{"id":54620,"date":"2023-10-20T16:28:16","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T16:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/diagnosing-the-need-for-a-medtech-startup-hub-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T16:28:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T16:28:16","slug":"diagnosing-the-need-for-a-medtech-startup-hub-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/diagnosing-the-need-for-a-medtech-startup-hub-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Diagnosing the need for a medtech startup hub – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Melbourne needs a new home for medtech startups to consolidate its thriving ecosystem and help commercialise health technologies, according to Startup HealthTech<\/a> co-founder Sid Verma. <\/p>\n

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Melbourne leads the way in terms of medtech startups, with 40% of all ASX-listed biotechnology companies coming from the city<\/a>, which also boasts nearly 75% of the country\u2019s top biotech companies by market capitalisation.<\/p>\n

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Verma says it\u2019s necessary to have a hub to bring all this innovation together.<\/p>\n

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\u201cInnovation comes from many different places, but it\u2019s important to have a home somewhere,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s also important to have an ecosystem where people aren\u2019t bound to a single location.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere are a whole lot of things happening in the medtech space right now, and there\u2019s space for a medtech-specific home in Melbourne somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Verma says he\u2019s working on a hub that could help with funding, education and provide a forum for medtech startups, and hopes to open it within six months.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe aim is to get these unstructured ideas to a point where they become structured and trained in how to pitch and present,\u201d Verma says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s also to filter the hundreds of ideas into five or 10 fairly good ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The barriers to commercialisation<\/b><\/h2>\n

Many successful startups focusing on medical technology have emerged from Melbourne recently, including the iAward-winning<\/a> Eyenaemia,<\/a> which can diagnose anaemia with just a photo of an individual\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n

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Another is medical Internet of Things<\/a> startup Clinicloud<\/a>, and its founder and CTO Hon Weng Chong says a hub could help with the biggest problem facing the Melbourne medtech scene.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have some of the best innovators in the world, but what we\u2019re really bad at is commercialising the technology, and that\u2019s where the profits come from,\u201d Chong says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cResearchers working on ground-breaking, highly commercial technology need to meet, discuss and share findings with the engineers and business people who can take something from a petri dish into the mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A new medtech accelerator<\/b><\/h2>\n

The Melbourne medtech community has also welcomed the Melbourne Accelerator Program\u2019s<\/a> (MAP) plans to launch a medtech-specific accelerator.<\/p>\n

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Speaking to the Australian Financial Review<\/i>, MAP director Rohan Workman says the accelerator could help give more exposure to the city\u2019s medtech scene and encourage more support from venture capitalists and governments.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a very good idea, and it\u2019s something I\u2019ve been championing for a long time,\u201d Chong says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe question is how they\u2019re actually going about doing it. It needs the right mentors and funding sources.\u201d<\/p>\n

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According to Chong, the medtech accelerator could be a way to improve communication between different faculties, he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMy concern is that the medical faculty is usually not very keen or open to collaboration,\u201d Chong says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe need more collaboration between the technologies coming from engineering, the business people and the medical people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Verma agrees, and says his own plans won\u2019t be pitted against this potential accelerator.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne thing I like about the system is we don\u2019t see each other as enemies or competitors, there are always ways in which we can work together,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe challenge we have is that next step of innovation and finding funding, and an accelerator could absolutely assist with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Raising your <\/i>first round of capital<\/i><\/a>? Starting a <\/i>crowdfunding campaign<\/i><\/a>? Want to grow your business <\/i>with Instagram?<\/i><\/a> StartupSmart School can help.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melbourne needs a new home for medtech startups to consolidate its thriving ecosystem and help commercialise health technologies, according to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,27,8,24,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}