The Australian Clinical Entrepreneur Program (AUSCEP) wrapped up its third cohort in June with a high-impact Industry Showcase in Melbourne and Sydney.
This culminating event connects Australia’s emerging clinical entrepreneurs with the potential partners, funders, and health leaders needed to turn promising ideas into scalable, system-level medical and healthcare solutions.
At the heart of this journey is clinical entrepreneur mentorship -essential for empowering participants as they take on entrepreneurial roles to drive healthcare innovation in Australia.
At the Showcase, we sat down with Dr. Amith Shetty, a long-time AUSCEP mentor, and Elizabeth Jones, a startup founder and AUSCEP participant to discuss their mentor-mentee relationship.
Dr. Shetty - a seasoned emergency physician, health innovator, and serial entrepreneur - has been a mentor with the program since it started in 2020. With over 20 years in clinical care, digital health, and system-wide innovation, he offers rare insights that span bedside practice and boardroom strategy.
“I’ve seen too many pilots fail to scale. Supporting clinician-led startups early in their innovation journey is how we create real system-level impact.”
Dr. Shetty’s portfolio includes:
Elizabeth, a health tech founder of company BeHub, joined AUSCEP in October 2024 and was mentor matched with Dr. Shetty. Despite starting remotely, their mentorship relationship quickly became a powerful partnership.
“Even after just two sessions, we’d already made changes. Dr. Shetty helped us think beyond survival—to scaling and sustainability.”
Instead of jumping to solutions, they worked backwards:
This approach helped Elizabeth map a stronger go-to-market strategy and identify clinically meaningful outcomes.
Since launching the digital health product BeHub in over 35 hospitals in Australia, Elizabeth’s team is now focused on capturing measurable impact: clinician time saved, workflow improvements, and return on investment. BeHub is a digital platform that streamlines the delivery of product education, connecting hospitals, clinicians, and medical device manufacturers.
“Data is key,” Elizabeth noted. “To grow, we need to prove value to funders and decision-makers.”
AUSCEP’s mentorship model supports this kind of commercial thinking - moving from concept to evidence-based execution. The right mentorship makes all the difference to early-stage founders – it’s crucial to start early and find the right mentor to advise on the specific stage and focus of your product or business.
Both Amith and Elizabeth agree: the right match makes all the difference. “Dr. Shetty’s clinical, startup, and public system experience was perfectly aligned to our challenges, ”said Elizabeth.
Advice for Future AUSCEP Participants
We hear from many clinician entrepreneurs who take part in AUSCEP that they find their tribe – meeting and learning from other like-minded medical and allied health professionals interested in translating healthcare ideas into real-world solutions. However, the key tip from Amith and Elizabeth is to start mentorship early because as Elizabeth explains, “If we’d begun earlier, we could’ve avoided costly missteps. But now, the program is helping us grow into a scalable, professional organisation.” Other benefits of mentorship include, gaining important connections within the ecosystem, and the ability to make decisions quickly and confidently. “Innovation isn’t just about building something - it’s about solving problems in a way that works across the system. That requires vision, strategy, and support.” - Dr. Shetty.
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