Kinesis Health Technologies Raises €590k to Expand Global Sales of its Intelligent Health Diagnostic Devices

Kinesis Health Technologies , a University College Dublin (UCD) health technology spin-out, today announced that it has closed its first investment round and secured €590,000 to expand global sales of its intelligent health diagnostic devices.

The funding has been raised from a consortium of private investors alongside a High-Potential Start-up (HPSU) investment from Enterprise Ireland.

Kinesis is focused on developing products that provide greater clinical insights into the assessment of a patient’s movement using wearable sensor-based technologies.

Kinesis’ proprietary technologies are used by healthcare professionals to improve their ability to identify those patients at risk of falls and in need of help and intervention, to quantify a patient’s response to therapy and rehabilitation, and to assess patients for neurological disorders.

Falls in older adults are a major problem worldwide with an estimated 30% of adults, over 65 years of age, falling 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 US$20 billion per year.

Kinesis QTUG™, a registered medical device, utilises body-worn sensors combined with signal processing and machine learning methods, to provide a quantitative assessment of a patient’s mobility, frailty and falls risk, plus statistical comparisons against population averages for age and gender.

The technology has been scientifically validated through an extensive programme of top-tier internationally peer-reviewed research in falls prevention over the past eight years, based on a large patient dataset.

Kinesis has recently released a second product, Kinesis Gait™, a portable and flexible tool for clinical gait analysis. Kinesis Gait™ is intended for use in clinical trials, to assess rehabilitation improvements and to assess for neurological disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

Kinesis has already secured customers in Ireland, UK, US, Canada and Australia and aims to expand commercial activities in these countries, and in new territories, over the next 18 months.

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 is currently headquartered at NexusUCD, the University’s Industry Partnership Centre.

Welcoming the announcement Colm MacFhionnlaoich, Manager, HPSU Industrial Products and Life Sciences, Enterprise Ireland said, “A key focus for Enterprise Ireland is the commercialisation of research and development. Kinesis Health Technologies is a great example of how Enterprise Ireland’s commercialisation agenda brings relevant discoveries and intellectual property from Ireland’s third level institutions to highly competitive markets. Enterprise Ireland looks forward to continuing to work with them as they grow and expand their presence in global markets.”

Seamus Small, CEO and co-founder of Kinesis Health Technologies said, “We are delighted to announce our first investment round from a consortium of private investors and Enterprise Ireland. This funding will enable us to expand our engineering and commercial teams and grow sales of our intelligent health diagnostic devices which are addressing a major problem in the global health industry, in the area of mobility and falls risk assessment and gait assessment in older adults. The funding will also enable us to develop and to enhance our technologies further.”