Medtronic announced the launch of the Medtronic Open Innovation Platform (OIP) for APAC. The OIP will bring strategic collaboration in healthcare technologies from various innovators across the Asia-Pacific and several stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem through capability development, partnerships and business organizations networking in the areas of medical technology and digital health.
 
Focusing on the unique healthcare needs of the APAC, this first-of-its-kind platform will enable Medtronic to explore and advance partnership opportunities that can help it leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to address patient needs. Medtronic proposes to invest up to US $ 50 million, over a period of five years, starting from FY22, to support capability development of talent and technology.
 
“Building on the entrepreneurial spirit that we share with other companies including our Medtronic OIP start-ups serves as a launchpad for us to grow new ideas, empower an innovative ecosystem and translate this collaboration into actionable outcomes. Medtronic is one of the best destinations for innovation and innovators due to its large and diverse portfolio across 70 disease states. This is indeed aligned to our new brand and bold ambition to become the global healthcare technology leader, with a focus on AI, robotics, automation, IoT and digital health,” said Chris Lee, president for Asia Pacific, Medtronic.
 
As part of the OIP, Medtronic also launched the Medtronic APAC Innovation Challenge (MAIC), where business organizations in APAC will have the opportunity to showcase innovative medical technology solutions in one of the four domains - namely, ‘Life Transforming Technologies’, ‘Better Outcomes for All’, ‘Experiences that Put People First’ and ‘Insight Driven Care’.
 
MAIC, which is open for submissions now, is scheduled to take place alongside the Medtronic Asia Innovation Conference in the first quarter of 2022 and will be hosted at Medtronic’s regional headquarters in Singapore.
 
The top five winners of the MAIC may have the opportunity to partner with Medtronic to explore joint commercialisation of products and/or run commercial pilots for their proposed MedTech or digital health product solutions.