As part of a new accelerator starting this month, three innovative Australian SMEs will use the power of data and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their medical products to become internationally competitive.
Cortical Dynamics, Microbio, and Resonait Medical Technologies have been selected for the Biomedical AI Sprints Accelerator (BASA) run by leading innovation centres, the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Hub and MTPConnect.
These innovative companies will harness their data and AI to revolutionise their products, which range from perioperative management of anaesthetic agents to diagnosing sepsis using an advanced PCR-based platform and accelerating the path to recovery from depression.
ARM Hub CEO and Founder Professor Cori Stewart and MTPConnect CEO Stuart Dignam jointly congratulated the companies on their successful selection.
Professor Stewart said BASA will help unlock valuable intelligence within their businesses.
"AI and automation are estimated to increase Australia's productivity by 50% to 150%," Professor Stewart said.
"We are already seeing life-changing evidence of the value of AI in biomedicine with accelerated drug discovery, precision medicine, and enhanced diagnostics."
MTPConnect CEO Stuart Dignam said this groundbreaking program is addressing an urgent need for specialised data and AI services within the Australian biomedical sector.
"We are delighted to be working with the team at the ARM Hub to make this AI accelerator a reality to support innovations in medical product discovery and to advance human health," Mr Dignam said.
"Providing support to these promising innovative companies means we are building sovereign AI capabilities in our medical science sector and that is a smart approach if we want to be globally competitive."
ARM Hub is Australia's leading AI, robotics, and design-for-manufacture industry hub. MTPConnect is Australia's life sciences innovation accelerator championing growth of the medical products sector.
ARM Hub and MTPConnect established BASA to address a lack of expertise in AI and big data management in particular, addressing critical skills shortages within Australia's life sciences sector.
At the conclusion of the accelerator, companies will have a tailored plan of how to scale their innovative AI applications and leverage data infrastructure to overcome AI adoption hurdles.
About our accelerator participants
Cortical Dynamics Limited
Cortical Dynamics is a neurotechnology medical device company that has added AI to intellectual property originally developed at Swinburne University. Cortical's core product is the Brain Anaesthesia Response (BARM™) System.
Utilising EEG interpretation, BARM™ is a non-invasive medical device with global approvals used in the operating theatre to help anaesthesiologists better administer analgesic and anaesthetic drugs to deliver improved patient outcomes perioperatively.
BARM™ addresses a global market exceeding 200 million operations per year where a general anaesthetic is administered and has particular application in cases involving total intravenous administration of drugs.
The device operates in real-time and has been designed with feedback from global key opinion leaders and practitioners.
CEO Ashley Zimpel said they were applying AI to the device and related App Cordyan™ to further develop a diagnostic tool that predicts individual patient outcomes based on the anaesthetic and analgesic drugs they are given in surgery.
The BARM™ technology will better aid the total intravenous administration (TIVA) of drugs used during general anaesthetic-based surgery and help significantly reduce the carbon footprint effect of inhaled gas in surgery.
"Enhancing our core technology with machine and deep learning applications will undoubtably result in better patient outcomes, reduce possible negative post operative complications, and positively impact on hospital costs and environmental outcomes," Mr Zimpel said.
Microbio
Microbio is a molecular pathogen diagnostic company based in Brisbane. It is commercialising InfectID-BSI, a revolutionary qPCR test to improve sepsis management by identifying 26 pathogens that cause >94% of sepsis cases directly from blood. Currently, it can take between 11 hours and multiple days to identify the pathogens that cause sepsis, meaning clinicians must rely on broad-spectrum or empiric antimicrobials.
Microbio has launched InfectID-BSI in Europe, the United Kingdom and India and is starting additional clinical trials in late 2024 aimed at facilitating regulatory clearance in the US (FDA) and Australia (TGA).
Microbio is developing AI enhanced data systems that allow processing, storage and analysis of human pathogen genomic information, integrated with patient clinical metadata.
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer Dr Flavia Huygens said AI functionality will enable Microbio to interrogate the data, providing intelligence to allow the company to respond to the emergence of new infectious diseases.
"This program will enable Microbio to rapidly track and identify emerging infectious disease trends, which we can respond to by developing innovative diagnostic solutions to improve patient treatment and health outcomes," she said.
Resonait Medical Technologies
Resonait is a neurotechnology company on a mission to accelerate the path to recovery from depression.
There is a crisis of accessibility in mental healthcare, with wait times to see psychologists and psychiatrists at record levels. Demand for mental healthcare has continued to grow, vastly outpacing the growth in the mental health workforce capable of delivering this care.
Resonait is developing tools to alleviate this problem by tailoring treatment to individuals based on their personalised brain network expression. Resonait's team of neuroscientists and biomedical engineers have developed customised artificial intelligence algorithms that monitor changes in an individual's EEG recordings that provide early indications if a patient is responding to treatment, allowing psychiatrists to adapt treatment protocols in a manner optimised for each patients' recovery.
Founder and CEO Dr Cameron Higgins said the company is working closely with the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and the Queensland Neurostimulation Centre to rigorously test their technology, and this program will help them scale that technology into a clinic-ready product.
"There are so many challenges taking an established research result and deploying it in a product that clinicians can easily access in their normal workflows. This program will help us overcome these challenges and make this complex technology accessible to clinicians at the click of a button".
