The attractive part of ANDHealth’s offer fits on a business card: help for a digital health startup, without handing over equity. The less comfortable part requires a calendar. There will be meetings, questions about the business, evidence to assemble and milestones to meet. A promising product gets attention. A convincing answer to why somebody will pay for it gets work underway.
That is the territory occupied by ANDHealth, the Australian nonprofit commercialisation organisation founded in 2017. It helps companies developing digital and connected health technologies move towards investment, customers and clinical use. Its flagship ANDHealth+ program can provide selected businesses with up to A$5 million in non-dilutive project funding. The founder keeps the intellectual property. The project plan gets a thorough examination.
The proposition matters because health technology has several audiences, each holding a different test paper. A clinician wants evidence. A buyer needs a reason to spend. An investor needs a plausible business. ANDHealth’s work brings those questions into the same room, preferably before a company spends heavily answering the wrong one.
A venture capitalist’s unusual investment decision
Bronwyn Le Grice’s route into the sector began with a temporary job as an executive assistant at Neurosciences Victoria. In a Bionics Institute interview, she recalled coming from business rather than medical science. She subsequently worked in biotechnology and venture capital, including with Bioscience Managers and the connected respiratory-device company Adherium.
Adherium helped crystallise the problem. Adding software to a medical product changed the economics, investment needs and route to market. In that interview, Le Grice described digital health companies being directed towards technology accelerators that underweighted evidence, or device programs that understood hardware better than software. The existing support categories were an awkward fit.
ANDHealth gave that mismatch an organisational answer. In an early interview with Informa Australia, Le Grice credited James Dromey of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute as a co-founder. ANDHealth’s historical materials also identify Grace Lethlean as a co-founder. By March 2018, the fledgling organisation was putting six companies through its flagship program.
The ownership policy was there early. “We don’t require any equity or financial consideration for the support we provide,” Le Grice told Informa in 2018. That decision still shapes the institution. Its published model argues that holding no equity gives advisers greater freedom over difficult go-or-no-go decisions, without worrying about the effect on their own portfolio valuation.
The money arrives after the questions
ANDHealth+ starts with a company-specific advisory panel and a project plan. The underlying method is to work backwards from the requirements of institutional investors and enterprise customers. What is missing? Which piece of clinical or commercial evidence would remove a consequential doubt? What needs testing before the next expensive commitment?
The program’s first stage runs for four to six months. Five companies share a A$1.5 million pool, with work focused on identifying and addressing risks. Investor and customer discussions help inform the next phase. Stage two runs for 14 to 18 months, with a A$7.5 million pool shared across the intake to pursue larger clinical and commercial milestones.
Five companies share each stage’s pool. Allocations follow approved projects and milestones; they are not equal entitlements.
Follow-on allocations are competitive. The A$5 million headline is the maximum available to an individual company across stages and additional funding opportunities. A place in the cohort does not automatically produce a cheque for that amount. The structure makes the evidence-generating project the unit of investment.
There is practical administration behind it: supplier procurement, project management and repeated engagement with advisers. That is valuable for a small team trying to arrange unfamiliar specialist work. It also means that participation reaches into the business. This is a programme for executives willing to have their assumptions examined while they are still running the company.
Equity-free still has a cost
The financial catch is straightforward. ANDHealth+ says most, if not all, funding goes to third-party providers delivering services for participants. Ordinary business-as-usual expenditure is excluded. Approved project-specific employment and materials can qualify, but founders must have the resources to keep operating while the program funds agreed work.
Time is another contribution. The current FAQ requires at least one full-time employee and a leadership team comprising more than one gender. The program is delivered nationally, but shortlisted applicants for the current round must attend an in-person selection presentation in Melbourne. Alumni must continue reporting outcomes for three years after leaving.
For a business seeking an unrestricted cash injection to cover routine expenses, those terms matter. For a company with operating runway and a defined evidence problem, the arrangement can be a closer match. The sensible first calculation is the whole cost of participation: people, time, travel and the work that the award will not cover.
Keep the equity. Budget for the homework.
The practical bargain behind ANDHealth+
A public budget, a commercial test
The organisation’s own economics explain how this can function without an equity portfolio. Le Grice has described government grants and associated management fees, private industry contributions, and selective consulting work as sources of income. Governments and industry support the intermediary; emerging companies receive the commercialisation assistance.
In July 2025, the Australian Government awarded ANDHealth A$33 million to accelerate evidence-based digital and connected health technologies. The award formed part of nearly A$100 million allocated across three incubator organisations. It represents a public commitment to commercialisation support, with the expectation that more medical innovations will become attractive to investment and move towards use.
Victoria had already backed another part of the operation. In 2022, ANDHealth announced A$1.4 million from LaunchVic to establish ACTIVATE, alongside A$2.4 million of Victorian Government support for its connected health innovation centre. These are program and capability budgets. Treating them as venture rounds would obscure what the money was intended to build.
Different doors for different stages
A founder does not need to begin with the flagship application. ANDHealth’s Office Hours offers free virtual conversations about product development, regulation, funding and market entry. Questions are triaged to relevant expertise. For an early team, clarifying the next question may be a useful result in itself.
ACTIVATE serves Victorian digital and connected health businesses with a minimum viable product and early user or customer engagement. It combines specialist modules, practical implementation and individual feedback, including an Executive in Residence. The program is free for eligible businesses and selects 15 companies each year. Its emphasis is on putting commercial knowledge to work inside a growing company.
Masterclass: ACCELERATE provides another entry point, bringing founders and other sector professionals together with specialists in areas including investment, governance and market access. Its published pricing offers complimentary places for eligible small companies and members, with A$950 excluding GST listed for larger industry participants. That makes education a distinct product alongside the more intensive accelerator support.
The joint Therapeutic Goods Administration initiative tackles medical-software regulatory navigation through webinars and one-to-one sessions. Its remit includes understanding which products fall within regulation, classification, registration and post-market responsibilities. This gives founders somewhere to take a specific regulatory question as they work out their development and commercial plans.
ANDHealth also works with Brandon BioCatalyst on CUREator+, a A$50 million national program spanning therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and digital technologies. A separate A$50 million CUREator+ Dementia & Cognitive Decline program adds Dementia Australia to the partnership. Its project funding can reach A$5 million across two stages. These collaborations extend ANDHealth’s digital expertise into broader biomedical development.
Read the results with the dates attached
ANDHealth+ reports A$211 million in follow-on funding and A$97 million in new revenue across its 28-company outcome dataset as at June 30, 2026. It also reports 558 new full-time-equivalent jobs and 125 clinical trials and studies commenced. Funding deployed was A$15.6 million.
ANDHealth+ participant-reported outcomes, 30 June 2026; dataset of 28 companies. Pilot and MRFF-funded companies have different reporting periods.
Those numbers describe what participating businesses achieved. They do not establish how much would have happened without the program. The reporting notes matter: six pilot companies stopped reporting in March 2023, and the dataset includes overlap between pilot and later funded cohorts. Patient reach, reported at approximately 4.7 million, should likewise be read as the organisation’s impact measure, rather than a clinical outcome for every individual.
The latest intake shows demand for the model. More than 90 companies applied in the preceding round; five were selected earlier in 2026. A new application window opened on August 20 and closes September 28. ANDHealth also announced finalist status in the 2026 Prix Galien USA incubator and accelerator category, with winners due to be announced in October.
The question worth borrowing
ANDHealth occupies a particular place between health research, business advice and investment. General accelerators, device incubators and specialist consultants offer alternative routes; its distinction is combining digital-health expertise, project funding and participant ownership. The mixture is designed for businesses that must satisfy commercial and clinical requirements together.
The most transferable lesson is its working-backwards method. Name the customer or investor whose decision matters next. Identify the unanswered question preventing that decision. Then design the work that could answer it, including what result would justify stopping. A better experiment can be more useful than another polished presentation. For a health startup with limited money and several audiences to convince, that is a discipline worth borrowing.