Co-creating health and tech: MedTechVic 2024

Swinburne University of Technology’s medical technology incubator and accelerator research hub, MedTechVic, invites you to a celebration of our achievements, and a look ahead at what is to come in 2024 and beyond for the partners working with MedTechVic.

Join Swinburne’s Chief Scientist, Professor Virginia Kilborn, who will introduce keynote presentations from Pete Donnelly, TEDx Speaker and Churchill Fellow, and Professor Rachael McDonald, Director of MedTechVic. The showcase will also feature thesis presentations from PhD candidates, as well as project overviews from past fellows of the Clinical Innovation Fellowship Program.

Finally, join a panel of industry experts and leaders as they discuss the potential for assistive technology manufacturing, research, and development in Victoria and Australia. The panel will consist of the following experts:

• Dr Annette Davis, General Manager Therapy Services, Scope Australia
• Bryce Alman, Paralympian and Co-founder, Rove Wheelchairs
• Shelley Jackson, Director of Australian Medtech Manufacturing Centre
• Dr Danny Davis, MedTechVic

About MedTechVic

The opportunities have never been stronger for improving effective care through assistive technology. Significant investment in innovative technology solutions is being pursued as a vital part of the future strategy across Australia’s three biggest areas of national budget expenditure in aged, disability and health care. We are seeing a sharp increase in the creation of meaningful positive outcomes for personal wellbeing and clinical care, which are also delivering cost effective support infrastructure in the face of generational systemic, client and family expectation, budgetary, and staffing challenges. Local manufacturers are eyeing billions in import replacement, and the generation of sustainable export markets for high-quality Australian manufactured products.

Swinburne’s MedTechVic has developed a unique place within this rich and varied medical and assistive technology ecosystem in Australia. Our specialised end-user co-design incubation and acceleration processes embodies Swinburne’s recognised strengths. MedTechVic has access to:  

1. Globally competitive engineering, product design, materials innovation, testing labs and commercialisation practice.

2. Specialist expertise in health, disability, and ageing for pragmatic, lived experience and practitioner involved personal wellbeing outcomes and clinical innovation.

3. Insight into the complex ecosystem of patient journeys, funding mechanisms, governance regimes and health economics required to deliver the sustained impact of systemic change.

MedTechVic is a catalyst for ideation, applying these strengths with the rigour of academic research, and high-quality evidence-based measurement arising from end-user and practitioner participatory design, testing and trials.

This specialist incubator and accelerator engages partners across all stages of the innovation lifecycle from problem investigation and definition, through solution design, product design, enhancements to clinical procedures, ethics and policy, systems integration, evidence-based measurement, health economics, personal wellbeing, commercialisation, manufacture, and post implementation impact reviews.

We look forward to telling you more about our story, sharing our successes and jointly exploring the opportunities and pathways that lie ahead for us all.

Keynote Speaker – Pete Donnelly, Founder, The Wheelchair Skills College

Pete Donnelly is a disabled social entrepreneur and Founder of The Wheelchair Skills College, an organisation with the vision of building confidence and independence for every wheelchair user through peer-led skills training to develop crucial skills for daily living. He built his professional experience through 10 years of program management across disability charities, supporting empowerment of disabled people through skills development, campaigning, advice, and advocacy.

With the support of the Churchill Fellowship, Pete is exploring what is required for disabled innovators to take their lived experience to create scalable solutions to the social issues their community faces and to embed system change. Improved understanding of the systems that act to support disabled innovators, enabling the sharing of lived experience–based innovations demonstrates how these positive initiatives can apply across large communities, ultimately leading to better living outcomes.

Keynote Speaker – Professor Rachael McDonald, Director, MedTechVic

Professor Rachael McDonald is Co-founder and Director of the MedTechVic hub, creating innovative enabling technology, products and services to enhance lives for people with disability, ageing or health issues, their families, and the people who support them.

Professor McDonald is a clinical, research and teaching health professional with an interest in enabling all people to participate equally in life situations. She has worked extensively in the field in children’s services and adult settings. She has supervised over 30 research (honour’s, MSc and PhD) students specialising in the care of people with complex disability, and led the development and evaluation into the effectiveness of assistive technologies. She has published over 150 academic outputs across a range of publications. She has qualifications in occupational therapy, biomechanics and higher education in addition to her Doctorate and has attracted over $11 million in competitive grant funding.