Uni bootcamp nurtures medtech startup culture
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Western Australia’s credentials in the medical sphere don’t make the headlines too often.
It is a small industry compared to the resources sector, but one that is accelerating off the back of a global pandemic and improved government and private sector support.
Amid this, an under-the-radar university course is bringing some of the state’s brightest minds together to build what many hope will be one of WA’s next big industries.
Intan Oldakowska and Matt Oldakowski are the driving force behind Perth Biodesign, a seven-month course adapted from Stanford University’s SPARK Co-lab, which was introduced to Perth in 2015.
“The course is really built as a framework so people interested in going into the innovation space, specifically in the medical devices or healthcare area, can have the training to think about it,” Ms Oldakowska said.
“It is really about training the next generation of people to be able to innovate in a more efficient way.”
The current iteration of the course is administered by the University of Western Australia, and the calibre of its partners – Curtin University, Telethon, Perkins, Perron, WA Health Translation Network and the state government – is testament to its growing clout since it launched under the new name in 2016.
About 300 alumni and nine startup companies have come out of the program.
About $20 million in startup funding has been raised by alumni and 140 PhD students have gained internships with 28 industry partners.
Also, alumni have featured regularly in prized awards, such as the state government’s innovator of the year.
Graduates who spoke to Business News revealed the value of the course lay in its mantra of identifying problems to solve and its lessons in understanding how to turn ideas into businesses.
“People go to the hospital, they shadow clinicians, and what we find is that they identify a hundred needs,” Mr Oldakowski said.
“As they research through those, they can pick the one that has the strongest pool, the strongest market size and health economics.
“So, then they have got this hidden advantage … they haven’t just got a good idea, they have got a good idea to solve a really strong problem that people want to solve.
“When we go through the next process, we don’t just think of one idea … we think of typically at least ten different concepts for how to solve the problem.
“You investigate the feasibility of these upfront, so you know the IP is strong, it is technically feasible, and the regulatory pathway isn’t too onerous.”
Contribution
A Deloitte report released on December 1 revealed the surprise contribution medical research makes to WA’s economy.
Commissioned by the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI), the report found in 2021 the sector generated about $322 million and 2,600 jobs across the state.
For every $1 spent, $2.61 is generated in Australia and $7.58 worldwide, a figure that speaks volumes of other nations’ interest in WA ideas.
And those numbers are set to grow. Forecasts in the report point to a $2.1 billion industry generating a further 2,100 jobs every year by 2045.
“This report proves what we’ve always intrinsically known in WA: our medical research is world class and gives back significant value to the community and economy,” AAMRI WA chairman Jonathan Carapetis said.
“Medical research is in a unique position to not only build a more diversified WA economy with high-paying jobs and a highly skilled workforce, but also to offer direct solutions to a range of budget pressures caused by the growing cost of managing chronic disease and an ageing population.”
This was a sentiment shared by Medical Research Minister Stephen Dawson, who was on hand to launch the report and spruik the state government’s Future Health Research Innovation Fund.
“Over the next four years we have $250 million in the fund to give out to worthy causes,” Mr Dawson said.
“The fund is designed to position us as a leader in research and innovation, but also to help improve the sustainability of our health system.”
Ideas business
For VeinTech chief medical officer Katherine Arenson, a Facebook advertisement and her interest in inventing something to make cannulations easier drove her to Perth Biodesign.
“The problem of difficult cannulation has been something that I’ve experienced for many years in my career as an emergency doctor,” Dr Arenson said.
“It has always frustrated me that the solution is always so complex, it is basically ultrasound, but it is difficult to use if you haven’t been trained.
“I came across an advert for Perth Biodesign and thought ‘I have an idea, but I don’t know where to go from here’.”
VeinTech is developing a handheld unit that can visualise ideal veins to target for cannulation: a common procedure delivered more than 2 billion times annually worldwide.
The device would help reduce the 40 per cent insertion failure rate of intravenous cannulations, which have relied on visual judgement by clinicians since the 1950s.
Dr Arenson met fellow VeinTech co-founders Nikhilesh Bappoo and Nicholas Buckley during the Perth Biodesign course and has since added Jamie Davison to the team as chief financial officer, and seven staff.
“It is all very well having an idea, but you don’t know what you don’t know,” she said.
“The course shows you what you don’t know, and it gives you a taste of all the steps you need to go through in order to get an idea out onto the market.
“I wouldn’t have done it at all without the course, because I’ve had lots of ideas throughout my life or things I’ve wanted to invent and I have just gone ‘oh, it’s all just too hard’.”
At the time the three finished the course in 2019, a basic prototype had been developed and patent writing had begun.
VeinTech now has two patents and a prototype able to be used on humans. It is gearing up for a capital raising to turn the latest protype into the final design next year.
Solutions
It was during the 2016 version of the Perth Biodesign course that Arjun Kaushik and Michael Challenor recognised a problem with fetal distress monitoring during childbirth.
Dr Kaushik said the idea was sparked following observation of midwives in the birthing suite, who were arguing over the purpose of existing monitoring systems while preparing a mother to give birth.
“We are developing a novel biosensor to measure the most accurate marker of fetal distress, so we can keep mothers and babies safer during childbirth,” he said.
Today, the company Dr Kaushik and Dr Challenor co-founded, VitalTrace, employs more than 50 people and will next year begin human trials of its biosensor, which is listed on the US Food and Drug Administration’s breakthrough devices program.
Dr Kaushik said the course was overhauling education practices and the state’s biodesign ecosystem.
“The critical point Perth Biodesign teaches is to really focus on the problem, and not try and create a solution until you absolutely understand everything about that problem,” he said.
“We had to fly to Melbourne to access funding and guidance back [in 2017].
“Now, that’s all happening here, and if we fast forward another five years into the future I really think Perth could become one of the medtech leaders.”
Next in line
Pretect Devices is among the latest innovators hoping to follow what is becoming a well-worn path for Perth Biodesign alumni.
Next February, the startup will put the hand out for seed funding to back an invention that could prevent intravenous leakage in premature babies, a problem that can lead to amputation and plastic surgery.
Pretect chief technology officer Sam Bolland graduated from Perth Biodesign in mid-2021 and is part of a team with plenty of skin in the game.
“I have had a premature baby myself, the CEO of our company has as well, and one other person in the company,” Mr Bolland said.
He said the course had created an ecosystem where alumni and students were feeding off each other’s ideas and successes.
“I would say it’s not just a course, it’s also a network,” Mr Bolland told Business News.
“They really connected us to the people we didn’t know before, but we now realise we really did need to know and connect with.
“Seeing our fellows, the previous cohorts, where they have got to is very inspirational.
“You can see … examples of what to do, when to raise, when to set up an office for example, and what that encompasses, so that has actually been very useful.”
Mr Bolland said the biodesign course and state government funding was giving the industry the leg-up it needed to establish a presence in WA.
Final hurdle
A major bugbear remaining for the sector is procurement.
“It is one hundred per cent the biggest problem,” Mr Oldakowski said.
“The (government) can procure a device that is equivalent to something they already procure, but to say ‘we want this new thing’ is really difficult.
“If you could imagine a situation where state government could invest in procurement for companies on a trial; that would be super valuable for the companies because it would get them sales traction and experience selling, which would allow them to accelerate their growth.”
Ms Oldakowska said improving government procurement would keep more WA medical inventors in the state.
Mr Dawson said he, Finance Minister Sue Ellery and Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson had recently held a roundtable to figure out how to remove this roadblock.
“We have got a couple of pieces of work that will be undertaken next year in WA to help actually make procurement easier,” he said.
“If I am asking researchers to translate their research into a product and then they have to go overseas to sell their wares, I don’t think that’s very good.
“I would like those innovations trialled locally, and indeed, hopefully then rolled out in our health system in WA.”
What goes around
Many of those who have gone down the Perth Biodesign path never truly leave, a fact Ms Oldakowska believes has contributed to the course’s success.
“They are mentoring the next people who are just at the beginning, so it really feeds itself in terms of increasing the knowledge base,” she said.
“Clinicians tend to only talk to clinicians and … I think that’s why having that multidisciplinary team is really important within the course to try and bring everyone together.”
As for WA’s role in the global biotechnology race, Ms Oldakowska looks to the Asia-Pacific region.
“Australia can potentially be a really good bridge between the US and that area by potentially setting up headquarters in Perth, which is in the same time zone,” she said.
“There is definitely an increasing number of investors that would traditionally only invest in gold, mining and oil and gas that are starting to invest in biomedical science.”
Venture capital funds from the likes of Tattarang and Purpose Ventures are taking interest, and it is an area Mr Dawson said he was eager to grow.
“You never want to be reliant only on government money; you want to have people invested with skin in the game,” he said.
“Up to now there were no investors locally willing to invest in the sector, hence people like (spray-no skin founder) Fiona Wood having to go interstate or to the [United] States or wherever to sell their products.
“Getting some VC funding in town here in WA I think will make a huge difference.”
Professor Wood, who was at the launch of the Deloitte report this month, said WA’s biomedical sector was on the right path.
“I bear the scars for starting something almost thirty years ago; that was in front of the wave,” she said.
“I just want to say thank you to everybody who has been involved in this because I think the time’s right.
“You have to make money and … you’ve got to make a difference, and certainly that balance is exquisitely important.”
To see the bright ideas coming out of WA one must only look to the state government’s innovator of the year awards held in November, which this year featured 15 nominations for medical and eight for industrial inventions.
It is perhaps serendipitous that Ms Oldakowska’s and Mr Oldakowski’s own invention, EarFlo, got the nod for emerging innovation of the year.