A Melbourne urologist and an engineer in his 80s built a device that turns a 24 hour plus hospital stay into about 5 minutes in emergency. The company is Akeeko Medical, and the people behind it are urologist A/Prof Joseph Ischia and mechanical engineer Donald Fry, now 85.
The problem
When a kidney stone blocks the ureter, the fix is often a stent. Right now that usually means a hospital admission of more than a day, about an hour in theatre and a general anaesthetic. Morgans puts the cost at around $8,000 each time.
The fix
The Akeeko Stent Inserter is designed to do the job in the emergency department, without admission and without a general anaesthetic, in about 5 minutes. It was first used on a patient at the Austin Hospital in November 2024, where a stent was inserted and the stone passed.
The scale
Around 600,000 of these stent insertions happen each year worldwide, nearly all in operating theatres. Ischia reckons the savings could be about $4,000 a case, or roughly $30M a year in Australia alone.
Where it’s at
Akeeko had raised $4.5M by September 2025, mostly from family, friends and high net worth investors, and it was a recipient of a Victorian Government Medtech Market Growth Program grant. The device is not registered yet. FDA and TGA filings are planned. The target was February 2026 in reports last year and has since slipped later into 2026.
My read
Hospitals won’t need convincing. A procedure that frees up a theatre slot and a bed is an easy sell to anyone running an emergency department. The regulators are the hurdle, and that is where the timeline will be decided.