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LuminaX accelerates technology for patients and healthcare workers

As COVID-19 accelerates the digital health revolution, the inaugural LuminaX health tech accelerator program, delivered by Cohort Innovation Space to support 15 ambitious founders with 10 start-up businesses, could not have been better timed to ride a wave of health and tech sector interest and growing consumer demand.

Running an intensive in-person program over 14 weeks during a pandemic, was no mean feat in itself!

Patients and hard-working healthcare workers were front and centre, as the 10 LuminaX teams made their passionate pitches to solve health problems and potentially save lives during an upbeat demo-day event, with hearing impaired founder Elliot Miller taking out top prize for his gamified auditory training program that has the potential to assist 430 million hearing-impaired people worldwide.

Drawing on his own experience after receiving a Cochlear hearing implant, Elliot realised that this amazing device and Australian innovation success, was just the start of his hearing journey – he needed to train his brain to adapt to an auditory world, and existing training programs were simply inadequate. Hearoes was born.

“Receiving the implant was like being given a car, but without ever having driven a car before, let alone having a driver’s license,” Elliot told the audience.

With a Bachelor’s degree in Games Design and the support of clinicians, Elliot has brought a fellow designer onboard and their initial gamified and modular product has already attracted 1,000 active consumer users in a month, while almost 50 clinical users have also signed on. Queensland Health has supported the proof-of-concept, purchasing 25 program licenses for $92,000, ahead of a $500,000 seed funding round.

Health and economic costs from hearing loss are estimated at $41b per annum in Australia alone and the program is proving to be a universal solution that cuts across languages and can help people with different types of hearing loss. The two-pronged (B2C and B2B) business model targets both end-users and the healthcare industry, with a combined annual revenue forecast of $101m by 2026.

“We’re already building a world where people with hearing loss can achieve their full potential,” Elliott enthused.

Cohort and CoSpaces CEO Ben Howe said the accelerator’s success was built on the wealth of expertise they were able to bring together from across the Precinct to assist the start-ups with 400 hours of coaching, with the 30 mentors representing the brightest industry and clinical minds, including eight clinicians from Gold Coast Health.

Health is a hard industry in which to innovate, so it is has been great to see teams who are not only motivated to solve big problems and build great businesses, but who genuinely care about helping others in need.

From an acute care medical research data program, to an online platform preparing children to cope with medical procedures, programs to enhance medical and healthcare training, and an online health and wellness program for those with disabilities, the solutions developed by the ten teams have already attracted almost $1m in funding and seen 8 new jobs added across the group during the accelerator period.

Taylor Hobbs founder of Comfort Quest took out the LuminaX AI Prize for his platform that aims to take the anxiety out of medical procedures and hospital admissions and which has already attracted partnerships with the Queensland Children’s Hospital and the Meg Foundation.

Queensland Minister for the Environment, Great Barrier Reef, Science and Youth Affairs, Meaghan Scanlon MP, with the female founding team members

The other participants were:

Able Digital Wellness – an online community and digital wellness platform designed to improve the lives and health of those living with a disability.
Beyond the Clinic – A two-sided marketplace that empowers patients to take their health into their own hands, whilst providing doctors with data to analyse patient outcomes.
Datarwe – An acute care medical research data platform, enabling medical researchers to develop next-generation artificial intelligence clinical diagnostic tools and technologies.
Edify Medical – A new digital ecosystem designed to break down the barriers of language, cost, and access to information that creates healthcare inequality across the globe.
Virtual Psychologist – A psychology and counselling business that delivers text-based mental health services by qualified professional staff through a global IT platform.
Bundle of Rays – Immersive learning tools such as VR and AR to deliver education and training within the health care space.
Oncana – An integrated digital health and wellness experience that bridges the gap between treatment and care for people living with and beyond cancer.
Fwards – A digital platform that provides clinical nurses the tools to connect, reflect and grow together, aiming to improve burnout and turnover within the nursing sector

LuminaX was delivered in partnership with the Queensland AI Hub and IntelliHQ and with the support of the Queensland and Australian governments. Applications for the next program will open in January 2022.

Filed Under: BUSINESS, HEALTH, PROJECTS Tagged With: child health and development, childcare, Evans Long, Proxima

Precinct to be home to early learning and child development ‘living lab’

Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development Hon Steven Miles MP is joined by Matthew Evans from Evans Long developments to turn the first sod on the Proxima development

As the first private development in the Precinct’s Lumina commercial cluster, the $80 million Proxima building will offer a novel collaborative space for paediatric researchers, clinicians, teachers, early childhood educators, and parents, in a model that puts all children at the centre.

Up to 30 Griffith University researchers and PhD students will develop innovative programs and early interventions for young children, including those with additional needs, through co-locating with a new early learning centre and paediatric clinicians from Gold Coast Health in the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct.

Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development Steven Miles was joined by Minister for the Environment, Great Barrier Reef, Science and Youth Affairs Meaghan Scanlon, Griffith University Vice Chancellor Professor Carolyn Evans, Gold Coast Hospital and Health Services Board Chair Ian Langdon, and representatives of developer Evans Long to turn the first sod on the new Proxima development, which will be focused on child health and development and is set for completion at the end of 2022.

The Deputy Premier and Minister Scanlon said founding tenant Sanctuary Early Learning Adventure would create a unique environment that will include support for children with special needs. Approximately 25 percent of the children who will use the inclusive centre are anticipated to have additional needs.

“This is an Australian-first, an early learning centre with in-house access to allied paediatric health and research professionals, and I’m so pleased they have chosen to establish within Lumina at the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct,” Mr Miles said.

Around 180 construction jobs will be created and when fully occupied, 900 health and teaching jobs will be based at Proxima, providing access to a huge range of services for families.”

“Children will have access to the expert care that they need within a familiar, fun and caring environment at their early learning centre, “Minister Scanlon said.

*Artist impression of the Proxima development*

Professor Evans said co-location provided the perfect basis on which to establish a Centre of Excellence in Early Childhood Education.

“The Centre brings together interdisciplinary teams across Griffith’s Allied Health disciplines and Early Childhood Education to embed a model of research-integrated inclusive childcare education,” Professor Evans said.

“This will be a place in which every child can grow and learn together.”

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Mario Pinto said a ‘living lab’ provides a rare and valuable opportunity for researchers and would build on the university’s existing strengths in education and autism research.

“This is all about collaboration, leveraging complementary skills, building on strong but flexible foundations as a springboard to a whole new level of research translation”.

“It is a perfect example of what our Research and Innovation Plan seeks to achieve with research impact, and what we are striving to create in the Precinct through integration.”

Associate Professor David Trembath, who will lead an allied health team of researchers from the university’s Menzies Health Research Institute Queensland, said the model would benefit both children with additional needs and the broader pre-school population.

“We will be looking at each child individually, rather than thinking of them through the lens of their diagnosis,“ Associate Professor Trembath said.

“It is all about identifying each child’s strengths, preferences, and interests and working with these. This is how all kids like to learn and doing so in an inclusive environment like this is good for all kids.

The close relationship with the diagnostic clinics at Gold Coast Health will also lead to children’s needs being identified in a timely way, so we can intervene at the earliest opportunity when it is most beneficial.”

L-R Evans Long co-founder Dirk Long with Lauren and Damian Hall andSanctuary Early Learning students

Sanctuary Early Learning Adventure Co-Founder, Damian Hall said the new state-of-the-art facility would cater for up to 400 children and they would have their own specialists embedded.

“Proxima will help relieve more of the pressure on parents also as it will eliminate most excess travel in transporting their children to and from medical appointments,” Mr Hall said.

Technology will be a focus for some educational supports, but equally researchers will learn practically through observing interactions between educators and children.

“For some children, technology will open new windows into how they think and learn, for children with minimal language it may open a new door to communication with their peers, parents, and teachers,” Assoc Prof Trembath said.

“We are working on offering training for Sanctuary’s staff and we will certainly be learning from them, and of course from the children themselves, so we can blend the art and science of early childhood development together.

The Director of the Menzies Health Research Institute Queensland, Professor Paul Scuffham played a key role in developing the concept.

“This exciting opportunity will allow for multi-year longitudinal studies as well as rolling evaluations in real-time that we will be able to quickly innovate into new programs,” Professor Scuffham said.

Griffith researchers will also be drawn from the Griffith Institute for Educational Research (GIER) and the University’s specialised Autism Centre of Excellence.

Filed Under: BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: AI, artificial intelligence, Silverpond

AI pioneers Silverpond expand their pool of influence into the Precinct

One of Australia’s pioneering AI and machine learning companies, Melbourne-based Silverpond, is moving a team into Cohort to take advantage of Queensland opportunities for AI particularly in the utility industries, and the emerging health-AI ecosystem on offer in the Precinct.

Having a long-standing relationship with fellow industry innovators Datarwe, a data-driven technology company based out of a data-lab in Cohort, Silverpond will look to steady expansion through easy access to existing and new clients and a pool of local talent.

When Silverpond established 13 years ago, the AI world looked a whole lot smaller – the company evolved from software development and realised they’d need artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) to make sense of an increasingly digitised physical world.

Being early adopters of AI and ML made them a big fish in a small Australian pond, and they understood that a platform on which to build applications for clients would make projects easier, so they came up with their own – HighLighter was built to intelligently enable ‘detection workflows’ through applying deep learning (advanced machine learning) to manage detections of interest from incoming sensor data.

It is now a subscription cloud or self-hosted service to enable technology and operations teams to gain more insight from their data, while Silverpond’s data scientists and software engineers work with energy utilities and other large asset managers such as mines, as well as the health and medical sector, to develop enterprise-level solutions.

Silverpond CEO Jonathan Chang explains that HighLighter detects, measures, predicts and automates.

“We’re working with utilities such as Powercor and Energy Queensland to help improve the inspection of the pole and wire assets, helping to reduce the risks that contribute to dangers such as bushfires. The AI works with human inspectors to help identify where field teams first need to pay attention.” Jonathan explains.

“Similarly, this approach of improving the way we work through AI, has been used to improve the detection of illegal poaching on wildlife reserves, and we’re now working with the Australian Institute for Marine Science to survey fish populations in our tropical waters.

From the macro (i.e. satellite image) to a micro image in a lab, whether it be using still or video imagery, radiology, 2D and 3D scans or heatmaps, we can apply the same approaches.”

Defect inspection of electricity crossarm in Silverpond’s AI powered platform HighLighter

With an existing Queensland energy client to service, consolidating staff into the Precinct makes good business sense, and for a company that has invested heavily in driving skills and growth in the AI/ML ecosystem, it’s a logical step to grow within our emerging AI in healthcare hub.

“We’ve partnered with Kelvin Ross, Chief Technology Officer for Datarwe over a number of years on programs like Women in AI,” says Jonathan.

“We’re still an emerging community within the broader IT industry and there is a lot of room for education of businesses and the general community about the opportunities and ethics of AI and ML, and a growing demand to skill up the next-generation of specialised professionals.”

Silverpond, a founding member of Responsible AI Australia, regularly runs events and workshops to build the AI/ML ecosystem, advocates to government on policy and industry capability, hosts a small co-working space in Melbourne; and undertakes an annual survey and analysis on the state of the growing sector.

“We’re going to fit right into the collaborative environment at Cohort and within the Precinct, and are looking forward to being involved in events, mentoring, potential research partnerships and also taking on local interns, as well as broader engagement with the Queensland AI Hub.”