Showcasing Australian Health Innovation


Pictured: Health Horizon Co-Founder Mathew McGann and MTPConnect Director Major Projects Elizabeth Stares at the Canberra Innovation Network.

Canberra-based healthtech start-up Health Horizon identified a gap between research and translation in Australia - how can someone search for an exciting development in Australian health innovation? Their solution is a unique showcase platform that enable people to track new technologies and approaches so that the whole development process, from idea to product, is visible to the public.

Health Horizon is the brainchild of Co-Founders Marcus Dawe and Mathew McGann. Their project leverages human-curated machine learning to scan the internet for new Australian innovations, and piece together their history of development. The system provides a searchable, public pipelines platform for medtech, pharma and digital health innovations, allowing the progress to be tracked into the future.

Health Horizon’s consortium collaborators – Health Informatics Society of Australia, ANDHealth, Hospital and Health Services IP Ltd, MTAA, Medical Software Industry Association, University of Newcastle, Queensland University of Technology and Novartis Australia – then provided data and access to key health technology and care events around the nation and promoted and encouraged more innovators to share their stories on the platform.

Health Horizon CEO Marcus Dawe said the platform provided users with a comprehensive list of Australian health innovations, from start to finish.

“There’s never been such a complete record of the technologies under development and it will continue to stay up to date,” Mr Dawe said.

“This platform is an important first step toward a national online infrastructure that has empowered innovators, investors and consumers for the benefit of health research in Australia and globally.”

Pictured: The Health Horizon team at the World Hospital Congress in Brisbane.

Currently, the showcase has over 1,000 health innovations to explore with approximately 30 Australian innovations uploaded to the platform each week. The dataset and tracking system are now being used by Health Horizon to track capabilities, companies and people and how it has been interacted with in Australia and internationally.

To mark the end of a year-long development program supported by MTPConnect through the Industry Growth Centre Project Fund Program, the Health Horizon showcase was launched at the World Hospital Congress in Brisbane last year, with the President of the International Hospital Federation cutting the ceremonial ribbon. The event demonstrated the culmination of the project with all 1,000 innovations being showcased and 11 of the most exciting start-ups demonstrating their technologies in person.

Project manager and Co-Founder Mathew McGann said the showcase provides a new level of transparency in Australian innovation.

“The public have an important role to play in helping the right treatments make it into our lives,” Mr McGann said.

“This showcase is the place they, alongside professionals, can explore, understand and monitor the technologies that matter to them.”

Health Horizon achieved its goal – to build an always-on, online representation of everything happening in health innovation as it happened.

For more information, visit Health Horizon.

You can also hear more about this project from the Co-Founder himself, Mathew McGann on the MTPConnect Podcast now.