From their local roots here in Aotearoa, two innovative Kiwi companies, Script Sense and Prosaic, are using AI to develop their products for the global market.

At the Aotearoa AI Summit earlier this month, the two start-ups demonstrated how they are using AI to power their service delivery in Aotearoa and around the world.

Both companies participated in Callaghan Innovation’s AI Activator programme, which supports founders and companies to adopt AI to boost productivity and create a competitive advantage for Kiwi businesses in global markets.

Script Sense is an award-winning platform that allows pharmacists to overcome workforce challenges, enhance efficiency and improve patient care.

“AI has opened up a world of opportunities for Script Sense to innovate in the pharmacy sector,” says Co-founder Kieran Erasmuson.

“By harnessing AI, we’ve created a platform that not only addresses the pressing issue of pharmacy workforce shortages in New Zealand but also has the potential to transform healthcare operations globally.”

The start-up says that through Script Sense, pharmacists can focus on patient care and reduce the smaller admin tasks to AI.

Prosaic is an app that uses AI and open banking to help small businesses, sole traders and their accountants to automate the process of finding deductible expenses and income tax credits.

“Using AI to automate time consuming tasks – in our case identifying and categorising thousands of business transactions instantly – not only translates into immediate, positive impacts for Kiwi business users, but opens opportunities for a wave of AI-native startups from New Zealand to export new solutions to the world too. It’s a pretty exciting time,” says Prosaic Co-founder, Nick Houldsworth.

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“AI enables startups to solve old problems in new and innovative ways – especially when combined with emerging technology like open banking.”

Through AI Activator, Callaghan Innovation is hoping to boost the country’s economic growth and exports especially with already 67% of Kiwi businesses using AI, in specific generative AI.

“It’s great to see so many businesses taking advantage of automation and efficiency gains through AI on a wide range of tasks. This is helping to free people up to focus on higher level, strategic work and opportunities to accelerate growth,” says Stefan Korn, CEO of Callaghan Innovation.

“We are looking forward to supporting businesses – wherever they are on their AI journey – to take advantage of a new world of opportunities for growth.”