Healthcare start-ups: Insights and innovations

Session chair
Dr Jen Bichel-Findlay Chair of the NSW Committee, CHIA

Jen has been employed in the health service industry for 44 years, originally as a registered nurse and most recently the inaugural Director of Digital Health & Innovation in the Faculty of Health at the University of Technology Sydney. She is committed to supporting major health reform through digital health initiatives, and has an interest in how data and information are used by clinicians at the point of care and how data analytics impacts on health outcomes and efficiency of health service delivery.he has been associated with HISA for two decades, fulfilling current secretarial obligations for the HISA board and Nursing Informatics Australia, as well as chairperson responsibilities for the NSW Branch. Jen became a CHIA in early 2014, and is the chair of the CHIA Examination Committee. She is keen to actively contribute to NSW HISA activities to influence the positive uptake of digital health by clinicians.

Cody Middlebrook AI Health  

Cody is not just known for his hat and double glasses; he's won awards for saving over $100 million of lost revenue using data mining techniques. Being a data expert with more than 20 years' experience he's made a name for himself in New York, London, Singapore, Sydney and Delhi as the data & AI guy. 

He's well known as a brave and dynamic pioneering entrepreneur that has developed businesses in robotics, software and even award-winning health solutions.

Cody has built fast paced Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Companies, AI Australia & AI Health, these focus on being an affordable solutions provider to local cities and help hospitals leverage innovations and investments through a shared health marketplace.

Dr Jonathan King Lysn 

Dr. Jonathan King is the Founder and CEO of Lysn, a mental health company providing better services from over 500+ psychologists helping Australians either online, phone or face to face. Leaving surgery behind only 3 years ago, Lysn has grown rapidly and is now being used by over 200 clinics across Australia.  

On the side, Jonathan also works as an advisor for the Digital Mental Health Advisory Group & Innovation Advisor for Mackay Hospital & Mackay Institute of Research and Innovation (MIRI)

Jonathan is also an advocate of supporting his future colleagues, spending time teaching at health technology for Medical Students at Melbourne University’s Medical School and University of Queensland. 

Vikram Balakrishnan is a Colorectal Surgeon and health tech entrepreneur and is currently the CEO of myBeepr. Vikram attended medical school at the University of Melbourne and subsequently completed General Surgical training at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne and specialist Colorectal Surgical training through the world renowned CSSANZ. 

Through his training Vikram saw communication inefficiency and an over-reliance on paging systems as a major problem. He also witnessed firsthand the rise of smartphone use and reliance on social media platforms such as WhatsApp. Vikram contributed to published research which shows that 95% of junior doctors are heavily reliant on smartphone instant messaging for their daily workflow. Seeing a significant gap in the market, Vikram founded myBeepr with two other entrepreneurs. myBeepr is a healthcare customised communication and workflow application that meets privacy law guidelines and allows doctors to work on the go. The solution has been intricately curated based on user feedback and myBeepr continues to iterate the product to meet the needs of Australian healthcare workers. myBeepr is being implemented across 14 hospitals in NSW and Victoria, and is on track to become Australian healthcare's most widely adopted communication application.

 

Dr Raghav Murali-Ganesh is the Co-Founder & President of CancerAid. Completing his Medical Training at Nottingham University, UK, Raghav moved to Sydney, Australia and undertook training in Radiation Oncology at RPA hospital, having completed his specialist qualifications in Radiation Oncology in 2016.

Raghav has the ambition of improving healthcare outcomes with the use of digital tools and was drawn towards developing CancerAid. Combining oncological knowledge, entrepreneurial skills and a vision for technology solutions, CancerAid has become the number 1 Cancer App in Australia, the US and the UK. Having received prestigious honours including an appearance on Shark Tank 2017, Emerging Company of the year 2017 (AusBiotech / Johnson & Johnson), Best Global Start-up (Sir Richard Branson), Best Start-up creating Social impact (Steve Wozniak) and the EY Accelerating Entrepreneur award for recognition towards the initiative in creating CancerAid as an innovative healthcare solution to change cancer care on a global scale.