ACADI Health Technology Innovation Challenge 2023

The Australian Centre for Accelerating Diabetes Innovations (ACADI) held its first Health Technology Innovation Challenge pitch event on Monday 13 November.

(L-R): Professor Elif Ekinci, ACADI Director, with Health Tech Innovation Challenge Winners, Professor Lan Fu, Dr Buddini Karawdeniya, Ms Shiyu Wei and Professor Chris Nolan.

The Health Technology Innovation Challenge is designed to provide seed funding for visionary students or researchers passionate about transforming health care for people living with diabetes, and it is open to any of ACADI’s partner organisations.  

Four teams were shortlisted to pitch their ground-breaking innovations. Their missions were to prevent, monitor or treat diabetes and its possible complications. Hosted by Professor Jia-Yee Lee and held at Melbourne Connect, the finalists presented a 5-minute pitch to a panel of five experienced judges, before answering questions on their innovations.

The first prize of $30,000 seed funding was awarded to Dr Buddini Karawdeniya and colleagues from The Australian National University for "Ketowhistle – a highly accurate point of care home-use breath acetone sensor for diagnosing diabetic ketoacidosis".

The second prize of $10,000 seed funding was awarded to Ms Renee Ng and colleagues from The University of Western Australia for “GluCLOSE – improving screening, outcome and diagnosis of euglycemic diabetic ketoacidosis”.

ACADI also commends Ms Chiara Beccia from the University of Melbourne and Dr Jean-Pierre Ndabakuranye from RMIT University for their outstanding projects that were shortlisted to the final four.