From Colin Murdoch’s invention of the disposable syringe, to Fisher & Paykel Healthcare’s famed ‘preserving-jar’ humidifier prototype; Aotearoa has an impressive history of healthtech innovation.
Healthtech innovators, however, face some unique challenges on the road to success: strict rules and regulations, clinical trials, different investment needs, and longer pathways to commercialisation and mass adoption.
To meet these challenges, Callaghan Innovation and the Consortium for Medical Device Technologies (CMDT), with support from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), have developed the HealthTech Activator.
The Activator aims to connect the sector better, support capability-building programmes and services, provide useful resources, and make bringing a new healthtech product to market easier.
If you’re developing a new product or technology that could positively impact the well-being of patients, make the HealthTech Activator your first port of call.
Benefits to your business
A rich library of online resources, including in depth information on trials and regulations.
Workshops, webinars and events to help build capability in your business.
Request local and international market research and sector intelligence from the HTA database.
Wraparound support from our Business Innovation Advisors, as well as opportunities to engage with international experts.
By the numbers
Is this right for me?
The Healthtech Activator supports all business development stages: from a clinician with the kernel of an idea for a business to an established company with products or services already in the market.
Opportunities in healthtech spring from many sources: from scientists undertaking research in our universities and Crown Research Institutes, to clinicians working in our hospitals, and entrepreneurs who recognise an unmet need but may have a limited healthcare background.
The Healthtech Activator supports all business development stages: from a clinician with the kernel of an idea for a business to an established company with products or services already in the market.
Opportunities in healthtech spring from many sources: from scientists undertaking research in our universities and Crown Research Institutes, to clinicians working in our hospitals, and entrepreneurs who recognise an unmet need but may have a limited healthcare background.
Meet our partners
Callaghan Innovation has seriously accelerated our company development by connecting us to experts in our medical field in product and intellectual property development and commercialisation.
"The workshop was specifically for businesses in the health field, and the facilitator was highly experienced in health. The session gave us a whole framework for market validation – how to schedule and conduct customer interviews to really test our assumptions and avoid the typical mistakes startups make.
"The HealthTech Activator has run amazing programmes and given us amazing access to grants, information, insights, programmes, referrals, and all their networks that they have so graciously pulled us into and shared with us.
"We've been really fortunate to be one of the first organisations to be able to work with the HealthTech Activator. So, for about two and a half years we've been involved with workshops, webinars, and it's been incredibly beneficial to our company.
Something that was very helpful for us was a market validation workshop. It was led by a world-leading expert and other companies in the workshop were really inspiring. We were able to come away with plans that were useful to us right in that particular part of our journey.
The HealthTech Activator helped us to navigate quite a complex landscape. They helped us to understand what we needed to do, when we needed to do it, and who we needed to speak to.
Heart disease is one of the world’s most preventable causes of death. Healthtech startup HeartLab is on a mission to help the doctors diagnosing it, using AI to give them better, and quicker, information from echocardiograms.
From science fiction to reality, deep tech startup Helico is wanting to produce life-saving therapeutic compounds from plants and, ultimately, ‘edible medicine’. Callaghan Innovation is supporting in every way possible.
Want to join the Healthtech Activator Community?
Get started today!
Get in touch with a member of the team.