Tautoko Tech: The Māori-led medtech startup bringing equity and innovation to diabetes treatment

A Christchurch-based startup is using the approach of by 'Māori, with Māori, for everybody' to develop a low-cost, AI-powered, and user-friendly insulin pump to tackle inefficiencies and inequities in diabetes care.

Founded by Dr Jake Campbell (Te Rarawa), Dr Grace Walker (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngaruahine) and Connor Benton, Tautoko aims to disrupt a diabetes care system which often overwhelms and overburdens both patients and medical specialists.

Driven by a mission to make advanced diabetes management accessible to all, the company is raising its first round of capital to make its insulin pump accessible in New Zealand and then to the millions living with diabetes worldwide. 

Caffeine caught up with Dr Jake Campbell for this week’s startup spotlight.

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‍What led to Tautoko’s founding?

Back in 2018, during my PhD, we were approached by an endocrinologist here in Christchurch who works with a lot of children and educates people on insulin pumps—taking people from the many injections and previous methods to the gold standard of diabetes care. And he came to us and said these devices are amazing but too complex. They take hours with the specialist educators training patients. And there’s also a vast equity gap in access. So he asked, can you make an easier one for us? A cheaper one? A better one? 

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So that’s what you did, tell me about the device?

A key part of our device is the intuitive use and interface. We’ve got some IP around our drive system, which lets us run for a whole year on a battery. Compared to current pumps, where they last three days on your body. You either have to swap out your device to recharge it or change it, have a new battery, or throw the whole device away, which is why we’re saying, what if you’ve got a device that’s always connected? Always ready to use.

You saw all the recent floods where we’ve had stories of people who couldn’t charge the pumps. They had no other way of administering insulin because they had no power. So, really, where we come in is simplifying the user flow and using these devices or our device, which then reduces the complexity of education and training required. For our end goal, our vision is to be able to say what if primary care could confidently prescribe this pump day one and you don’t need extensive specialist training for this device. 

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What inequalities are you seeing in healthcare that you hope this addresses?

I have a friend who was a junior doctor in Hawke’s Bay and would see children coming in. All of the pākehā children would have insulin pumps, and all the late great support would be there, but none of the Māori children had this technology.

Then, in 2022, we were fortunate to go to rural Hokianga and talk with people who weren’t in the health system and refused to take the census. So, how do we really develop care for those communities? A lot of that came down to independence, to how they could operate without having to travel 1.5 hours to see the doctor. 

Seeing that disparity and realising that if you know the system and how to navigate it, then you can get these support and devices and all of the required training. But if you don’t have those support systems set up, it’s very difficult to go through that process. 

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And how accessible are insulin pumps in terms of price?

Pharmac has been amazing. They have announced full funding for continuous glucose monitors for people with type 1 diabetes and insulin pumps for those who need them. 

So, they’ve changed the previously strict criteria to be much more inclusive, which is fantastic for these users. However, the only problem is the extensive amount of training required; there’s quite a large bottleneck and fear from clinicians and how do they provide that support? So it’s a bit of a balance of how do you not burn out all of your specialists and staff while being able to get the best care.

What stage are you at now, and are you looking to expand beyond New Zealand?

There are around 460 million people living with diabetes globally. Of these, 43 million require insulin multiple times a day around the meals and food they eat, and there are quite intensive insulin requirements in the US. So, the US is the largest market for us, with 47% of the global market for insulin pumps, and has a population that could serve about 3.6 million people. 

It’s a bit of a scale up from New Zealand, and around 100,000 are newly diagnosed per year compared to the 1000 here. So, it’s on a different level.

We’re currently raising our first round of capital. So we’re building on a $2 million grant for the last two years to develop our device and to build our IP. So the proof of concept and then the first round of $2.75 million will take us to getting our low power drive system into our device down and early verification testing as well as FDA meeting to be able to make sure with the FDA that we’re on the right path.