Medtronic Korea held a press conference on Thursday to introduce the top five winners of the “Medtronic APAC Innovation Challenge (MAIC),” announced on March 16 in Singapore.
The challenge was participated by 323 startups and companies from 46 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
The five winners are MediThinQ, a Korea-based healthcare startup, Alimetry, The Clinician from New Zealand, CliKX, and Imedrix from Singapore. The top five winners will receive opportunities valued at up to $200,000 to commercialize their solutions. In addition, if desired, it is possible to conduct joint research with Medtronic.
Chris Lee, president of Medtronic Asia Pacific, said although Medtronic would not gain much from supporting startups, there should be a “virtual cycle” that leads startups’ R&D to commercialization to speed up healthcare technologies.
“Making such an environment is Medtronic’s vision,” he said.
Medtronic Korea also released the Economist Impact white paper, “Asia Pacific’s HealthTech Ecosystem: Enhancing start-up and SME Success,” published under the support of Medtronic and Singapore’s Economic Development Board. The report covered 150 startup executives working in 15 Asia-Pacific countries, including Korea, Japan, Australia, and Singapore, from September to October 2021.
In the white paper, 55 percent of the respondents recognized Covid-19 as an opportunity, not as a hurdle, to execute and develop innovative ideas. They picked cooperation from multiple areas, including the public and private sectors, as the key factor to accelerate innovation.
Eighty percent said “hiring talents” was a major challenge for health technology startups.
The white paper demonstrated that Korea’s healthcare startup environment was more mature than other countries in the Asia-Pacific.
While 35 percent of early startups in the Asia-Pacific region said the difficulty in securing funds was a major challenge, only 13 percent of Korean companies said so.
Regarding interrelationship between startups, 30 percent of Korean companies described it as “competitive and cooperative simultaneously,” whereas only 19 percent of those in the Asia-Pacific said so.
The white paper can be viewed on the website of Medtronic at "https://bit.ly/MDT-Whitepaper".
MediThinQ, the only Korean startup to make it to the top five, received the award thanks to its digital healthcare solution, SCOPEYE.
Established in 2018, MediThinQ develops medical imaging equipment and wire/wireless wearable smart glasses for surgery. SCOPEYE received positive reviews because of its seamless compatibility with existing display equipment used by physicians without installing additional software.