A New Zealand medtech wants to take an MRI machine that normally fills a shielded room and wheel it to your bedside. Its scanner weighs about 50kg.
The device
Wellumio’s scanner is called Axana. It runs on batteries and needs no shielded room, no cryogenic cooling and no contrast agents. It is built for the places where a full MRI is too far away: the bedside, an ambulance, a regional hospital.
Its core imaging method, Pulsed Gradient Free Mapping, was granted a US patent in December 2025. The company says early feasibility trials show Axana can identify stroke biomarkers with accuracy comparable to a conventional MRI. The device has been trialled at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Why it matters
Stroke treatment works best in the first hour, the “golden hour”. The company points out that fewer than 5% of patients are treated in that window, and getting to a scanner is a big part of the delay. If the scanner comes to the patient, that clock looks different.
The raise
Wellumio closed a first round of NZ$7.28M (about A$6.2M) in its pre-Series A, led by Nuance Connected Capital. Icehouse Ventures, NZ Growth Capital Partners, Pacific Channel, Booster and Cure Kids Ventures joined, along with angel groups, retail investors and international investors through the NZ Government’s Active Investor Plus programme.
The round has since grown. Later reporting puts the oversubscribed pre-Series A at NZ$9.75M.
The company is led by co-founder and CEO Dr Shieak Tzeng.
My read
Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability on earth. Wellumio’s bet is simple: the machine should come to the patient, not the other way around. The patent and the trial results are a good start. The next test is whether hospitals and ambulance services actually buy it.