Meet Ardant, the health tech ‘venturer’ empowering occupational therapists
Ardant joins AusHealth Ventures to revolutionise occupational therapy
AusHealth Ventures welcomes Ardant, a health tech company working to transform the occupational therapy (OT) sector.
“I started Ardant because I wanted to create a wrap-around service that frees OTs from the burden of administration,” says founder Margeaux Bartholomew-Carle. “I’m talking about things like sourcing clients, referral management, scheduling administration and invoicing – the sort of stuff that can cost an OT up to 2.5 billable hours per day.”
Ardant effectively acts like a match-making service. It connects clients with the right OT; it takes care of administrative tasks like schedules, invoices and contracts; and it fosters a trusted referral network of OTs working in different areas of practice, such as mental health, paediatrics and assistive technology.
This leaves practitioners spending less time on paperwork and devoting more time to clients.
“The Ardant service is working really well but I’m ready to go to the next level. I want to build a bespoke digital platform that makes use of AI assistants and scale up the operation.
“That’s why I feel fortunate to be working alongside AusHealth Ventures. Everyone here is working in health tech and there’s a lot of industry expertise I can draw on – especially relating to technology, governance and legals.”
While Margeaux is a registered occupational therapist, she sees the potential for Ardant to relieve administrative pressures experienced by all allied health workers, including speech therapists, psychologists and osteopaths.
“In Australia, more than 650,000 NDIS and 1.5 million aged care clients are struggling with long wait times to access allied health services,” she says. “With both groups expected to grow exponentially, there’s real pressure on an already compromised system. We need to be streamlining the sector to allow health professionals to do what they do – which is treat clients.”
According to Dr Justin Coombs, COO for AusHealth, “Ardant is a great fit for AusHealth Ventures and the team we’ve assembled in The Accelerator. I’m really looking forward to seeing what we and Margeaux can accomplish together in 2025.”
AusHealth Ventures supports medical research and start-up health tech companies that are Australian-made and investment-ready. Find out more: AusHealth Ventures