20 national projects in Australia’s medical technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical (MTP) sector will share in $7.385 million of funding provided by MTPConnect, a not-for-profit company responsible for delivering the activities of the MTP Growth Centre.
The funding is awarded through by MTPConnect’s Project Fund Program, a competitive, minimum dollar-for-dollar matched funding program that aims to invest in ideas that could boost the innovation, productivity and competitiveness of Australia’s MTP sector.
The projects, which are expected to leverage as much as $15.2 million in industry partner funds, were selected based on their potential to have sector-wide impact and to deliver results on a national scale.
Sue MacLeman, CEO of MTPConnect, said all these projects are aligned with MTPConnect’s Sector Growth Priorities as defined in its 10-year Sector Competitiveness Plan.
“This competitive, dollar-for-dollar matched funding program aims to invest in big, bold ideas to accelerate growth, drive greater commercialisation opportunities and address key barriers in the sector,” she said.
“The selection panel has chosen these 20 projects because they creatively address many of these barriers and have the potential to have a major impact on the sector. By supporting these projects, we believe we can develop a more vibrant MTP sector ecosystem with more successful companies, and ultimately improve the health and wellbeing of Australia and the world.”
MTPConnect has identified the need to create a highly productive commercialisation environment from research to early clinical trials and proof-of-concept as one of the principal sector growth priorities.
“A number of the selected projects will help achieve this including The Bridge Tech Program – a program providing entrepreneurs and researchers with access to product development and commercialisation training, and internships; The Healthy Living Design Hub – which offers real-life testing for new health technology products and services to help translate ideas from concept to prototype evaluation; and The Clinical Manufacturing Training Hub – which aims to establish a MTP clinical manufacturing training hub to enable the manufacturing of innovative products into clinical studies,” reads MTPConnect’s statement.
The need to strengthen Australia as an attractive clinical trial research destination has also been pinpointed as one of the key sector growth priorities, which is why MTPConnect has awarded ClinTrial Refer Australia funding to develop a new IT platform that connects doctors and patients to improve clinical trial recruitment.
The development of digitally enabled MTP solutions is another area of interest for MTPConnect, which awarded funding to The National MTP+D Live Showcase to create a searchable and trackable catalogue for Australian medtech, pharmaceutical and digital health innovations.
“MTPConnect’s support will allow Australian’s to grasp the overwhelming but often at times, confusing progress in medtech, pharmaceutical and digital health nation-wide,” said Marcus Dawe, project lead for The National MTP+D Live Showcase and CEO of Health Horizon.
“This platform will unite informed professionals and an empowered public in a national collaborative effort to make sure the right innovations make it into our lives, faster.”
