CTCM Celebrates – Three CTCM Awardees Receive $50,000 Funding Each Through Victoria’s Medtech Market Growth Program
08 July 2024
Pictured: from left, three of the Ventora Medical team - Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Edward Buijs; Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder, Amy Yu; and Lead Clinical Advisor and Co-founder, Associate Professor Christiane Theda - one of the CTCM Program awardees to receive $50,000 funding through the Victorian Government's Medtech Market Growth Program.
Three awardees in MTPConnect’s Clinical Translation and Commercialisation Medtech (CTCM) Program – Navi Medical Technologies, Ventora Medical Pty Ltd and VividWhite Pty Ltd – each received $50,000 funding through the Victorian Government’s Medtech Market Growth Program.
Victoria’s Minister for Jobs and Industry, Natalie Hutchins, recently announced the 20 grant recipients – including the three CTCM awardees – under the Medtech Market Growth Program, with each to receive $50,000 funding to access the skills, services and resources they need to take their life changing products to market.
The matched funding provides working capital to assist medtech startups to develop their go-to-market value proposition, helping to bridge the gap between the development of products and getting them into hospitals and healthcare services.
Congratulations to our three CTCM awardees!
CTCM Program Director Danielle Shand said it was terrific to see three CTCM awardees receive further funding for their innovative medtech products through Victoria’s Medtech Market Growth Program.
“Congratulations to our three CTCM awardees – Navi Medical Technologies, Ventora Medical and VividWhite – on receiving $50,000 funding each from the Medtech Market Growth Program in Victoria.
“Each medtech product being developed and commercialised by our three awardees is designed to address critical health needs in Australia and globally – from providing safer healthcare safety for critically ill children and improving neonatal respiratory support, to advancing treatments for glaucoma and blindness,” Ms Shand said.
Navi Medical Technologies received funding through CTCM’s Round One funding in October 2022 for the clinical translation of a new medical device – Neonav® – to place and monitor paediatric central vascular catheters. Tens of thousands of central venous catheters are inserted into the veins of newborns in Australian ICU settings every year for essential intravascular access and delivery of life-saving therapies – with many more required for older children.
Faster, easy-to-use, real-time confirmation of catheter tip location
The Neonav® ECG Tip Location System ('Neonav') aims to improve the standard-of-care for critically ill children by providing clinicians fast, easy-to-use, real-time confirmation of catheter tip location during its insertion to increase the number of 'first-time-right' central vascular catheter placement procedures and confirm that the tip remains in a safe position for continued use post-procedure.
The Neonav® will improve quality-of-care by reducing procedure time and ionising radiation exposure, improve clinical decision-making by identifying catheter migration to avoid complications, and provide significant cost-savings to hospitals.
Ventora Medical Pty Ltd received funding through the CTCM Program Round Two funding in July 2023 for the development and clinical translation of an airway pressure monitor to improve respiratory support treatment for neonatal patients to help premature babies breathe.
An unmet need exists to improve non-invasive breathing support for neonatal patients. Failure rates of current non-invasive respiratory support systems remain alarmingly high, at 20-40 per cent, and the consequences of such failure include a significantly higher risk of morbidity and mortality.
Reducing failure rates and improving patient outcomes
Ventora Medical is addressing this need by developing an airway pressure monitor for neonatal patients on non-invasive respiratory support. The device aims to provide objective feedback of the delivered pressure to enable clinicians to provide proactive and tailored respiratory treatment. By improving the delivery of non-invasive respiratory support, Ventora’s device aims to reduce failure rates, decrease length of time on respiratory support and improve patient outcomes.
VividWhite Pty Ltd also received funding in Round Two of the CTCM Program funding for a clinical study, manufacturing and registration of a medical device to treat glaucoma and prevent blindness.
Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, and the second most common cause in Australia. Current treatments for glaucoma, including medication and surgery, often cause side effects and give unpredictable results.
VividWhite has developed a micro sized device that is surgically implanted in the eye to reduce intraocular pressure (IOP) and treat glaucoma. In a small clinical study, the VividFlo glaucoma implant showed favourable safety and efficacy results and a significant reduction in post-operative care.
Product commercialisation in Australia, Europe and the US
This project will support the Australian manufacturing of the VividWhite glaucoma implant for use in an Australian multi-centre pivotal clinical study, to generate data for registration with the regulatory authorities to allow commercialisation in Australia, Europe and the US.
It is also good to note that two of our BioMedTech Horizons Program awardees were included in the 20 recent grant recipients of Victoria’s Medtech Market Growth Program – Carbon Cybernetics for its device for high resolution cortical recording for the prediction and prevention of epileptic seizures, and ZiP Diagnostics for establishing domestic capabilities for R&D and manufacture of point-of-care diagnostics – both companies will also receive $50,000 funding each for their innovative medtech products.
The Medtech Market Growth Program is a collaboration between the Australian Medtech Manufacturing Centre and startup agency LaunchVic, to increase the pipeline of export-ready medtech startups in Victoria and create jobs in the state’s growing medtech sector, which is home to some 660 companies employing more than 20,000 workers.
The Clinical Translation and Commercialisation Medtech (CTCM) program, delivered by MTPConnect, is a $19.75 million MRFF initiative. The CTCM program identifies and nurtures high quality medical device projects that have commercial potential and supports their translation through early clinical trials.