Santosh Kaur is a passionate registered nurse and mother of a 5 year old. She has worked in healthcare for over 15 years from frontline to senior management/executive roles. She practiced as a doctor in India, successfully running her private practice before moving to Australia in 2009 and becoming a nurse. Throughout her journey around wound care, she was frustrated to see the simple gaps in wound care resulting in negative patient outcomes. Santosh is the founder of SmartHeal which launched in 2020.
SmartHeal is a technology alternative to manual measurements and manual sharing of important wound data, replaced with a no touch technique. It aims for healthcare professionals to have live remote access to wound data, make wound assessments and assist with speech to text notes thus saving time, cost and people. SmartHeal also aims to assist healthcare professionals in providing optimum wound care by analysing the wound tissue for infection, moisture and providing suggestions for suitable dressing. Source: https://sbeaustralia.org/news/4358.
Australian Health Journal spoke with Santosh prior to another startup pitching contest (where SmartHeal won).
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A New Era in Primary Health Care Nursing
Coinciding with this year’s International Nurses Day, this week’s Federal Budget has had some significant outcomes for the primary health care, nursing workforce.
The Federal Budget delivered on 9th May 2023, APNA believes will strengthen Australia’s primary health care (PHC) system by addressing growing nursing shortages, seeing more nurses hired where they are needed, and better utilising the largest workforce in PHC of nearly 100,000 nurses to their full potential to reduce the pressure on the health system.
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Cardinal Health brings device reprocessing plant to Australia
Cardinal Health is global medical products manufacturer and leading provider of single-use device reprocessing services in the U.S. In Australia and New Zealand, as one of the largest suppliers of medical devices, announced on 23 May 2024 that it will be opening a single-use medical device reprocessing facility in Australia – its first reprocessing facility outside the United States.
On 18 March 2025 at the Health Innovation Living Lab at the John Hunter Hospital, a further announcement was made, on the chosen single-use medical device remanufacturing facility in Beresfield, Newcastle, set to commence operation late 2025, supported by the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.
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Research funded to investigate early-onset bowel cancer progression
Bowel Cancer Australia recently announced a team led by Professor Michael Samuel as the successful applicant for a three-year $600k early-onset bowel cancer research project through the 2023 round of Cancer Australia’s Priority-driven Collaborative Cancer Research Scheme (PdCCRS).
