An on-the-go device that measures several body functions at once and a technology that turns laptops and mobile phones into e-book readers are among the seven innovative ventures named finalists in Enterprize 2010, the University of Queensland’s $100,000 business planning competition.
“This year Enterprize received a record number of entries from entrepreneurs in diverse sectors throughout Australia, which demonstrates Australia’s commitment to producing innovative ideas, products and business models,” said Prof. Iain Watson, head of the business school.
Last year’s winner was CoolMe, a disposable personal cooling device designed to be worn under protective clothing or as a recovery device to counteract heat stress. Other recent winners were Bilexys (2008), which marketed a treatment technology that treats wastewater as a resource, and Codesion (2007), which helps industry overcome geographic boundaries and is the largest worldwide provider of hosted, open-source system centre configuration management.
This year’s finalists must submit a full business plan by 15 September 2010 and meet the judges for interviews on 22 September 2010. The big finale takes place 20 October at Brisbane’s State Library of Queensland, where each finalist will pitch to an audience of venture capitalists and angel investors. The winner will be announced at the end of the day.
The seven finalists and their concepts:
Aviator (Queensland):
Commercialising the development of hands-free control systems, allowing the user to harness the freedom of their mind.
Vaxxas (Queensland):
Developing a needle-free vaccine delivery solution, the Nanopatch, which, in work to date, has demonstrated unprecedented performance in amplifying vaccine efficacy by 150-fold.
Lachesis (New South Wales):
A start-up venture to commercialise a cuffless, compact device that can simultaneously monitor heart rate, blood oxygen levels, mean arterial blood pressure, systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure.
Counselink (Victoria):
An e-health service targeting the $4.1 billion Australian allied health profession, enabling electronic health records and communications and remote pre-diagnosis.
KneeCo (Queensland):
Commercialising an Actiform product for the repair of damaged and torn menisci knee ligaments.
ReadCloud (New South Wales):
Technology that turns laptops and mobile devices into e-book readers.
Southern Innovation (Victoria):
Its core technology, SI-Toro, aims to improve the performance of radiation detectors.
Image by Alosh Bennett
