Irish technology firm Innerstrength Health has raised an estimated €500,000 to bring new solutions to market following the success of its flagship product TickerFit.
The Dublin-based healthtech firm was established in 2013 by former physiotherapist and exercise science specialist Avril Copeland, and Greg Balmer, previously chief technology architect with Mapflow and Carma.
TickerFit, the company’s first product enables health professionals to prescribe, educate and monitor a heart patient’s recovery from a distance through a wearable device.
The company has just closed an investment round with a mix of private money and Enterprise Ireland High-Potential Start-Up (HPSU) funding. While financial details were not disclosed the funding is believed to be in the region of €500,000.
Ms Copeland, who is the chief executive, said the funding would be used to enable Innerstrength Health to bring new products to market and drive expansion overseas.
“We’re delighted with the progress we have made already and there is a lot of interest in the US and the UK. It will be a very busy year ahead but we’re looking forward to growing the company and being able to make a real difference to more people’s lives and wellbeing, which has always been the goal,” she said.
Innerstrength Health has developed a secure web-based platform for health professionals that allow them to provide personalised programmes of education, exercise and support to patients who are at risk, recently diagnosed or currently living with a chronic condition.
Real time
Patients can access the programmes through mobile applications that track and monitor their progress in real time.
“The company was born from my time working in the public healthcare system. A core skill of working in healthcare is building rapport and trust with patients to achieve healthier outcomes. I always found that this was easy when the patient was in hospital but as soon as the patient was discharged home or left the clinic, this support was gone,” Ms Copeland said.
“Personally, I found this difficult, especially when it came to patients who had just gone through a life-changing event, such as surgery for cancer or a recent heart attack, knowing the best I could offer them was handouts about how best to manage their condition. I knew technology could overcome this problem and so we developed our first product, TickerFit, which has the potential to revolutionise how healthcare is provided,” she added.
Ms Copeland, who is an ultra endurance athlete and a former hockey player with Ireland, is also the daughter of well-known Dublin tailor Louis Copeland. "He's my biggest supporter," Ms Copeland said of her father.
