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Adelaide was a hive of medtech sector activity this week, hosting the national AusMedTech Conference and ANDHealth digital health summit.

Medtech is a significant sector for Australia, contributing $5.4 billion to Australia’s gross domestic product in the 2022 financial year, representing a compound annual growth rate of 5.9 per cent over the previous two years.

The sector employs an estimated 17,000 Australians, with a further 34,000 working for industries that supply inputs into the medtech industry.

The theme of the 2024 ANDHealth summit was ‘AI Investment and Industry Trends.’

According to ANDHealth, 19 per cent of Australian digital health companies list artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as their primary technology, and this been incrementally increasing over the past few years.

Supporting innovation in South Australia’s health sector

Acknowledging the increasing prevalence of AI in vital sectors like healthcare, the Department for Industry, Innovation and Science recently invested $6 million, matched by the University of Adelaide, to expand upon the work of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML).

This funding includes support for AIML’s research and engineering team to help government and industry develop AI-enabled products and services, automate processes and improve productivity.

The South Australian Government is also investing a further $900,000 to support the continuation of the Medical Device Partnering Program (MDPP).

An initiative of Flinders University's Medical Device Research Institute, the MDPP works to foster collaboration between researchers, industry and end-users to create medical technologies where there is both identified clinical need and viable market opportunity.