Federally-funded MTPConnect has announced a $1.2 million commitment to two healthcare projects, both of which involve Telethon Kids Institute as a collaborator.
Federally-funded MTPConnect has announced a $1.2 million commitment to two healthcare projects, both of which involve Telethon Kids Institute as a collaborator.
MTPConnect, the Medical Technologies and Pharmaceuticals Industry Growth Centre, will provide $1 million to the Accelerating Australia project over the next two years, and $200,000 to the Accelerating Precision Therapies project being undertaken at Murdoch University.
The Accelerating Australia project aims to boost entrepreneurship in the biomedical sector and help to translate medical research to the commercial sector. It will provide access to biomedical entrepreneurship training programs.
“This funding is vital to help build networks between academia and industry and helps to facilitate the translation of research discoveries into clinical practice,” Telethon Kids Institute director of research services and innovation, Paul Watt, said.
The Telethon Kids Institute is one of more than 20 researchers, universities, hospitals, research institutes and medical leaders from across the country collaborating on the project.
The University of Western Australia, which is involved in the Accelerating Australia project, said MTPConnect’s $1 million would be matched by the medical sector.
Chair of the Accelerating Australia executive committee and UWA associate professor, Kevin Pfleger, said the funding would help researchers develop medical inventions and technology to solve unmet needs of doctors, medical staff and patients.
“Many problems encountered by doctors could be solved by talking to university and industry researchers and through collaboration," he said.
The Accelerating Precision Therapies project at Murdoch University is aimed at transforming the way new therapeutic drugs are tested, introducing digital solutions.
Telethon Kids head of infectious disease implementation, Tom Snelling, said effective collaboration was critical to the project’s success.
“The funding aims to help Australian biotech companies to partner with patient and academic groups,” he said.
Murdoch University director of the Centre for Comparative Genomics and project lead, Matthew Bellgard, said clinical trial design required patient information to be captured, entered, and available for analyses in near real-time.
“The solution aims to build the digital infrastructure required to realise this vision,” he said.
The project team will concentrate initially on cystic fibrosis and hepatitis C as two exemplar diseases, to evaluate deployment of the digital solution.
