Life Sciences and Energy

Health tech start-up wins inaugural UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Award

By Business & Finance
21 November 2013
UCD Venture Launch

Kinesis Health Technologies, a new health technology start-up company, has won the inaugural UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Award and a €25,000 prize.

Kinesis Health Technologies has developed QTUG (Quantitative Timed Up and Go), a novel, patent-protected falls risk and mobility assessment technology which can be used by a broad range of healthcare professionals to facilitate objective assessments of falls risk in older adults.

By using QTUG healthcare professionals can potentially improve healthcare utilisation, reduce healthcare costs and improve the quality of life of those at risk.

QTUG, based on the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test, uniquely provides an objective assessment by the quantitative analysis of gait and mobility data collected using body-worn inertial sensors.

Kinesis Health Technologies plans to launch QTUG into the European (Ireland and the UK) and Northern American (USA and Canada) markets in mid-2014 and plans to be employing 15 people by end 2016.

Falls are a costly, complex and common problem with one in three of people over the age of 65 falling once per year. This figure rises to one in two in the over 80s. The direct and indirect societal costs of falls are very significant and in the US along the annual cost of falls management is estimated to be $30bn. In addition 40% of all injury deaths in older people are as a result of a fall.

Kinesis’ technology will enable healthcare professionals to improve the accuracy of falls risks and mobility assessments in older adults. Improved identification of those at risk of falling will enable targeted intervention and care services tailored towards those who are actually at risk of falling.

The founders of Kinesis Health Technologies Ltd are Seamus Small, Dr Barry Greene, UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science and Bill Bollengier who is based in the USA.

Kinesis is a spin-out company which has emerged from internationally peer-reviewed research carried out over the last six-year in the TRIL (Technology Research for Independent Living) Centre at UCD. Partners in TRIL, in addition to UCD, include TCD, Intel and GE Healthcare.

In addition Kinesis’ technology has been extensively deployed and evaluated in TRIL’s dedicated research clinic in St. James’s Hospital, Dublin.

Speaking at the awards evening Prof. Peter Clinch, UCD vice-president for innovation said: “Innovation is the third pillar of UCD’s core mission and two of UCD’s key innovation themes are putting knowledge to work and growing and supporting new business. Through the new UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Programme, held over the last three-months at NovaUCD, we are supporting researchers to accelerate this process by establishing new ventures which will translate innovative research ideas into companies providing value-added products, services and jobs.”

He added: “Kinesis Health Technologies is an excellent example of a UCD spin-out company, which has been established to address a major worldwide problem, in this case in the health industry, and which has significant global potential and global customers. I congratulate the members of the Kinesis team for winning the 2013 UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Award and wish them every commercial success for the future.”