Plastic made from seaweed, a novel way to detect tissue leakage from IV drip and a microchip to monitor pet health have been named among WA’s most innovative technologies.
Plastic made from seaweed, a novel way to detect tissue leakage from IV drip and a microchip to monitor pet health have been named among WA’s most innovative technologies.
The finalists for the WA Innovator of the Year awards were announced this week, with several companies set to vie for eight awards across six categories.
The winners of the emerging and growth categories will be awarded $60,000 each, while winners in other categories will share in a $240,000 prize pool.
In the emerging innovation category, two seaweed technologies companies – SeaStock and Uluu – who extract an ingredient used to reduce methane emissions from cows and who tun seaweed into plastic respectively, are among the finalists.
They’re joined by subsurface probe technology Hermes and Soteira, MedTech company Materia Health, which developed a world-first device capable of transporting both organ and tissues, and mining collision avoidance system PerceptN from Raptortech.
Rounding out the finalists for that category was Pretect Devices and their invention, Vedette, which monitors ongoing intravenous therapy to detect leakage into surround tissue, particularly in newborn babies.
In the growth category, an automated grain sampling system from Deimos Laboratory is up for the gong, alongside Genvis and their Kudo operating system, which provides a team-based platform for coordinating emergency responses.
They’ll also contend with Tape Ark, a cloud migration and remastering of tape media for mass data preservation service, and Hey Sister! A drug-free, plant-based tablet for period pain and menopause relief.
Also up for the growth category gong is Hy-Boost Technologies, who developed a hydrogen co-fire system which can be retro-fitted to diesel combustion engines to boost efficiency with on-demand hydrogen.
RaptorTech was again nominated, but this time for its RaptorOS real-time production dispatch solution for the mining industry.
In the energy innovation category had three finalists – Nepternal Hydrogen, which uses seawater to produce hydrogen, Strada Percussion Drilling Systems, for their dual circulation water hammer drilling system, and WaveX for its D-Spar technology that converts motion from the ocean into green electricity.
In the wellbeing category, a company developing 3D-printed heart valves, Corametix was nominated, alongside a video game which teaches the player up to 28 different languages, Earthlingo.
Hey Sister! was also nominated in that category for their period pain drug, alongside Setonix Pharmaceuticals for its pill which boosts the immune response against cancer.
And in the Business News Great for the State award seaweed-to-plastic company Uluu was again named a finalist, as well as VetChip and Tape Ark.
AMLab’s automated quay crane was the only single-appearance finalist in that category.
