Brain scans at home, gut health tech, sweat-free casts: Kiwi HealthTech companies to watch

SECTOR UPDATE - Callaghan Innovation

A sweat-free, lightweight alternative to bulky plaster casts, drug-free therapy for chronic pain and a simple, non-intrusive way to detect gut problems through a pad that attaches to someone’s stomach. Sounds like the future, doesn’t it?

Aotearoa is currently enjoying a groundswell of innovative new health technologies being developed here and exported to the world. Across the sector solo entrepreneurs, clinicians within DHBs, university and institute researchers alike are working to scale up healthcare solutions for global reach. 

COVID-19 changed much for the healthtech industry. Medical terms like ventilators, clinical trials and epidemiology became commonplace, and health technologies were thrown into the spotlight like never before. There’s plenty to celebrate in healthtech at the moment, so let’s take a look at a few innovative home-grown health technology companies to watch.

Drug-free pain management
Kiwi neuroscience company, Exsurgo, are the minds behind Axon, a miniaturised headset that monitors electrical activity in the brain to inform drug-free therapy for managing chronic pain. 

Major hospitals and medical universities typically use large, expensive electroencephalography (EEG) machines to glean EEG Neurofeedback information to analyse the chronic pain a patient may be experiencing. 

However, patient access is often constrained to a specialist clinic and a clinician needs to interpret the data. Current equipment costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Exsurgo plans to offer Axon as a medical-grade service at a fraction of the cost, making EEG Neurofeedback affordable and accessible for the first time. 

The non-invasive therapy is drug-free and comes without side-effects. It can be done at a clinic or at home with clinical oversight allowing patients to deal with their chronic pain via an Axon subscription, rather than via a drug prescription. 

No more bulky plaster casts
Zero-Cast is bringing treatment for fractures into the 21st century. Gone are the heavy, bulky plaster casts of the past, the company’s Zero-Cast Wx fracture stabilisation system was developed to be lightweight, stable, adjustable and waterproof.

Instead of plaster, Zero-Cast uses advanced materials and modern manufacturing techniques to create a system that stabilises the fracture while retaining joint function.

For patients Zero-Cast only takes three minutes to attach, doesn’t make the wearer sweat and itch and has a hypoallergenic foam lining so designed to be much more comfortable.

It will be more adaptive to everyday life as people can shower and bathe in it and its slim design means clothes fit easily over it. 

Medically Zero-Cast can mean shorter clinic visits, less joint stiffness and faster rehabilitation, protecting muscle mass and joint health. You can X-ray with the cast in place.

Diagnosing gut problems from the outside
Alimetry is a Kiwi medical device company making advanced diagnostics that non-invasively sense gut issues. Their technology can detect the contributing causes of common symptoms such as abdominal pain, indigestion, nausea and vomiting. 

In the two years since its inception Alimetry has opened up an area of diagnosis that had previously been a ‘black box’ for medical experts.

A stretchy electrode array is placed on a patient’s stomach – the person eats a standardised meal and symptoms are tracked via the Alimetry app. Test data is sent to the Alimetry Cloud and processed using advanced algorithms which inform a detailed report by the clinician.

Previous methods to determine causes involved years of expensive, labour intensive diagnostic testing which could often leave people with inconclusive results and confusion.

At scale, Alimetry’s technology is set to have a big impact - in NZ alone one in five Kiwis have some sort of gut syndrome. 

Alimetry CEO and co-founder Professor Greg O’Grady has the right expertise being one of NZ’s a general and lower gastrointestinal surgeon, and principal investigator at the Department of Surgery (FMHS) and Auckland Bioengineering Institute. Alongside these roles, he’s found the time to not only co-found Alimetry but also the Insides Company. 

Solutions for invasive colorectal surgery complications
Kiwi medical devices business, The Insides Company, is improving quality of life for people who have had colorectal surgery.

It used to be that a patient who’d had colorectal surgery would have a hole cut in their body to divert intestinal contents away from the surgical site as it healed.

This approach could lead to the opening staying open for six to 12 months and during this time the contents collected would be disposed into the toilet. This resulted in complications, readmissions, and reduced quality of life.

The Insides system uses a pump, tube and driver to reinfuse those same contents that were once thrown out back into the patient’s intestine. This allows patients recovering from colorectal surgery to feed orally again and reduces their length of stay in hospital.  

Within a median of two days, the company found that 91 percent of patients are able to be weaned off nutrition fed to them through IV lines, improving patient nutrition as well as their gut and liver functions.

Author: Andrew Clews, the Head of Health Technology at Callaghan Innovation

Source: Callaghan Innovation media release

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