Ollo telehealth phone wins Rackspace competition

Brisbane-based startup, Ollo Mobile, has taken out the inaugural Rackspace Australia Small Teams Big Impact Down Under competition for entrepreneurs following last night’s final in Sydney.

Small Teams Big Impact was created to give small teams of entrepreneurs the chance to showcase their product and win the chance to take it to the global stage.

Ollo Mobile is the developer of a 3G Cloudphone which is a specialised mobile phone integrated with a Cloud-based service platform which works by informing families (or other designated individuals) when seniors require assistance.

The product is a matchbox-sized phone which has a SIM card and can be called like a regular phone. In addition, it features a variable volume speaker, voice control, automatic fall detection, and indoor geolocation. Battery life is listed as more than 10 days, and the device can be worn as a pendant or attached to a key ring.

As the winners of the competition, Ollo will be flown to Silicon Valley where it will be interviewed by Rackspace startup liaison officer, Robert Scoble, in front of his social media audience comprising more than 335,000 Twitter followers and 500,000 Facebook fans. It will also meet with investors and other startups.

“We’ve been trying to get Robert Scoble’s ear for a while, so when it came about that he was going to come to Australia, we were really excited about entering the competition,” Ollo co-founder, Hugh Geiger, said.

“The Ollo Cloudphone technology will reinvent monitored telehealth services for seniors and those with chronic health conditions. We lower the cost of service delivery by 80 per cent and make the service socially engaging and desirable, without compromising safety.”

The other finalists who pitched their product last night were OpenLearning, Food Orbit, Clipp, Projectia, DigitalSorbet, Annexium, AuthoPay, Revolutionise, and Geepers.