From left: Peter Finnegan; Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor, TD; Dr Michael Mulvey; and Dr Fergal McCaffrey. Image: Ciara Wilkinson
Dundalk IT and spin-out company Nova Leah have received funding for two projects in the areas of medtech and connected health cybersecurity.
Nova Leah is a medical cybersecurity specialist company that started as a spin-out from Dundalk IT. In late 2018, the company raised €2.25m in a funding round to improve the security of connected devices used by healthcare providers.
Now, the educational body and the start-up have together secured €3.7m in total funding to support two industry projects aimed at driving disruptive innovation in the areas of medtech and connected health cybersecurity.
The projects were confirmed as part of the Government’s Disruptive Technology Innovation Fund, a €500m fund established under the Project Ireland 2040 capital investment plan.
The first project aims to develop a hosted software platform that will facilitate the timely sharing of security-related information across the medical device and healthcare industry, to enhance the security posture of the industry as a whole. This project will receive €1.5m in funding. Co-founder of Nova Leah, Dr Fergal McCaffrey, said this funding will allow the company to advance its capabilities in AI, data analytics and blockchain techniques, to enhance how healthcare providers can manage and prevent security-related incidences for their medical devices.
The second project, entitled Medical Imaging Ireland, is a broader collaboration between Dundalk IT, Nova Leah, IBM Ireland, University College Dublin and Davra Networks. This will disrupt the Irish medical imaging market by delivering a platform with enabling technologies that can host, manage, process, and analyse image and text data.
Peter Finnegan, co-founder of Nova Leah, said this project will be essential for many patients. “One in two people will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime, and four in five will suffer from cardiovascular diseases. These disease types, and at least 15 others, are diagnosed and managed using complex imaging modalities that produce both structured and unstructured data at an ever-increasing volume and velocity,” he said.
“Medical Imaging Ireland will provide much-needed technology solution for the market to host, manage, process and analyse this data.”
Speaking today (4 March) about the funding announcement, Dundalk IT president Dr Michael Mulvey said Nova Leah is a fantastic success story that has already established a reputation as a world leader in the provision of cybersecurity solutions for medical device manufacturers and healthcare providers. “We are delighted to continue our relationship with Nova Leah through research collaboration to develop technological advancements in medtech,” he said.
