Healthbox, the accelerator program for health care startups that was founded by Chicago-based Sandbox Industries, have selected 10 companies to participate in its three-month program beginning 9th January. The line-up includes PaJR (Patient Journey Record), an Irish company using Trinity College developed technology to build a cloud-based hospital re-admissions prevention platform. The software identifies at-risk patients based on health status information reported by patients and caregivers.
 The HealthBox program offers each company office space and $50,000 in seed capital, in addition to access to a network of about 70 mentors that includes hospital executives, health care entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The 10 companies will also work with the five-member Healthbox team. Healthbox received about 200 applications
Patient Journey Record is a company we’re really excited about, they’re thinking about the problem that hospitals have with high 30-day readmission rates, and trying to use data in new ways to address that challenge and manage basic populations in a much more proactive way.
said Ms Nashif, Healthbox’s founder and a managing director of Sandbox Industries.
More information about what Patient Journey Record is on this video, taken at Enterprise Ireland’s big ideas forum.
Care, Chicago, Connected Health, Document management, Health, HPSU, IT for Healthcare, Patient, Public Sector, Startup, US
This is a guest post from Amy Neale, Marketing and Programme Manager at the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC).
We at NDRC (National Digital Research Centre) have just announced that we are now open for applications to LaunchPad. This investment programme is open for applications from digital start-ups from Ireland and internationally, and 15 start-ups will be selected to work with us for a 3 month period starting 13th February 2012. During this time we provide these 2 or 3 man bands with a hands-on, intensive mentoring programme; weekly workshops and networking opportunities with experts; as well as the all important investment of up to €20,000 per project. The three months will culminate with NDRC’s ‘LiftOff’ competition, taking place in May 2012 where the start-ups will present to a room of investors and compete for access to a follow on investment prize fund.
We were delighted earlier in 2011 to be ranked in the ‘Top 10 EU Accelerators’ by the Kauffman Fellows, and – along with Enterprise Ireland’s iGap programme – we have been nominated for Best European Accelerator at The Europas 2011. NDRC LaunchPad is producing award winning startups such as Redeem&Get and Hit the Road, and developing technology entrepreneurs with early stage innovative digital start-ups. We invest in and collaborate with early stage start-ups to establish market focused, technically excellent and profitable ventures.
In 2010–2011 NDRC mentored, trained and developed 39 entrepreneurs, and has to date secured €4.8 million in commercial investment for technologies and start-ups. Just ten days ago, NDRC-backed start-up Redeem&Get won the Spark of Genius Award, giving them access to an ACT Venture Capital term sheet worth €100k. This year NDRC received a record 81 applications for 15 places on the current LaunchPad Programme, with Irish, European and North American start-ups participating.
If you are interested in NDRC LaunchPad, come along to our open evening to meet the team, ask questions and find out everything you need to know about the accelerator programme, before the application deadline of 16th December. This informal evening will be held on Thursday, the 1st of December, and will start at 6.30pm and will run to 8.30pm. It will take place in NDRC’s ‘Digital Exchange’ building on Crane Street, Dublin 8 – please register your details here.
To apply for a place on NDRC LaunchPad visit www.ndrc.ie/launchpad; deadline for receipt of applications is 5pm on the 16th December 2011.
NDRC LAUNCHPAD CLOSING DATE 5pm 16th December 2011
NDRC LAUNCHPAD PROGRAMME START 13th February 2012
Siobhan King-Hughes, MD of Sensormind Ltd., has been shortlisted for this year’s Women Mean Business (WMB) Awards. Siobhan is one of only three nominees in this year’s Microsoft Women Mean Business Technology Award. The other shortlisted finalists are Judith Browne (Dell Ireland) and Vivienne Williams (Cellix Ltd., a graduate from the EI high potential start-up stable).
 
Sensormind is an innovative ‘assistive living’ technology that enables elderly and vulnerable people to live independently and safely at home. With improving life expectancies and the rapid rate of population aging in Europe and North America, there is growing demand for these technologies, with a market forecast of $335m for ‘social alarms’ by 2012 in Europe alone. Sensormind uses a network of discrete sensors placed in the home connected to a web-based central monitoring service to monitor normal daily activities and raise an alert if an unexpected behaviour pattern occurs.
Siobhan founded Sensormind in 2008 with husband and Chief Operating Officer Cian Hughes. She builds on a strong track record, having held senior positions at AOL, Oracle, IBM and Adobe in a 19 year career that began at Microsoft. Cian is Executive Director of the Irish Technology Leadership Group and has a 20 year career in high tech operations and strategic management, including spells at Lotus, Intel and Pivotal.
The WMB awards, which recognise the outstanding achievements of Ireland’s businesswomen, will be presented at the Women Mean Business Conference & Awards 2011 at the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin on September 26th 2011. The conference features a diverse range of speakers to include Hilary Devey, Founder & CEO of Pall-Ex Group and Dragon on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton T.D.. Also taking to the stage is Dr. Maureen Gaffney, Psychologist, Broadcaster and Author. The theme this year is ‘Success is What you Make it’ and the day will include a panel discussion, facilitated networking with IFG Corporate Pensions and Awards lunch.
This is a guest post from Amy Neale, Programme Manager at National Digital Research Centre (NDRC).
The National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) team is seeking companies with a passion for innovation to work together on joint venture projects with research partners, through our Catalyser investment programme.
Do you know of companies with a great idea for innovative digital products? The NDRC team is looking to support and invest in strong research-led ideas to create digital products and services.
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Through Catalyser, NDRC invests in good ideas, provides neutral spaces, and commits commercial expertise to create value from research. For details of what we offer, who we look for, what the program feels like, and how companies and researchers can join us, visit the website www.ndrc.ie/catalyser or email catalyser@ndrc.ie to make contact with one of the team.
An example of an NDRC Catalyser joint venture:
Sean O’Sullivan, CEO Rococo Software Ltd, worked with NDRC and UCD to develop the LocalSocial platform. Sean said “With NDRC’s investment and expertise we were able to combine our deep market knowledge with an R&D concept to create an original export-driven product. We are now marketing the LocalSocial proximity platform, and have been able to target this at an international market based on a unique approach that NDRC enabled us to develop”
LocalSocial is a Proximity Service that enables developers to quickly and easily add proximity functionality to their applications and services. LocalSocial also gives end users of applications a simple way to manage and control how they interact with proximity-enabled applications, and to control and share information about themselves when they come in to contact with other people and businesses.
For more information on LocalSocial visit www.mylocalsocial.com
Animation, Potential Exporters
CASALA( Centre for Affective Solutions for Ambient Living Awareness) based in DKIT will be hosting its 2nd symposium in September. The symposium is a forum for academic, business and clinical leaders across the island of Ireland with common interests in driving change and creating opportunities to the benefit of people’s health, wellbeing and living environments.
Ambient Assisted Living and Connected Health Symposium, 15-19th September
http://casala.ie/aal-symposium.html
In addition, there will be a workshop to help you gain deep insight into the complex market dynamics, product and service positioning and communication challenges.
Technology and Ageing Workshop with Laurie Orlov, 15th September
http://www.casala.ie/blog/14-upcoming-events/76-Technology%20and%20Ageing%20Workshop%20with%20Laurie%20Orlov.html
IT for Healthcare
Software that was not previously classified as a medical device, is now classified as medical device.
Under Directive 2007/47/EC software that was not previously classified as a medical device, is now classified as medical device. A software application may be classified either as a medical device by itself or when it is connected to an active medical device. Organisations need to assess how these changes introduced by Directive 2007/47/EC impact on their specific products, development, quality control procedures and revenue streams.
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The need for state of the art software validation is mandated in Directive 2007/47/EC which states “For devices which incorporate software or which are medical software in themselves, the software must be validated according to the state of the art taking into account the principles of development lifecycle, risk management, validation and verification.” In this context “State of the Art” means what is generally accepted as good practice. Developers must now validate software be it integrated or standalone, regardless of device class. IEC 62304 and its aligned standards are harmonised under Directive 2007/47/EC and are seen as a good place to start when validating software.
How will this impact your company when EU customers specify compliance in their tender documents? If you’re an Enterprise Ireland client and have concerns about this, please contact us at gerard.lande@enterprise-ireland.com.
I visited DERI, located in NUI Galway, for their open day on April 6th 2011. Minister Sean Sherlock, TD, Minister for Research and Innovation, and himself a graduate of NUIG, opened proceedings with Professor Jim Browne, President of the University.
DERI is home to 140 research staff, half of whom are PhDs. The focus is web science research to enable networked knowledge across a variety of key sectors such as eHealth, eLearning, eGovernment, eBusiness and more. In the words of DERI researcher Dr. Giovanni Tummarello ‘we are drowning in information’. His research is making advanced contributions to tidy this up and make it easier to consolidate and access relevant information by creating a state of the art infrastructure that consolidates billions of pieces of metadata under one coherent umbrella. In my understanding, current search engines deliver links to different sources of information, DERI’s search engines deliver the consolidated information. See Sig.ma for more information.
Another area of particular interest to me is the application of DERI’s expertise to healthcare, a sector for which the Galway region is well known. The enablement of data integration a lá DERI can raise the efficiency of clinical research, and enable the self-management of disease by the patient through telehealth. Current projects tackle issues such as integration of sensor data with patient record systems, enablement of plug and play electronic patient records, and interoperability of eHealth systems.
The centre is buzzing with young researchers, appropriately interspersed with some elder lemons. The atmosphere in DERI is well summed up by Ronan Fox, who heads up the eHealth division of DERI:
“The DERI team is young, bright and enthusiastic. They want to change the world for the better and so do I!”
Enterprise Ireland works with a number of companies active in the IT for Health sector, please have a look at the directory if you’re interested in finding out more about them.
DERI, Digital, Potential Exporters
This is the second part of my overview on the Connected Health (CH) sector. My previous post outlined some of the challenges and barriers. Here, I provide some emerging thoughts on how best to increase the adoption of CH products and services and then I outline one aspect of what Enterprise Ireland is doing to help innovation in the sector.
Starting on to the thorny issue of how best to increase uptake and sales of CH products and services, the first thing to point out is that there is universality to the issues confronting companies active in the space. Nonetheless, the US has emerged as a leader in terms of uptake and innovation of CH products. In part, this is because the Stimulus Bill and healthcare reform are driving imposition of CH solutions. (more…)
Health, Potential Exporters
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