KEY POINTS:
Trade Me founder Sam Morgan's latest investment aims to save lives in developing countries.
The young entrepreneur is funding the development and commercialisation of a medical device designed to control the flow of IV drips with greater accuracy than existing devices.
Morgan would not give a figure, but
it is understood his investment will eventually total about $2 million.
The global market for IV drip sets - the bag, tubes and syringe pumps - was about 2.5 billion units a year, Morgan said. The device - called the Acuset - was targeted at Third World countries where demand was acute, but there would also be a market in hospitals and resthomes in developed countries.
"They're very cheap to make and we're working through [the commercialisation/distribution process] so we don't lose on each unit. We'll sell it to make a bit of money in the developed world, but it's more important that we save as many people [as possible] with it."
Auckland scientist Ray Avery, one of the Acuset's inventors, said it was more accurate than the "roller clamp" device used by Third World countries because it used a numbered dial mechanism to control and keep track of the IV flow rate. It was also safer because it could not be inadvertently closed or opened.
Morgan invested in the dial device after Avery wrote to him.
Avery is the founder of Medicine Mondiale, an organisation that aims to provide medicines and equipment for those in desperate need. He worked with humanitarian eye specialist Fred Hollows, and the lense factories Avery set up in Eritrea and Nepal make 10 per cent of the world's supply. He has also developed a protein formula called Proteinforte which can be easily absorbed by malnourished children.
Auckland plastic injection moulding company Adept Medical has invested about $250,000 into designing the Acuset, which is being patented worldwide.
Avery said he aimed to get the dial device into every hospital in the world. "Drugs these days, which are designed for IV drips on infusion pumps not roller clamps, are more concentrated than 20 or 30 years ago, so a small change in movement can increase or decrease the flowrate tenfold."
Unlike the roller clamp, the Acuset attaches on to the outside of an IV drip so it is reuseable, making it affordable for Third World hospitals.
"There's no way in your lifetime or mine that we'll see syringe pumps in every hospital in the world because the cost of a syringe pack and the amortised cost of the pump would be more than $100 a treatment and that's the average salary for a sherpa in Nepal.
"Whereas with the IV controller we've worked out cost-recovery programmes where if you're a rich paying patient you can afford $100 for a treatment and part of that might be $5 for the IV clinic and that gets used for all the other patients in the hospital. So hospitals don't even have to fund it, it's a user-pays opportunity."
It is being used in hospitals in Nepal, but Morgan said the challenge was to find the right distribution channel which "could take some years".
"We need to integrate with the bigger guys, like Unicef, to get the [customer] numbers up there. It's a sales and marketing challenge like any other company has with a product."
Since he made $227 million from the sale of his online auction business to transtasman media company Fairfax last year, the young entrepreneur has invested mostly in start-up tech companies.