. And I thought, Oh gee, you know, who is this old guy to be able to tell me he can build medical devices? Little did I know that he's a mechanical engineering genius and like the inaugural winner of the Australian Mechanical Engineer of the Year and uh has built everything from grain silos, sugar mills, ships for the Australian Navy, you know, and currently works on hypersonic missiles with the University of Queensland. He's an extraordinary man. They talk about, you know, what the success of your company. Was it hard work or was it just luck? And I look and I go, that was just luck. You know, I was so lucky that he mentioned it, and you realise he's a really go-get it sort of guy, and he has not slowed down at 86 years of age currently. So he's continues to come up with new ideas and iterations of the device that we currently have.

Caroline Duell 22:42

So tell us about the use of the device being used in Australia.

Prof Joseph Ischia 22:45

It is being used under the authorised prescriber scheme, which is a way that devices that have not yet been approved by the TGA can be used in like a clinical evidence gathering scenario. So it's sort of what we call it gathering real-world evidence that can then help with your TGA approval. And so what we are doing is our first two sites, which is one is Geelong Hospital and we've got the Northern Hospital, and we've now had 16 successful insertions of stents in the emergency department where we've been able to completely bypass the need for these patients to either be admitted to the hospital and certainly avoiding the need to go to the operating room. And so what we know from our research that we've done, where we looked at how long do people usually wait in a Victorian public hospital to have a stent inserted. And that was 20 hours, just sitting around waiting for your slot in the emergency operatings, uh, in the emergency operating room. And we've now reduced that to an average of one hour with our first two sites that we started at.

Caroline Duell 23:43

And that's for a kidney stone.

Prof Joseph Ischia 23:45

Yeah, so people that get kidney stone pain where the kidney stone blocks off the kidney. And what we do is we aim to unblock it by inserting a stent so the urine can start flowing again. It's that back pressure of the urine that causes what people describe as the worst pain they've ever had in their life.

Caroline Duell 24:00

Yes, I've heard that that pain is suggested to be worse than childbirth.

Prof Joseph Ischia 24:03

So I would never suggest such a.

Caroline Duell 24:05

So this is an incredible thing, obviously for patients, because you're you're thinking about not just the healthcare delivery, the treatment, but but also patients getting out of hospital faster, not having to go through excruciating pain while they wait for surgery.

Prof Joseph Ischia 24:21

Absolutely. Everything's yeah, every medtech device is aimed at patients. That's always who we we want to treat. And you know, you go into medicine because you want to treat people and make their lives better. And one of the beauties of this is that what I can now do is I know that the average length of stay for a patient who comes in with kidney stone pain is 2.8 days. And that is typical of nearly all Victorian public and in fact Australian public hospitals. And we have been able to change that from a 2.8 day stay down to just barely under a couple of hours, and that's from when the stent goes in, x-rayed under, make sure it's in the right spot, and then the patient can go home. Now, importantly, that's only the first step of their treatment. In fact, they will come back a few weeks later once their infection is settled or their kidney impairment is settled, uh, or the swelling that's caused by the back pressure on the kidney. Once that all settles, we come back and we treat the stone with all the fancy lasers and ureteroscopes and technology that we have. But we can do that at a time where I can book them in. This is the problem with the management of the initial episode, is that when they come in, I've I'm not sitting around waiting for people to come in with kidney stone pain. So I have to try and slot them in, and that's what causes the really long delays, is finding space in an already restrained system.

Caroline Duell 25:30

And so the stent or the device itself is being manufactured in Melbourne?

Prof Joseph Ischia 25:36

It absolutely is. So we're working with Planet Innovation, which is a Victorian company, and they have been fantastic at guiding us through the extraordinarily complex process of doing your design and process verification and validation. And they've been you know fantastic. The team there have been really generous in their time. Uh, obviously, talking to doctors, we're we're very well trained at looking after people. We have almost no knowledge of what it takes to get a medical device to market. So uh, you know, Eddie Vaughn, Natasha Lee, uh, and their team at uh Planet Innovation have been fantastic for us.

Caroline Duell 26:10

So, what's next for a key code? What are you aiming for in the next sort of 12 months?

Prof Joseph Ischia 26:15

So the first step is for us to complete our design verification, which we hope to do in around the next six weeks. Everybody aims to complete verification a certain time, unexpected things pop up, which is which is just normal and part of the course, but we're well on track to complete in six weeks, and then we can in fact use that to submit our uh submit to the FDA. And then while we're doing our process validation, we could get our MDSAP, which gives our ISO 13485, and then we're using MDSAP, and once we get our FDA clearance, we can come back and get our TGA clearance, and we hope to do that either by the end of this year or early next year.

Caroline Duell 26:52

So you're going to America first for that regulatory approval?

Prof Joseph Ischia 26:55

It is. So we can because the TGA requires process validation to complete. We've already got a compliant QMS, but we need to go through the certification process, which is actually a relatively prolonged process when we can be getting our clearances in the meantime based on the safety and the design of the device.

Caroline Duell 27:12

Tell us, what do you think about today's AMA MedTech showcase?

Prof Joseph Ischia 27:16

Yeah, I think it's been really uh eye-opening for me to see that this concept of having a fantastic product that's gonna help patients, save the health system money, be great for doctors, so I can do this operation at a time that suits me instead of after midnight, just how hard it is to get past that hurdle of procurement. You know, we always think that it's a no-brainer. If you've got a great idea and a great product that everyone's just gonna want to have it, nothing could be further from the truth. And I think it is certainly been our experience in the some of the hospitals that we've approached early on, is that it's very normal for hospitals to go, oh look, you know, we're not sure. This sounds really hard. You know, um, is this, you know, you've there's all these steps you have to go through. And even though that can be a it's a perfectly valid reason for someone who works in procurement because their job is to mine the bottom line, is that's still an enormously long process. And so I think one of the great advantages of what we heard today is this the development of the local health services network. So instead of having to go meet every one of the 71 hospitals individually, which I would have had to have done if I were in market right now, it sounds like I'm gonna be able to go and chat to maybe just the 12 to 15 local health service networks, and that will help us uh get into more hospitals at a time that without all the burden of having to meet people and meet the inevitable, every single person is gonna say no first time. So you sort of you need to build that momentum. And I think that's it, is bringing everybody together in the run one room to identify what are the problems, what are some of the solutions, and the importance of having a bit of a warm introduction too, because you know, I think purchasing from Western Health here or Royal Melbourne or Monash is that one day I'm gonna ring them up and go, Oh, I might remember you. You are that crazy guy who tried to deliver a stint during a two-minute presentation. You go, yes, I am, and that that's a great introduction to have.

Caroline Duell 29:07

Yeah, it's great to get sort of I think innovators in front of government, um, industry and and health talking, uh, just making those connections. Um, and it's really it really is a at the practical end of how do you get your product to market.

Prof Joseph Ischia 29:21

It is. And as a as I was sketching this device out what four and a half years ago, uh, you just don't realize how hard that, I don't know, whatever the right expert, but the last mile is. You think it's all about just making something that's great and safe, and you do your clinical trial and everything's finished. But really, that the journey has just begun and it is a long, arduous journey. And to know that there's um uh organizations that recognize that and will help guide you through it and the support of the Victorian government, who I know have a have a focus on really trying to encourage local manufacturing and all the problems we've had with sovereign capability and and the and the ecosystem that we could build, because one thing Australians do, and it came up a lot, is we're very clever, we're very good at developing and designing things, but it's just very hard to commercialise, and I think that's what they're trying to improve through these sorts of networks.

Caroline Duell 30:11

Um, so now it's about getting procurement ready and building your um innovation along that journey. So we wish you all the best, and we look forward to um to hearing positive news for you in the next 12 months.

Prof Joseph Ischia 30:23

Thank you, Carolyn. We hope so. All we can do is cross our fingers and put our best foot forward, and then you're at the mercy of the uh regulatory bodies. We've had really good pre-submission meetings, so we're we're hoping for a good run.

Caroline Duell 30:33

Well, good luck with that.

Prof Joseph Ischia 30:34

Thank you.

Lenexa Medical Sensors Prevent Pressure Injuries

Ajit Ravindran 30:37

I'm Ajit Ravindran, CEO of Lenexa Medical, and Lenexa Medical is a pressure injury and patient monitoring system that was developed right here in Melbourne from Uni Melbourne. And we're excited here to be today talking to MTP Connect.

Caroline Duell 30:50

Tell us about Lanexa Medical's products. What sort of innovations are we talking about here?

Ajit Ravindran 30:57

So just going a step back. So this is an innovation that is built right here in Melbourne. So it came out of the biodesign innovation program at the University of Melbourne. And it's quite an interesting program where they have clinicians, business students, and engineering students coming together to solve an unmet need. And Prussian trees are one of those where they were actually saying that since the Crimean War, when Florence Nightingale was doing her turns, it took her those three hours to get to the same person. So those three early turns are followed even today. Those manual checks are followed even today. And in this day and age, when you've got cloud computing, when you understand biomedical models and how you know skin and tissues sort of behave, Linux has sort of came from actually solving the need to go. How do we convert your everyday objects to be a smart monitoring platform? So, what Linux has actually got is a fabric-based sensor that goes underneath the mattress cover that can monitor in real time and highlight the areas of the body that are actually experiencing the pressure in the risk so that targeted information can be provided to clinicians and carers so they can actually step in and provide that intervention. And we don't sell any software, it converts your everyday objects and it tries to make the environment around you smarter. Because we always believe that when the environment around you is smarter, prevention becomes a default.

Caroline Duell 32:16

So we're talking about hospital beds or aged care beds, that type of equipment?

Ajit Ravindran 32:22

Yes. So our sensors can actually be put on because it's made of fabric, it can actually go very easily into either. So currently, Lanexa is in over 20 HK homes within this country. We also sell overseas as well in Singapore and also in Thailand. Um we are in a conversation to get into the hospital procurement sort of system, and which is why programs like MTV Connect is just fantastic because suddenly we now have a pathway to get there. Because we always sort of lament that, you know, it's an innovation from Australia for Australians, but yet the process is so painful to get into. Um and it's not for lack of you know goodwill and people trying it and spreading the word. It's just the process. Yes. No one person owns the healthcare system. It is just a complex beast. It is about how best to navigate through that. And programs like MTB Connect and their pathway to program is just fantastic because now we are in we are put in front of those audiences that can see us and um see how to help us take the next step.

Caroline Duell 33:21

So we've heard from HealthShare Victoria about their procurement process and how they're trying to make it easier for local innovations to connect with them, end part of your journey once you have the product developed, and then you have to get it to the patients, to the people that need it most. What's one of the biggest challenges that you faced?

Ajit Ravindran 33:43

I mean, there are many, many challenges, of course, uh, because when you have an idea that is actually built over here to actually scale the idea and to commercialize the idea, whilst I can say that in a single sentence, the steps to actually go beyond uh, you know, to sort of sequence it and to actually do it takes years in terms of you need the you need the financial capital and particularly being health, um, not naming names, but one of the largest public hospitals, their emergency uh wards or their ED sort of departments still has a fax machine in this day and age. Um it's one step above the carrier pigeon, you know, so it's secure and safe. So health is one of the largest, I mean, you know, it's a very complex beast, and things actually take a long, long time for it to change. So change doesn't come as fast. And when it when you're actually talking about um patient lives, you've got to be really, really careful in how you do it. But that doesn't mean you can sort of rely on these archaic systems. So when you have an innovative company, a startup wanting to roll out sort of products into the marketplace, in many ways the paths are not really clear. So they don't have the manpower, they don't have the funding. They also, more importantly, don't have the connections because connections make or break is what we've actually found. And sometimes it takes many years for you to be in the market for someone else to understand that you are serious. You're not a startup that's gonna run out of money tomorrow, whereas I can actually trust some of those large American companies that have been established names, they're gonna be there forever. And you know what, from a procurement point of view, it might be less risky for me to trust one of those than an up-and-coming because I'm gonna put my whole budget on the back of this stuff. So I can see both sides of the coin, but the path certainly has to be made better. And I would sort of reach out to other ecosystems globally around in the US and Singapore and other markets where you have universities, hospitals, investors coming together to open the pathways at the same time. So it doesn't matter where you get into the ecosystem, you'll end up the same. So it's time that we start to look at things in a different way because there are so many interesting ideas that have come out of the biodesign program at University of Melbourne, just waiting on the door to just get in. And many of them just leave because they go, it's too hard in this system to actually get in. I might as well look at some of the some of the larger markets. So we need to be embracing innovations that come out of locally over here in Australia. And I'm so thankful for the MTB Connect program to be allowing us a chance to kind of you know share our story and showcase a product and actually talk to some of the right connections to get our product in there. So it's not a simple answer, one thing, there are many things that need to happen in the right sequence.

Caroline Duell 36:30

What's the next 12 months look like for your team at Linux and Medical? What are you reaching for?

Ajit Ravindran 36:35

I mean, for us, uh, we were recently awarded um a quality management certification, which is ISO 13485, which means that from a manufacturing point of view, every product that comes out of our factory meets the quality standards. It's it's delivered, you know, at the highest levels of safety. I mean, we are actually quite quite proud in doing that. It's made over here in Australia. And again, thanks to uh some of the grants that we have actually got, that's actually allowed us to scale. So for us, for the next 12 months, it's really looking at sort of scaling. So we are scaling across many of our contacts in HCAR. We'd love to sort of get into the hospital systems over here. But we're getting lots of demand in the market from markets like Singapore, from markets like Thailand that are actually crying for innovative products. So we haven't sort of tapped into the US market or the UK market yet. That'll be that'll be in two years' time. But for us, it's about scaling within those, within those sort of sort of markets. And again, just to repeat my whole point, I mean, we are Australians, it's a product in Australia for the Australian market, yet we find that the Australian patients cannot have access to such an important tool that can save lives. Today we are still tracking, as of this morning, at zero pressure injuries, unheard of. And when you have pressure injuries in the in the hospital system, we can help. We can help. Would love to help.

Caroline Duell 37:53

Interestingly enough, Time magazine voted your company one of the top 100 medtech companies in the world last year. What a huge accolade. I mean, you know, this is this is fantastic news and great to see that recognition from a global perspective. How has that affected the growth of your company?

Ajit Ravindran 38:14

Um it didn't sort of change dramatically as you know, personally, what that meant, but for us it is a huge kudos. Um it is a it is a global recognition that we can now carry on to the conversations that we are actually having. In fact, the conversations that we have actually had with some of the healthcare systems, be it in HCAR or some of the places that we've been talking to, the doors have actually opened slightly more faster. And we always say it's time.

Caroline Duell 38:38

Oh, that's a great way to end our chat. Um, Ajit, thank you for talking with us today on the MTP Connect Podcast. And we wish you all the best at Lanexa Medical.

Ajit Ravindran 38:48

Thank you so much for having me. And I sort of repeat, like I always say, I mean, you know, we encourage one and all to help join us in solving this preventable problem. And as I keep saying, everyone, no pressure.

Program Credits And Final Thanks

Caroline Duell 39:01

That was Ajit Ravindran, CEO of Lenexa Medical, a Melbourne-based company with a live patient pressure monitoring system helping to take the pressure off bed sores. The Pathway to Market program is an initiative of the Australian MedTech Manufacturing Alliance, or AMMA, delivered by MTP Connect in partnership with BioMelbourne Network and supported by the Victorian Government. A shout out to the BioMelbourne Network team and the Australian MedTech Manufacturing Alliance for the teamwork involved in delivering these initiatives. And thank you to Dr. Amelia Vom, MTP Connect Director of Stakeholder Engagement Victoria, and Health and Biosecurity, who leads our Pathway to Market program. You've been listening to the MTP Connect Podcast. This podcast is produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people here in Naarm, Melbourne. Thanks for listening to the show. If you love what you heard, share our podcast and follow us for more. Until next time.