Image: iidea studios/Shutterstock
A UCD spin-out won top prize at a health congress in the US, with Kinesis Health Technologies declared the overall champion of the Tech Day pitching competition.
The 21st International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) had a touch of Irish flair this year.
That’s because Kinesis Health Technologies, an Irish health technology start-up, won a pitch competition in front of thousands of medical professionals.
“We are delighted to have won the Tech Day pitch competition at such a prestigious international ageing conference,” said Seamus Small, CEO of Kinesis.
“This prize provides great recognition for the Kinesis team and provides further external validation of the value and impact of our products to the global ageing care market.”
Kinesis was founded in 2013 by Seamus Small and Dr Barry Greene, as a spin-out company from the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre, a large ageing research programme at UCD.
The company’s proprietary technologies are used by healthcare professionals to improve their ability to identify those patients at risk of falls and in need of help and intervention, to quantify a patient’s response to therapy and rehabilitation, and to assess patients for neurological disorders.
Seamus Small, CEO of Kinesis Health Technologies, with his company’s IAGG award.
“Ageing is one of the great global challenges, and innovation is, and will be, essential in bringing measurable impact to this challenge. Kinesis’ technology brings real measurability to one of the most critical factors in ageing: the risk of falls,” commented Dan Maher, a board member at the company.
Late last year, Kinesis successfully raised €590,000 to expand global sales.
“This funding will enable us to expand our engineering and commercial teams, and grow sales of our intelligent health diagnostic devices, which are addressing a major problem in the global health industry, in the area of mobility and falls risk assessment and gait assessment in older adults,” said Small at the time.
“The funding will also enable us to develop and to enhance our technologies further.”
Falls related to age are a major problem worldwide, with an estimated 30pc of adults over 65 years of age falling at least once each year, according to the company.
This leads to financial costs and personal injuries, with estimates in the US tallying towards $20bn per year.
