Hacking health: Medtech startup Coviu takes top gong for digitising rural healthcare

In the past month alone, medtech startup Coviu has won Brisbane’s HealthHack, taken home the Innovation Award at the HIMSS AsiaPac18 Conference and been recognised by the Pearcey Foundation.

Coviou offers video consultation software that helps remote healthcare practitioners and businesses bring digital technology into their everyday practice and betters outcomes for patients.

The startup began in 2015 as a telehealth project within CSIRO’s Data61 when chief executive Dr Silvia Pfeiffer was working there. A national leader in the tech space, Dr Pfeiffer has more than 15 years of experience with web video technology, and in addition to her time at CSIRO, has worked for Google, Mozilla and NICTA.

After uncovering a gap in the healthcare industry, she built a rudimentary MVP in a couple of weeks. Once the project was given the green light, she and a handful of developers worked with speech pathologists to better understand the challenges and obstacles they face when working with patients remotely.

“The bones of our research was, first of all, to see if this new technology would make a difference in healthcare. Then to see if online consultations would result in the same patient impact as in-person consultations. Read more

Samantha Murphy - SmartCompany - 13 November 2018