Disability tech startups PolySpine and ResusRight have both been awarded prizes at the 2022 Good Design Awards, Australia’s most prestigious showcase of innovative and creative design.
PolySpine (2019) and ResusRight (2020) are both alumni of Remarkable, Cerebral Palsy Alliance’s unique disability technology accelerator, which equips early-stage start-ups with seed funding and skills to become commercially viable businesses.
The pair of start-ups have each been announced as a 2022 Good Design Award winner in the ‘product’ category, which celebrates impactful and ground-breaking design.
PolySpine is a unique, modular, customisable supportive exoskeleton for people with moderate to severe physical disabilities. It provides core and head support to users with physical disability so that they can participate in rehabilitative and recreational activities outside of their main wheelchair or accessibility equipment.
PolySpine was jointly-founded by Riley Saban, a young man whose lived experience of cerebral palsy led to him working with his father Clint to engineer a light-weight wearable solution to enable people with disabilities to experience the world inclusively.
ResusRight, meanwhile, won an award for its ‘Juno’ training monitor, which has been developed to save critically ill newborns in need of resuscitation from death and disability by improving the standard of resuscitation training and empowering clinicians to deliver higher-quality care.
Cerebral Palsy Alliance is a proud supporter of ResusRight, providing funding to develop the organisation’s first product prototype.
“Cerebral Palsy Alliance is incredibly proud to see the recognition PolySpine and ResusRight received by winning these prestigious Good Design Awards. Both organisations take very seriously the need to design with their end users and this no doubt contributed to their success,” said Pete Horsley, founder of Remarkable.
The recognition of these two startups also goes to show the growing momentum in this field and we can’t wait to see the development of more innovative technological solutions that drive inclusion and positively impact people with disability!”
The annual Australian Good Design Awards program has been recognising and rewarding excellence in cutting-edge design and breakthrough innovation since 1958.
The program celebrates the most impactful and innovative designs across eleven disciplines spanning more than 30 categories. The 2022 Awards Jury involved more than 70 design experts from Australia and around the world, with ResusRight and PolySpine being evaluated amongst more than 900 submissions.
