Melbourne startup Sleeptite has won the Digital Health and Health Tech category at the InnovationAus 2022 Awards for Excellence for its innovative monitoring technology assisting in the aged care sector.
The InnovationAus 2022 Awards for Excellence were presented on Thursday night at a gala black-tie dinner at the Cutaway in Sydney’s Barangaroo district.
Digital health has experienced unprecedented growth in light of the COVID pandemic, and the willingness of Australians to adopt these technologies in terms of healthcare has increased exponentially.
This category celebrated some of the pioneering digital health and health tech companies in Australia.
Sleeptite took out the category for its REMi smart bedding system, which provides innovative non-invasive monitoring technology for aged care facilities.
REMi uses flexible sensors in bedding to extract data and send it to a backend platform to be analysed and translated into valuable insights through a user interface designed specifically for the aged care workforce, whether it’s in a residential facility or a home environment.
This allows for the continuous monitoring of the presence, position and posture of an aged care resident across a whole night, helping the aged care workforce to prevent falls and monitor their residents throughout the night.
Sleeptite landed a $1.7 million CRC-P grant funding from the federal government, and a further $850,000 in 2021 in the form of a co-investment grant from the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre’s Commercialisation Fund to bring the product to market.
Aged care and smart beddings runs in Sleeptite founder’s Cameron van den Dungen’s family. His oma, Petronella, opened and ran a number of private aged care homes in Melbourne, while his father, Henk, was a founding member of Forty Winks.
This history inspired Cameron to start investigating new technologies and how they can improve care for older people. This led him to found Sleeptite in 2017.
After wining the award on Thursday night, Mr van den Dungen credited the innovation ecosystem that had helped bring the the technology to life.
“In a world like this where you’re trying to create brand new ideas and take something special and brand new and unique and world leading, you need collaboration partners,” he said.
“In Australia we’ve got an incredible ecosystem that I’m very lucky to be part.”
Mr van den Dungen also credited the hard work of the Sleeptite team.
“You don’t do it on your own. You have to do with a team.”
Sydney tech company 4eyesVision was highly commended in the category for its efforts to reduce the massive burden of blurred vision due to poor focus in remote and developing communities through on-the-spot eye testing and glasses.
The InnovationAus 2022 Awards for Excellence were supported by: Investment NSW, AusIndustry, Australian Computer Society, Technology Council of Australia, Verizon, Mimecast, Microsoft Australia, Digital Health CRC (DHCRC), Agile Digital, METS Ignited, Innovation Manufacturing CRC (IMCRC), CSIRO, and Q-CTRL.
Photography for InnovationAus.com by Phil Carrick and Belinda Pratten
