The Blog

Dr Ralph Highnam, Matakina’s CEO said

“This is our first direct relationship with a population based screening program and is fantastic opportunity to help women on a national basis”

Professor Ard den Heeten, head of the Dutch National Expert and Training Centre for Breast Cancer Screening (LRCB), said

“Rolling out a density score across the Dutch Breast Screening Program will allow us to analyse regional variations in breast density and thus allow us to better judge the quality of radiologist’s reading across the country. Once we have that understood and worked out how a density score can be integrated to be a normal part of screening, we can start to seriously consider how the screening program might be tailored for individual women.”

Aunt Minnie editor, Brain Casey, has conducted an extensive interview with Matakina founder, Dr Ralph Highnam in which they explore the technology behind Volpara, recent results and possible future applications.

Full story on Aunt Minnie:

Prof Sir Mike Brady, has received the prestigious Sir Frank Whittle Medal for his contribution to engineering innovations in healthcare. The award was given by the Royal Academy of Engineering at a ceremony on January 11th 2010.

Full story on Aunt Minnie:

Dr John Hood, President and CEO of the Robertson Foundation has joined the mātakina Board. He was previously Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford (2005-09) and The University of Auckland (1999-2004). Earlier, his career was in industry where he was Chief Executive and/or a Director of a number of companies across a broad range of industries and he is currently also a Director of BG Group plc. John brings his wide network, commercial acumen and vision to the team.

mātakina has been lauded as a “remarkable New Zealand Company” by the internationally based judges of the NZ Focus On Health Challenge who also strongly believe that we can have signifcant impact on patient care. mātakina is proud to have made the final and wishes good luck to all the other challengers.

Dave Murray, PhD, chairman of DICOM Working Group 7, the worldwide industry standard for medical image communication has signed on to provide DICOM support and expertize to mātakina. His presence in the team will ensure that our products comply to international standards and fit into clinical workflow.

mātakina has made it through the first round of the highly-competitive NZ Focus on Health Challenge to take its place in the semi-finals which are to be held during October 2009. The NZ Focus on Health Challenge is a business development competition to fast track commercialization of New Zealand health ideas into the US. The semi-finalists have been selected from over 100 eligible entires and the judges are “excited by the high calibre and innovation shown”.

NZ Focus On Health Challenge

Two of the founders of mātakina, Professors Martin Yaffe and Nico Karssemeijer gave keynote speeches at the 4th International Workshop on Breast Densitometry and Breast Cancer Risk Assessment held in San Francisco. Martin talked about “Challenges Associated with Mammographic Imaging Technology and the Measurement of Density”, whilst Nico talked about “Modelling Dense Breast Tissue in Mammograms”.

The Foundation of Research, Science and Technology (FRST) has, through a competitive process, recognized the potential of mātakina’s patent pending technology and awarded us a product development grant to help us prototype a new volumetric breast density estimation software product.

New Zealand Trade & Enterprise has acknowledged the significant role that mātakina can play in the NZ economy by providing a grant to help us build capability, namely by funding the implementation of a quality management system which will allow us to develop products to ISO13485:2003, ISO14971:2007 and FDA GMP regulatory standards.