Case Study – HCF Catalyst
Case Study – HCF Catalyst
HCF is Australia’s largest not-for-profit health fund with 2.1 million members. HCF has always been an innovator amongst Australian health insurers. To continue with that commitment HCF partnered with Slingshot to run the HCF Catalyst program
HCF identified specific areas of their business that they wanted to develop, grow and offer to their members and the broader Australian community. The HCF Catalyst themes were developed incorporating those key areas of focus, HCF’s corporate objectives and current health tech trends.
Connectivity, Experience & Personalisation
This theme is about empowering consumers through improved convenience, information access, decision making and quality of care.
Insight
This theme is about assisting doctors and health organisations to generate better insight by combining developments in computational power with data.
Community & Wellness
People and communities are our lifeblood and so this theme is all about them.
Efficiency & Outcomes
This theme is about decreasing health care costs and improving results.
The HCF catalyst program was open to both early stage startups and later stage scaleup companies. Both the startups and scaleups received mentoring, coaching, marketing support, and legal and financial advice, with the startups also receiving $50,000 in seed funding.
The selected startups were:
Helps provides families with reassurance that their elderly loved ones are safe at home through Internet of Things-connected devices monitoring their activity.
Created by a team at the CSIRO, Cardihab aims to provide cardiac rehabilitation to patients wherever they are via smartphone.
Developed by a team of doctors, CancerAid wants to empower cancer patients by providing them with an app that tracks their treatment options and journey.
MindFit is looking to help psychological patients find the right care and track their treatment, progress, and results.
Dubbed the ‘iSelect for the fitness industry’, Lookfit helps consumers compare and contrast fitness and gym plans.
Dream Well has created Fit for Battle, an app that gamifies running to help motivate users to be active.
PROGRAM OUTCOMES
The opportunity to work with HCF’s engaged customer base was invaluable for the chosen startups, whether they entered the program with just a great idea, or already an established business. This program provides the right product-market fit for today’s most innovative health tech ideas to help them develop the commercial and investment relationships needed to succeed.
OUTCOMES FOR PARTICIPANTS
- Out of the six startup companies, two have received follow-on funding during the program total in excess of $1.5m
- Total valuations of the program startups exceed $10m
- All six companies exited the initial 3-month program in revenue.
OUTCOMES FOR HCF
- HCF Catalyst was Australia’s first corporate Health Tech Accelerator taking a leadership position in the space
- Provided HCF exposure to Startups in multiple disciplines including mental health, cancer treatment, cardiac rehabilitation,fitness and wellbeing, aged care, pathology, data analytics & health records
- A Large number of HCF staff shared in the learning, language, and process of new and developing business models
- Sponsorship of events such as Health-Hack and Sydney Health-tech Meetup group further cemented HCF’s brand as a
leader in innovation at a grass-roots level
- 500 RSVPs for Demo Day. Incredible feedback and engagement from innovation community
HCF Catalyst Demo Day
Why Catalyst?
HCF’s vision is to improve health outcomes for all Australians, and improvement requires innovation. This is exactly what the Catalyst program supports. We are proud to be enabling budding entrepreneurs to test their ideas and to help them succeed in their health tech endeavours.
We are very proud to have launched Australia’s first Health Tech Startup program.”
Sheena Jack
Chief Strategy Officer- HCF
Our Programs
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