Every Breath Matters: A Melbourne Startup Solving a Long-Standing Clinical Need in Neonatal Care

In the quiet, high-stakes environment of a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), the difference between a premature baby going home or facing a life-altering complication often comes down to a single breath.

Neonatal clinicians are among the most highly trained specialists in medicine, continuously interpreting vital signs, work of breathing, and subtle behavioural cues to keep fragile lungs supported. Yet for one of the most critical elements of care—non-invasive respiratory support—they are often working without direct visibility of the pressure actually reaching an infant’s airways and lungs.

Devices like CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) are designed to keep tiny lungs open, but the reality at the bedside is complex. Babies move. They yawn. They cry. Each movement can shift a mask or prong, creating air leaks that clinicians must constantly compensate for—without real-time confirmation of the pressure being delivered.

“We were shocked to hear that these systems provide very little clinically relevant feedback to the clinician,” says Edward Buijs, co-founder and CEO of Ventora Medical. “Two babies on the same level of therapy might be receiving very different amounts of support, and therefore have very different outcomes.”

It is a gap that leads to failure rates as high as 40 per cent. When non-invasive support fails, these fragile patients must be intubated and put on mechanical ventilators—an invasive escalation that brings a suite of new risks and longer hospital stays.

Buijs, who landed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list alongside co-founder Amy Yu, didn’t start in the NICU. The journey began at the University of Melbourne during a Master of Engineering project.

The spark came from Associate Professor Christiane Theda, a neonatologist with 30 years of experience who had grown tired of the data “blind spot” in her wards. She teamed up with the young engineers to solve a problem that global med-tech giants had surprisingly overlooked.

The result is the Ventora Airway Pressure Monitor. It is a deceptively simple solution to a complex problem. Rather than trying to measure pressure at the machine—which Buijs notes “overestimates” the actual pressure reaching the baby—Ventora measures it internally.

The genius of the device lies in its “like-for-like” integration. Every premature baby on respiratory support already requires an enteral feeding tube. Ventora’s technology incorporates pressure sensing technology with an enteral feeding tube.

“It doesn’t change the workflow,” Buijs explains. “We’re providing real clinical insight without adding any additional invasiveness.”

While the human impact is the heart of the story, the commercial stakes are equally significant. In Australia alone, 15,000 babies require breathing support every year. In the US, that number climbs into the hundreds of thousands.

Buijs estimates the market opportunity at over $1 billion. But for investors, the immediate “value inflection points” are what matter. Ventora is currently moving out of the lab and into the ward, with a clinical feasibility study underway at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne.

“It’s been wonderful to see our device actually at the bedside, collecting data,” Buijs says.

The company is now eyeing a global rollout, having recently met with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to map out a regulatory pathway. The goal is to turn the “black box” of neonatal breathing into a transparent, data-driven process.

For Buijs and his team, success isn’t just about regulatory clearances or market share; it’s about the “human impact” of getting families home sooner.

In a sector often defined by cold metrics and rigid clinical trials, Ventora feels deeply personal. It’s an Australian success story that balances the cutting edge of engineering with the most basic of human needs: the ability to take a breath.

As Ventora prepares for its next funding round and an appearance at the Emergence 2026 conference in Sydney, the mission remains clear.

“We are a company that will ultimately have both that human impact and significant commercial returns,” Buijs says. “Helping premature babies breathe—that’s what drives us every day.”