The 2019 cohort consists of four teams working on high-impact projects to help pre-term babies, anaesthetists, rescuers and surgeons.

Team Cari

Team Cari has developed a better-fitting CPAP interface for pre-term babies in intensive care units. This reduces the risk of nasal injury significantly.

Team Gadzet

Team Gadzet has created a comprehensive monitoring system that enables anaesthetists to monitor the site of drug administration and alert them if something goes wrong.

At the 2019 University of Melbourne Endeavour Exhibition, Team Gadzet won one of the two prestigious Wade Institute Entrepreneurship Awards.

Team NeuroVIS

The team developed a system to address nerve damage during surgery. It integrates with existing surgical equipment to identify and provide in real-time information about the location of nerves to surgeons who can then reduce nerve damage during procedures.

Team Neurovis won three awards at the 2019 Endeavour Exhibition: the University of Melbourne RIC (Research Innovation and Commercialisation) Prize, QinetiQ Endeavour Award and the Wade Institute Entrepreneurship Award.

Team Rescuent

A pocket PCR guidance device. It detects CPR compression and offers feedback to rescuers. This improves cardiac arrest survival rates with higher-quality CPR.

Here’s a summary of the Biodesign 2016 cohort’s experience:

• The 2016 BioDesign Class
• 2016 Student Experience
• BioDesign 2016 at Endeavour
• 2016 Clinicians
• 2016 BioDesign Distinguished Speakers
• What Our Students Say about BioDesign Melbourne

Achievements

The teams made outstanding progress during and after Biodesign Melbourne.

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NAVi Medical Technologies:

• Winner of “Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!” competition (US$50,000), Sep 2017 at the Fifth Annual Pediatric Device Innovation Symposium in San Jose, California, USA.
• Winner of the Startup Victoria Healthtech Pitch Night ($150,000), Aug 2017. In addition, the team won the People’s Choice Award at the Startup Victoria Healthtech Pitch night.
• Second place in Victoria-China Sunan Cup Startup Competition ($15,000), Sep 2017. The team won an additional $1,000 prize for being the most popular project.
• Texas Medical Center Accelerator, TMCx (2017).
• Winner of HealthTech Innovation Challenge 2017: Pitch Event ($20,000), Graeme Clark Institute and Melbourne Academic Centre for Health.
• Obtained ethics approval to commence clinical research at Royal Women’s Hospital in Sep, 2017.
• Featured in the Melbourne Business School Impact Report and Video, 2017 and 2018.
• In 2018, NAVi joined the Actuator, Australia’s Medtech Accelerator
• For updates visit https://www.navitechnologies.com/news-notes

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Team Neuro:

• Won two awards at Endeavour: the Endeavour Wade Institute Entrepreneurship prize and the IEEE Award for Technical Innovation & Engineering Achievement.

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Team SWADE:

• Final five at MedTech’s Got Talent ($20,000 prize plus an incubation process with mentors).
• Finalist in Victoria-China Sunan Cup Startup competition (received $5000 prize).

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Team PELT:

• Final five at MedTech’s Got Talent ($20,000 prize plus an incubation process with mentors)

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Stelect

The 2017 BioDesign class consisted of four teams. It is taught by David Grayden and Michael Vitale.

Team Lenexa

Working on a solution for surgical patients.

Team members: Laura Dooley, John Negropontis, William Yang, Ajit Ravindran, Hiranya Perera, Martin Thompson.

Project:

Reducing pressure injury in patients on surgical tables.

Achievements:

Competitor in MedTech’s Got Talent
Winner, 2017 Endeavour Wade Institute Entrepreneurship Award
Winner, 2017 Endeavour Research, Innovation and Commercialisation Prize
Overall health winner, 2019 Bendigo Innovation and Invention Festival

Lenexa was accepted into The Actuator Accelerator in 2018, and raised $1m in grants and investments in 2019. They were also accepted into Melbourne Health Accelerator in 2019.

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Team Vital5

Team members: Vlad Litvenko, Tim De Rango, James Bennett, Naomi Wo, Edward Wong.

Project:

Patient monitoring system

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Team RespiRate (now Curatek)

Team members: Hannah Merrigan, Reagan Susanto, Jason Chiang, Megan Astle, Lee Gibson.

Project:

Respiratory rate increase is the strongest predictor of hospital patient deterioration. Early warning of deterioration enables intervention, and prevents adverse events such as cardiac arrest, unexpected death and unplanned ICU admission. In addition to saving lives, early warning reduces costs to the health system. Despite its importance in triggering early warning systems, studies show that respiratory rate is the least accurately recorded vital sign, often excluded completely. We are developing a cost-effective, wearable sensor configuration to provide continuous monitoring of respiratory rate..

Achievements:

Competitor in MedTech’s Got Talent
Merit Award, 2017 Endeavour Research, Innovation and Commercialisation Prize

Team Curatek was accepted into The Actuator Accelerator in 2018, and raised $200k in grants and investments (as of 2019) and are continuing to raise funding. They were also accepted into Melbourne Health Accelerator in 2019.

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Team Stelect

Team members: Elise Sutherland, Fay Gibson, Marc Stringer, Lizzie Griffiths, AR.

Project:

An accurate method for physicians to select the optimal stent length when treating patients with coronary stenosis to reduce the incidence of thrombosis and restenosis. In collaboration with cardiologist Prof Peter Barlis.

Achievements:

Won the top prize in MedTech’s Got Talent ($60,000 prize)
Awarded $7000 plus People’s Choice award of $1000 in Ernst & Young Beat the Panel

Stelect was accepted into The Actuator Accelerator in 2018, and raised over $1 million in grants and investments in 2019. The team was featured in the Melbourne Accelerator Gala dinner 2019 and both Elise and Fay have contributed as guest speakers at many events.

We thank the clinicians who mentored and worked with our student teams in 2016. Continue reading 2016 Clinicians