A pioneering collaboration between two medical startups tackling respiratory diseases with artificial intelligences has scored $3 million in federal government funding from Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) program.
Diag-Nose.io and Human Health are working on RhinoMAP – an AI-enabled platform they hope will transform how respiratory diseases such as asthma, sinusitis, and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) are monitored and treated.
The project hopes to address recent findings that up to half the patients treated for severe asthma don’t achieve the expected results by reducing trial-and-error treatment plans and unnecessary healthcare costs. The grant funding will support R&D, clinical validation, and local manufacturing.
Diag-Nose.io cofounder and CEO Eldin Rostom said current respiratory tools “only tell half the story”.
“New drugs such as biologics are life-changing but are expensive and slow to show results, which often lead to clinical uncertainty, lower patient adherence, and suboptimal use of healthcare resources,” he said.
“Our platform, RhinoMAP, is like a radar for the respiratory system. It reveals whether inflammation is escalating, stable, or resolving to help clinicians course-correct or stay the path with confidence, guided by the disease biology itself.”
The platform uses protein biomarkers from a nasal fluid sample and combines them with patient-reported data to deliver a real-time picture of airway inflammation. The AI algorithms then enable clinicians to track whether high-cost treatments like biologics are working before current tools would show results.
The total cost of the project is $8.4 million, including partner cash and in-kind contributions, and brings together leading experts from Monash University, Mater Research, ENT Clinic Melbourne, Manse Medical, and Invetech.
Human Health cofounder Georgia Vidler said the collaboration is “a rare and powerful convergence of science, technology, and government”
“It’s the shift Australia needs – Silicon Valley does this every day. It’s about time we did too,” she said.
“This partnership will demonstrate how coordinated national investment can turn research into real-world outcomes and elevate Australia’s role in global precision medicine.”
Respiratory disease affects one in five Australians and claims more lives each year than breast or prostate cancer. Globally, more than 545 million people are affected, with over 3.6 million deaths annually.
Diag-Nose.io was founded in 2020 as a spin-out of the Stanford Biodesign ENT Innovation program.
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