Latest Updates at VitalTrace

From Prof. Jonathan Morris, VitalTrace - Chief Medical Officer

I had the wonderful opportunity to present VitalTrace’s pre-clinical data in the highly regarded Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine 2025 Pregnancy Meeting in Denver, Colorado. This is the premier pregnancy meeting in USA. Our abstract was one of the 104 selected for presentation out of more than 2,000 submitted speaking to the significance and magnitude of the accomplishments we have achieved.

SMFM was a great opportunity to connect with obstetricians allowing VitalTrace to build invaluable relationships with leading practitioners and forming alliances to prepare the company for future activity in the United States and beyond. There was very strong interest in DelivAssure from leaders in Boston, Washington, Texas, East Virginia, New York and Philadelphia amongst others.

Some particularly notable feedback:

From Dr Emily Reiff (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School),

“I was fascinated by your study of real-time fetal lactate monitoring and think that innovation like this is what is needed for effective intrapartum management.”
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From Dr Justin Lappen (Cleveland Clinic),

“The whole team thought that DelivAssure would assist with Class II CTG dilemmas.”

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It was reinvigorating to see such strong support for continuous lactate monitoring and reinforces our confidence to launch DelivAssure in the United States.

VitalTrace is proud to announce it has received support from the Cook government, under the Investment Attraction Fund (IAF) which supports WA advanced manufacturing projects as part of an effort to diversify the Western Australia economy.

The IAF is intended to enable new investment into a range of industries, facilitating a more targeted and coordinated approach to investment attraction supporting the WA Government's economic diversification framework, Diversify WA.

Roger Cook, Premier of Western Australia said “Backing local companies to manufacture here in WA, to value-add, and to take on the world in developing high-tech products for the future.”

The dedicated and growing team at VitalTrace hopes to make good on Premier Cook’s support and create a nation first continuous lactate biosensor manufacturing facility.

VitalTrace is proud to announce it has received support from the McGowan government, Roger Cook and Medical Technology and Pharmaceutical (MTP) Connect under the WA Life Sciences Innovation Hub Manufacturing Voucher Program.

MTPConnect Managing Director and CEO, Dr Dan Grant, said, “Manufacturing medical products is a national priority so we’re supporting these promising projects to develop their medical devices and diagnostics.”

The MTP initiative, driven by Tracey Wilkinson and Kevin Pfleger, aims to accelerate the development and manufacturing of medical technology and pharmaceutical products in WA, such as medical devices, diagnostics, biologics and pharmaceuticals. The program is currently co-funded through the McGowan Government's New Industries Fund, industry growth centre MTPConnect and The University of Western Australia.

VitalTrace is honoured to be one of five WA-based companies under the scheme to been awarded a total of $450,000 to accelerate innovation projects requiring advanced manufacturing capabilities.

VitalTrace’s Chief Executive Officer said, “We are so fortunate to be supported by the McGowan Government through MTPConnect. This will not only bolster our path to market, but also bring new opportunities for Western Australia.”

This wonderful news adds to recent announcement of a new fund of approximately $40 million of ongoing support made towards health and medical research, innovation and commercialisation in Western Australia by Roger Cook.

More information

VitalTrace and our associated partners are honoured to announce that our BioMedTech Horizons bid has been successfully awarded a $797,276 grant from the MTPConnect and Dr Daniel Grant. This funding will accelerate VitalTrace's capacity to create prototype devices, fast-tracking our steps to commercialisation ready for advanced manufacturing and clinical trials activity.

MTPConnect Managing Director and CEO, Dr Daniel Grant, says this round focused predominantly on the development of pre-commercial prototypes that are entering human clinical trials.

“From the five selected projects, patients of the future are set to benefit from new medical devices for blindness and vision impairment, improved neonatal resuscitation, precision monitoring of fetal complications during birth, real-time atrial fibrillation/cardiac monitoring for patients at home and patient matched spinal implants,” Dr Grant said.

Read the announcement here.

We are excited by the opportunity this funding presents to improve the future of childbirth monitoring!

VitalTrace and our associated partners are honoured to announce that our CRC-P bid has been successfully awarded a $2.85M grant from the Commonwealth. This grant highlights the importance of improving the standard of care delivered to mothers and babies during the childbirth process, and will fund integral research and development milestones.

We are excited by the opportunity this funding presents to improve the future of childbirth monitoring, with a total project value of $11.3M and a world class team of researchers and innovators.

Thank you to our key supporters to date and everyone that supported this successful bid, particularly Danica Sekulovska GAICD and McGarry House.

CRC-Ps strengthen links between research organisations and industry, to develop new technologies, products, processes and services. For more information, and to see the list of successful projects, visit business.gov.au/crc-p

VitalTrace would like to announce we have been named a Finalist in WA Innovator of the Year for the Wesfarmers Wellbeing Category!

We are incredibly proud to be named amongst such high-calibre companies, including WA MedTech innovators in VeinTech, The University of Western Australia/Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and Avicena Systems.

Thank you to Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Life Sciences WA MTPConnect and AusBiotech.

We cannot wait to see how this opportunity allows us to further progress our technology, company and mission to deliver a new gold-standard in childbirth monitoring.

Congratulations and good luck to all 2021 WA Innovator of the Year Finalists!

See the article on the Western Australia Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation’s website.

Additionally, see the article developed by UWA after our conversations.

A wonderful feature from one of VitalTrace's clinical and commercial advisors, Vinayak Smith, on the role of innovative technologies to reduce the risk of litigation in obstetrics!

“Cardiotocography (CTG) has been used for foetal heartrate (FHR) surveillance since the 1970s, as a means of detecting foetal hypoxia and guiding clinical decisions around delivery timing.

Despite the length of its usage, there is yet to be convincing evidence that CTG reduces birth asphyxia, stillbirths, caesareans or instrumental deliveries.

Although the technology is good at providing reassurance when foetal heartrates are ‘normal’, it is less useful at working out the prognosis of ‘abnormal’ heartrates, explains Dr. Vinayak Smith, of Monash University and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

“It is not easy for two clinicians to agree or interpret the same CTG output the same way,” said Dr. Smith ahead of the Obstetric Malpractice Conference.

“Heartrates which look normal are easy to trust, whereas abnormal ones could mean anything. The CTG doesn’t tell us how worried we should be when a heartrate doesn’t look quite right.

“As a result, FHR red flags can be wrongfully dismissed by the clinician, leading to ‘preventable’ delivery complications or, in extreme cases, foetal deaths.

“Conversely, false alarms can lead to unnecessary clinical intervention and greater numbers of (precautionary) C-sections – a procedure which is risky for both mother and baby.”

Aside from the risk of healthcare complications, CTG reliability issues expose clinicians to legal culpability.

With 20 percent of obstetrics claims involving CTG – and obstetrics accounting for a significant proportion of medico legal disputes – it is widely agreed that better foetal monitoring solutions are needed.”

See the full article here.

VitalTrace has had the pleasure of participating in iPREP WA's Industry and PhD Research and Engagement Program. We were fortunate to work with our very own “Dream Team”; Alvin Lee, Saman Akbar Zadeh and Georgios Mavropalias, bringing their expertise in signal processing, data science and biomedical science respectively.