Clevertar heads over for US trade talks

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Clevertar co-founder Tanya Newhouse

Flinders University spinout company Clevertar is among a select group of Australian companies joining the Australia-US Business Week trade delegation in America this week.

Clevertar co-founder chief operating officer Tanya Newhouse joins Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb, Health and Aged Care Minister Sussan Ley and up to 240 Australian companies taking part in the inaugural AUSBW, to be held in six commercial centres in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Boston and New York.

Delegates range from medical and digital technology companies, to tourism, resources and energy, to agribusiness and food science.

With support from the University’s commercialisation arm Flinders Partners, Clevertar Pty Ltd formed from the Flinders Thinking Head artificial intelligence project three years ago.

The Adelaide-based company has since developed a virtual health coach, Anna Cares, which gives users personalised reminders and prompts to improve compliance with medications, doctor appointments and daily lifestyle routines from an iPad or mobile device.

Ms Newhouse said the upgraded relational agent avatar Anna Cares product focuses on improving diabetes patient engagement to support better health outcomes and lower costs to the health-care system.

The US is the largest foreign investor in Australia and the source of much of the world’s commercial innovation and new ways of doing business, said Minister Robb.

“It is also the top destination for Australia’s foreign investment; since the commencement of our free trade agreement with the United States a decade ago, two-way investment has more than doubled to over $1.3 trillion,” he said.

“Through AUSBW, we are looking to reinvigorate an already strong relationship. In particular, AUSBW represents an effective platform to inspire US investors with Australia’s new $1.1 billion national innovation agenda.”

In 2014-15, the US was Australia’s second largest two-way trading partner for services and third largest export market.  Australian firms exported about $20.5 billion in goods and services in that year.

Australia also has recently signed the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, a major new trade pact that will join together 12 economies representing 40 per cent of global GDP into a free trade zone across the Pacific.

As well as the G’Day USA promotional program in 2016, the Australian Week trade missions and promotional events funded in the 2015-16 Federal Budget includes trade promotions in China, India and Indonesia.

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