Since 2022, Penny Flicker has worked alongside a small team at Baymatob – a medical device start-up aiming to provide clinical insights and early warnings for severe but treatable complications during pregnancy and labour. The company is developing a digital platform powered by their core technology, a wearable sensor named Oli, making it possible to monitor complex and novel sets of physiological information – an unprecedented capability in maternal health. Long term, the team plan for Oli to be the only device a mum needs to be monitored with as they deploy their AI-enabled monitoring and diagnostic capabilities across the platform to provide insights such as labour onset warnings in pregnancy, time until birth in labour, and early warning for stillbirth.
This technology aims to create the opportunity for an entirely new standard of care, supporting clinicians in reducing the prevalence and severity of severe complications during pregnancy. “Our goal is to make pregnancy and childbirth safer for mums and babies,” says Penny. “If you give birth today, you will be measured using the same technology that measured women in the 1960s – it hasn’t changed in generations, so we're creating an entirely new maternal and foetal monitoring system that uses four different sensor types.” With 10 sensors in total, this provides highly complex and unique data sets that allow clinicians to better understand what’s happening within the uterus. “We can run that data through machine learning algorithms to provide new clinical insights and early warnings for complications,” adds Penny.
Focusing on early warning for post-partum haemorrhage – the leading cause of preventable maternal death, both worldwide and in Australia, the team is committed to transforming maternal and foetal care. “It affects about one in ten births – it’s incredibly common and increasing in prevalence,” says Penny. “Could you imagine any other area of medicine where a deadly complication is increasing in prevalence, and people aren't screaming about it from the rooftops?”
From classroom to the lab
Penny’s journey to Baymatob started following a meeting with the company’s founder. “We’d stayed in touch and eventually she needed someone that sat in between an engineering and commercial role – it was my dream,” says Penny. The CEO invited her for a coffee and by that afternoon, she had a job offer. In 2022, Penny began her role at Baymatob, allowing her to utilise her experience for the future benefit of mothers throughout the world. “I had worked with really small startup businesses and multinational corporations before, but it was frustrating because the small businesses were often started by doctors, scientists or engineers trying to solve a problem, and they’d be excellent at getting a product to work but not at getting it into the world.”
While Penny was eager to dive in and help commercialise these promising solutions, she didn’t quite have the skills to do so. “I wanted to put my foot down on the accelerator and learn things quickly, so after one of my colleagues suggested a Master of Business Administration, I went to the in-person taster class, and it kicked off my MBA journey.”
I fundamentally would not be able to do this job without having completed my MBA.
Penny Flicker
Master of Business Administration graduate
Confidence beyond the classroom
With a Masters of Engineering in Design and Innovation already under her belt, Penny embarked on her MBA in 2021 and officially graduated in May following completion of her studies last October. The experience boosted her self-belief. “For me, having the confidence to go out and find a job like the one at Baymatob was a big deal,” she says. “I don’t think I would’ve been as knowledgeable about what I wanted to do without the leadership practice and development I got in the very first class of the MBA – you learn so much about yourself.”
Now, as the director of commercial operations at Baymatob, Penny can be highly involved in the business – from market research to preparing how to sell their devices, and participating in investor meetings. “I fundamentally would not be able to do this job without having completed my MBA,” she says. “I understand the language during investor meetings and can help the team understand each other as well.” This has been particularly helpful for Penny when deciphering whether a stakeholder is speaking on behalf of themselves or on behalf of a market more generally. “You figure out how to understand what that person's opinion is, where the line is, and where you can push back – which is so important because those things can be difficult to identify in the real world,” she adds. “It’s a pretty awesome position to be in – to be able to bridge these gaps.”
With Baymatob planning to submit Oli for the regulatory review process in the coming year, it’s Penny’s hope the team will be able to sell the device by the end of 2027 and start helping those who need it most. “Unfortunately, everybody has a story within this space,” she adds. “This is the most important job I’ve ever had, and we will keep moving forward no matter what.”