CEO and founder Eóin Tuohy. Image: Morningstar Visuals
A keen sports fan and Gaelic football player, Wicklow-born Eóin Tuohy wants his sports wearable to become a household name in Ireland – and beyond.
In a past life, Eóin Tuohy worked at the European Space Agency (ESA) on projects ranging from medical devices for human spaceflight to experimental research on lunar regolith, better known as moon dust.
His work while at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany (where Ireland’s latest astronaut Rosemary Coogan trained recently) involved designing, developing and testing a miniature device that could scan astronauts for eye conditions that could emerge or worsen under the adverse impact of outer space and its many uncertainties.
Tuohy’s latest project, however, focuses on a different type of impact and uncertainty – concussions during sport. Inspired by his work on the miniaturised device for space, the founder and CEO of Sports Impact Technologies has built a small device (enough to fit behind one’s ear) that can record the impact of head collisions during rugby, Gaelic football or soccer and notify those beyond the pitch.
I met him for the first time at an event in February hosted by NovaUCD, where the start-up is based. During a presentation of his entrepreneurial journey to an audience of students, founders and investors alike, Tuohy played a short clip of a rugby match which seemed normal at first, but when played in slow motion, revealed three different head impacts within the space of seconds.
“Concussion is an ongoing issue in sports and unfortunately five in 10 concussions go unreported or undetected. Our mission is to make these undetected concussions a thing of the past,” the young founder of our latest Start-up of the Week tells me in an interview.
Addressing the problem head-on
As a keen sports fan and Gaelic football player himself, Tuohy takes the issue of undetected concussions seriously. It is well documented that concussions – however mild – when untreated over a prolonged period can have detrimental consequences for brain health and cognition later in life.
And while prevention with helmets is better than nothing, there is no foolproof way to ensure concussions don’t occur. But a timely response to one can be beneficial, even life-saving. The solution? A wearable that detects head impact as and when they happen.
“We have designed a sports wearable that is very small and is worn behind the ear. It records all impacts a player may receive and sends them in real-time to the side line, where a coach, physio or parent can see them, and if required, remove the player from play to assess them for a concussion,” Tuohy explains, adding that the target market is amateur games.
“This is where most impacts occur, and they have fewer resources to support them – particularly in the early teenage years when the impacts are significant. We are using Ireland as our testbed with GAA [Gaelic Athletic Association], rugby and soccer clubs before targeting the US.”
An engineer at heart, the Wicklow native studied mechanical engineering and business at University College Dublin before spending time in Australia working in several roles, including pharmaceutical manufacturing.
“Our solution consists mainly of a wearable, a housing case, sideline app, and a web portal. The wearable is worn behind the ear and detects any impact that the head receives. The wearable then transmits this information in real time to the sideline where the responsible person can see the impact of this player and all other players on the field via the app,” Tuohy explains.
“It gives them real-time information on head impacts that they otherwise may have missed. They can then use the web portal after the session to get more detail on the impact if required. When used, the solution is like having a dedicated person for each of your players watching them for head impacts.”
Getting the start-up ready for the pitch
After working in Australia on a work travel visa, he then went on to complete a masters’ degree in space studies at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, which helped him get his ESA gig that started it all.
Although still in development, Tuohy has been making rapid progress in improving the product and getting it pitch-perfect. “We have already had on-field tests and are moving on our research validation piece. The team is growing, and we will be doubling the team next month,” he says.
“We have a number of potential customers working with us to provide feedback on the product and how they are using it which has been brilliant. We want to make sure that it is being designed with player and coach input so that we are building something that people want.”
Funding for any start-up is hard, and harder still for hardware start-ups.
“As you get a batch of prototypes produced, the hardware is ‘locked in’ for that version and there is only so much you can adjust via software until the next version. It took us a while to get to a fully working solution which gave us our MVP [minimum viable product] platform that we could start to build upon,” he explains.
“I think it has helped the team by having that lean mindset grow out of necessity. It is great to have that behind us now and onto facing new challenges.
Today, he is on a mission to make Sports Impact Technologies a household name when it comes to sport. And investors are seeing the possibility of this becoming a reality – with half of an initial €500,000 seed funding round already secured. The other half, Tuohy hopes, will be raised within the next month – to be invested in getting the product ready for market.
“We want to be the go-to for safety in sport. The issue of head impacts is gathering more and more attention of late,” he says. “However, we know the benefits of playing sports are massive. So if we can remove or reduce the serious risks of head impacts in sports, that’s a huge win for all.”
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