Telehealth startup Coviu, which spun out of the CSIRO’s Data61 arm, has raised $1 million in funding from Main Sequence Ventures, managers of the CSIRO’s $200 million innovation fund.
Coviu works on WebRTC, or Web Real Time Communications, where real time video conferences can take place in a person’s browser by users able copy and paste a URL into their personal browser and enter a conference call.
The focus is on enabling consultations between doctors and their patients, without a patient having to have and understand technology more sophisticated than a computer with an internet connection and browser – particularly useful in regional, rural, and remote areas with both poor internet connections and speeds and limited access to healthcare.
Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, CEO of Coviu, said the investment will allow Coviu to scale and seek out partnerships with health systems.
“In Coviu, we’ve developed a solution tailored for health practitioners that enables rich experiences with patients in the comfort of their own homes through custom tools designed for each health specialisation, whether it’s speech pathology or psychiatry,” she said.
The platform is currently being used by 1,100 clinicians, connecting them to more than 20,000 patients. With the funding to scale, the startup expects to be working with 7,000 clinicians by the end of 2018.
Phil Morle, partner at Main Sequence Ventures, said, “Through Coviu, we can see the wonderful future of healthcare emerging. Patients, no matter where they are, get clear visual support while collaborating with their care team.
“Care teams help more people in an experience which is delightful to use and integrated with the systems they already use. We haven’t seen anyone else do it this well.”
Meanwhile, Queensland startup BenchOn has raised $650,000 in seed funding.
Founded by Tim Walmsley, the BenchOn marketplace helps businesses match idle staff to short term contracts from reputable companies and government agencies in need of talent, with the aim of solving the issue of employee underutilisation for some companies and, on the flip side for others, being short staffed.
Since its founding in 2016, the startup reported it has processed over $50 million worth of contracts across industries including defence, IT, mining, and engineering.
The startup, a graduate of BlueChilli, will put the funding towards expansion across Australia.
“We are operating across 10 industries now so we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we now have the resources to take that next big step.”
Image: Tim Walmsley. Source: Supplied.
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