Myovolt

Still considering whether or not to enter the Food, Fibre, and Agritech Challenge?

ChristchurchNZ spoke to Dr Dianne Jones, founder of Myovolt, to find out why entering a Challenge has been so beneficial for their company.

Myovolt pioneered Wearable Vibration Technology – a research-backed targeted recovery treatment engineered to fit the body.

With their wearable therapeutic device for rehabilitation, they were one of eight finalists in the 2020 Health Tech Supernode challenge run by the Ministry of Awesome and the University of Canterbury’s Centre for Entrepreneurship with support from ChristchurchNZ, KiwiNet and Ryman Healthcare.

They are now working towards a capital raise, and waiting to hear back on the success of their application for a larger Asia-Pacific med-tech accelerator.

Dr Jones said the challenge helped them set a new future pathway for their business.

‘’The challenge really helped us formalise our plans and thinking around a medical device using our technology.’’

Previously they had been targeting sports, physiotherapy, and fitness industries only.

‘’Being part of the Health Tech Challenge allowed us to think about what other device applications could be, and the market for a medical version of our products.

‘’The process allowed us to do research, talk to clinicians, and really distill a design for a product that we now want to take forward.’’

It also set them up for further accelerator success.

‘’Because of the [Health Tech Challenge], we were then invited to be part of a much bigger med-tech accelerator in the Asia Pacific region.

‘’We also had a much stronger application for having done the local one.’’

The Health Tech Challenge had distilled their thinking much more quickly, and provided them with assets and marketing collateral they could easily ‘’plug into’’ another application, she said.

Their new health tech device would ‘’form a central part of our plans for our raise coming up in the middle of the year’’, and was a core part of the product portfolio they were looking to develop further over the next one to two years.

She strongly encouraged other would-be start ups or entrepreneurs to enter, particularly if they wanted to check out an idea and see if it could be turned into something that could eventually be taken to market.

‘’If someone has got an idea around a technology or a product and they’re looking for some way to take that from an idea to a much more developed concept, prototype or even just a marketing plan, then a challenge is a really great process to go through.

‘’It helps you look at whether an idea has legs and whether to develop it and get it to a stage where you can put it in front of someone for investment or research funding.’’

The Food, Fibre, and Agritech Challenge is open for entries now with more than $130,000 prizes up for grabs. Judges are looking for bright ideas to disrupt the sort of products we consume, or how we produce them.

Entries close 14 February.