An Irish health technology startup has been revealed as the overall winner of the Tech Day pitching competition, held during the 21st International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) World Congress which has just ended in San Francisco. Via Dublin Globe

Kinesis Health Technologies is a spin-out from University College Dublin (UCD), develops products that help prevent falls in older adults using wearable sensor technologies.

Falls in older adults are a serious global problem and the WHO estimates that 30% of adults, over 65 years of age, fall at least once each year. The direct and indirect societal costs of falls in older adults are enormous and in the US alone, such costs have been estimated to be in the region of $30 billion per year.

Kinesis QTUG™, a Class I medical device, based on 9 years of research, is used by healthcare professionals to improve their ability to identify those patients at risk of falls and to prescribe an intervention, to quantify a patient’s response to therapy and rehabilitation, and to assess patients for neurological disorders.

At the Tech Day event, entitled Technology and Ageing – Innovation for Independence and Innovation, Kinesis pitched against a number of leading start-ups, from around the world working in the ageing technology space, and won a $4,500 (€3,900) prize.

After winning, Seamus Small, CEO and co-founder of Kinesis Health Technologies said, "We are delighted to have won the Tech Day pitch competition at such a prestigious international ageing conference. 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 (TRIL) Centre, a large ageing research programme, at UCD.

The company, an Enterprise Ireland High-Potential Start-Up (HPSU), has already secured customers for its products in Ireland, UK, US, Canada and Australia, and has partners in place in India, Japan, Germany and The Netherlands. Kinesis is headquartered at NexusUCD, the Industry Partnership Centre at UCD.

Last November Kinesis announced that it had closed its first investment round and secured €590,000 from a consortium of private investors and Enterprise Ireland.

by Amanda Connolly, Dublin Globe