A $50 million grant from the Albanese government for the Australian Artificial Heart Frontiers Program will help to develop and commercialise its “Total Artificial Heart”, with hopes to harness technology to “halve deaths from heart failure” globally.
The program brings together stakeholders including five universities and three clinical partners, to work toward the development of three “transformative, next-generation cardiac technologies, collectively known as the Total Artificial Heart”.
The heart employs magnetic levitation technology, which “promises to be durable for more than 10 years”, potentially allowing patients to achieve a better quality of life.
As well as going toward the development of the tech, the funding from the Albanese government will also help to commercialise the project, which is “expected to contribute $1.8 billion to Australia and Australian society” over the next fifteen years, including savings for the healthcare system and the creation of “over 2,000 jobs”.
Mark Butler, Minister for Health and Aged Care, praised the collaboration that the project represents, adding, “this is an incredible story of Australian ingenuity and sovereign manufacturing”.
Collaborators include Monash University; University of Sydney; University of New South Wales; Griffith University; University of Queensland; The Alfred; Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute; St Vincent’s Health Australia; and BiVACOR.
To learn more about the Total Artificial Heart and the Australian Artificial Heart Frontiers Program, please click here.
In other news from Australia, a study published in Nurse Education in Practice has evaluated the preparedness of Australian nursing students for the digitalised clinical environment, carrying out an integrative review of the literature and highlighting the need for “a professional digital literacy competency standard framework embedded into nursing curricula”.
In related news from elsewhere, Finnish health tech company CardioSignal has announced that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding for their tech to promote early detection of heart diseases, with the investment intended to help scale the solution and pursue further clinical validation.
