The Australian Digital Health Agency has announced five winners of its recent COVID-19 innovation challenge, who will receive up to $50,000 to scale up the technologies nationally over the next year.

The winners include pharmacy software vendor Fred IT, population health solution vendor Pen CS, CareMonitor for its remote monitoring platform, eye health platform vendor Oculo, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute for its AllergyPal app, developed in association with design firm Curve Tomorrow.

The competition was announced in early May aimed at existing companies that can roll out the potential solution in the 2020/21 fiscal year.

The winning bidders would be required to offer rapidly designed, interoperable, safe and secure digital health services and technologies for both patients and providers affected by COVID-19.

ADHA chief digital officer Steven Issa said 395 applications were received for the challenge from Australian industry and academia on how to solve key healthcare challenges.

The agency will now work with the successful applicants to assist them to co-design their solution and assist with plans for national scaling.

The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute’s AllergyPal app, which was developed by paediatric allergists and researchers Katie Allen and Mimi Tang, is a digital management platform for children with moderate to severe food allergies. The team is now seeking to build a national database of patients with food allergies to facilitate greater continuity of care and improved patient health outcomes.

Sydney-based CareMonitor has built a shared care and remote monitoring platform that was used during the COVID-19 pandemic in western Sydney to allow GPs to remotely monitor patients at home. The company, which was co-founded by prominent GP Kean-Seng Lim and entrepreneur Deepak Biswal, has also recently released a new telehealth system that users can access through Pen CS’s Topbar app.

Pen CS itself was one of the five winners for its Disease Tracker solution, a primary care clinical data and analytics platform that aims to improve epidemic surveillance, emergency response and clinical outcomes through point-of-care decision support.

Oculo will build a solution that will link mobile technologies for the remote capture of measures of visual function to inform telehealth decisions and care pathways for eye care. The company has also launched a standalone telehealth solution for optometrists and ophthalmologists that can be integrated with third-party PMSs.

Pharmacy software market leader Fred IT also won for its idea to enable patients to easily access their prescriptions electronically through WhatsApp.

The agency said the winners were determined through a competitive process with three themes: digital clinical care, digital social care and digital health population management and future preparedness.