Lab-on-a-Patch Wearable Diagnostics

Australian deep tech ventures in the Tech23 2025 'Care Economy' cohort are developing lab-on-a-patch diagnostic devices — wearable adhesive patches that sample interstitial fluid through painless microneedle arrays and analyze multiple biomarkers in real-time using integrated microfluidics and electrochemical sensors. Target applications include continuous glucose monitoring (beyond current CGM), inflammatory marker tracking for autoimmune diseases, and early infection detection.

Current diagnostic practice requires discrete blood samples, laboratory processing, and physician interpretation — a process that can take days and captures only point-in-time snapshots. Continuous wearable diagnostics would enable real-time health monitoring analogous to how smartwatches track heart rate, but for clinically meaningful biomarkers. The shift from episodic testing to continuous monitoring could catch disease progression days earlier than current methods.

Australia's universal healthcare system and strong clinical trial infrastructure make it an ideal testbed for wearable diagnostic technologies. The country's remote communities — where specialist medical access requires long travel — represent a compelling use case for technologies that can provide clinic-quality diagnostics at the point of care. Combined with Australia's telehealth expansion (accelerated during COVID), wearable diagnostics could enable remote patient monitoring at scale.