HidraMed Solutions founder Suzanne Moloney has been chosen as The Irish Times Business Person of the Month for January, an award run in association with Bank of Ireland.
Ms Moloney was selected for the award after the Galway-based medtech company won the Irish Times Innovation of the Year award for 2020 for developing a novel dressing system aimed at those suffering from the incurable skin disease, Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS).
She was chosen as the winner by a panel of judges chaired by leading entrepreneur and investor Chris Horn.
About 4 per cent of the world’s population suffer from HS, which causes painful lesions and abscesses in the armpit, thigh and groin areas.
The wounds need to be regularly dressed, but current dressings on the market are unsatisfactory as they can leak, move and fall off.
Dressings
HidraMed Solutions was founded by Ms Moloney who suffers from HS. She tackled the dressings problem from a novel angle, designing adhesive-free dressings to fit into a range of specially-created underwear.
The global wound care market is worth an estimated $23 billion (€19 billion) and HidraMed’s technology also has potential applications in the wider chronic wound care market.
Investment in HidraMed to date has been about €1 million, of which €125,000 was raised in the past year.
The company is about to embark on a €2 million fundraising round to expand its operations into other markets, to bring its team up to nine people over the next year, and to expand into the broader area of post-surgical wound dressings.
