The Australian arm of global technology giant Konica Minolta has become a strategic partner and investor in Clevertar, the Flinders University spin-out that is developing embodied conversational agents (ECAs) for aged and community healthcare.

Clevertar has developed the Anna Cares platform that is aimed at community aged care providers as part of the care in the home market, as well as custom avatars such as Laura, an ECA that is being trialled as part of the My Diabetes Coach (MDC) study being run by the University of Melbourne, the Bupa Health Foundation, Roche Diagnostics and Diabetes Australia.