Dr Aviva Cohen and Frank Dolphin. Image: SeamlessCare
SeamlessCare has built two products, Empathic and Focus, that are aimed at caring for patients who find it hard to communicate.
Digital health start-up SeamlessCare has raised €700,000 in seed funding to accelerate the roll-out of its assistive care technologies.
A University College Dublin (UCD) spin-out, SeamlessCare is building technology that is focused on enhancing communication and support for people with a wide range of disabilities, including autism, acquired brain injury, dementia and intellectual disability, among others.
It was founded last year by Dr Aviva Cohen, Ian Kennedy and Dr Çağrı Çubukçu with the support of NovaUCD and Enterprise Ireland. It was among 11 research-based high-potential start-ups backed by Enterprise Ireland last year.
The seed funding round was backed by angel investor and former HSE chair Dr Frank Dolphin as well as Enterprise Ireland. Dolphin is the co-founder of RelateCare and has previously invested in Irish home-care technology company PacSana.
Empathic focus
SeamlessCare’s first product Empathic helps non-verbal people to communicate their emotions to carers. Empathic records a patient’s vocalisations for up to 10 seconds and uses artificial intelligence to identify up to 10 emotions, such as happy, sad, excited and frustrated.
“We are now running a closed beta test and we welcome new participants to sign up,” said Cohen. “The feedback from testers so far has been fantastic and we are rapidly progressing towards an open beta version.”
Empathic will be available as an app for Apple and Android devices later this year. The idea is that it can be used by carers and family members on a subscription basis.
Second in the pipeline of technologies being built by SeamlessCare is Focus, a video-based care planning app that enables carers of people who cannot communicate to easily record short videos of daily activities, take notes, send alerts and update written care plans from any device.
“The SeamlessCare team are ambitious for their business while genuinely wanting their technology to improve outcomes for others,” said Dolphin.
Next year, the company plans to start releasing new products that “promote respect, safety and efficiency” in chronic care facilities.
10 things you need to know direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of essential sci-tech news.
