Web 2.0 Ireland

This is a guest post by Enda Madden, CTO and co-founder of GroupNos, an on-demand Healthcare Software startup that helps clinicians and healthcare organisations improve patient care and quality of service delivery. He has previously been a software developer and enterprise architect for a number of Fortune 500 companies and has a background in Computational Linguistics. Enda can be followed on Twitter at @endamadden.

eHealth, mHealth, Telemedicine, EHR’, PHR’, Healthcare Social Media, CCR, Personalised Medicine, Information Prescription. The proliferation of terms currently used in Healthcare Technology is a sure sign that the hype cycle is well and truly at its peak.

Recent articles on mainstream analyst sites including Mashable Smarter Healthcare: How Social Media is Revolutionizing Your Doctor Visits and Vator.tv What Angels want along with high profile early stage investors such as Jeff Clavier, Rob Hayes and Aydin Senkut talking about looking for cloud based and personalised medicine start-ups are all good indicators that this area is generating significant interest amongst investors and technology analysts.

What does all this mean? Given the work of the larger companies healthcare divisions (Microsoft, Intel, Google, IBM, etc) in doing the heavy lifting in terms of agreeing on Healthcare Data Standards, Personal Healthcare Records, Interoperability and Data Governance this has paved the way for smaller start-ups focused on particular niches and with a high degree of innovation to plug into this ecosystem and build on top of the work done already.

Enterprise Ireland recently facilitated a discussion between a number of Irish Health Technology companies, Patient Interest groups and State Bodies North and South to look at forming a Connected Health Group. The main focus of the discussions centred on fostering this sector within Ireland, identifying and supporting early stage companies and creating a connected health cluster of companies large and small, established and start-up in Ireland.

One of the key challenges facing many eHealth startups is escaping the gravitational pull of pure Research and Development. It is very encouraging to see a new generation of Irish eHealth start-ups following a more entrepreneurial path. More and more profiles are appearing on CrunchBase (RevaHealth), taking part in Seedcorn competitions and founders engaging with other entrepreneurs at various technology and networking events throughout the country, for example SokoHealth at CMYPitch.com the other day.

So where are things at in Ireland? I’ll leave a discussion on what is needed to help make Ireland a cluster for eHealth startups for another day. To begin with here is a list of some of the Irish eHealth start-ups I know of in Ireland today.  

It would be great if Web2Ireland readers could add comments about companies they know of or comment on some of those listed here. There is no doubt this is an exciting space to operate in at the moment, I hope this article serves as some sort of introduction to newcomers and acts as a means to get the rest of us operating in eHealth to continue to connect.

Slainte Technologies
www.slaintetech.com
SlainteTech is one of the most exciting companies coming out of Ireland in the Healthcare Technology Space at the moment. I think these guys could be the next Curum Software. Their products are well positioned in two major growth areas within Healthcare IT. Improving efficiencies through workflow driven solutions and also in the area of integration and creating a complete patient record from multiple sources. They’ve been making big inroads with their Claimsure product. I’m very interested in watching their other products gain traction in the market. One of the things that most impresses me with these guys is their knowledge of the US Market. In fact they seem more knowledgeable than many US Healthcare IT companies I’ve met in recent times.

Chief Executive Officer: Andrew Murphy
Chief Operating Officer : Billy Diggin
Chairman : David Nash

 Neuro Synergy Games
www.neurosynergygames.com
One of the earlier stage companies listed, Neuro Synergy Games profiles users along a number of parameters and measures the patients performance along each of these. The product then creates a tailor made series of brain training exercises for the patient in order to improve their score in the particular areas where the patient exhibits deficiencies. The product is based on extensive research performed by David Doherty during his doctorate studies in Trinity College.

Neuro Synergy is a great example of a startup Healthcare IT company that is following a commercial path. These guys have got alot of media coverage lately through taking part in the Imagine Cup, sepp enterprise awards, iqprize and more recently IBMs smartcamp competition.

Chief Executive Officer: Dr David Delany
Co-Founder: Dr Lorraine Boran

 RevaHealth
www.revahealth.com
Reva will be well known to many Web2Ireland regulars primarily through its CEO Caelen King. RevaHealth.com provide a healthcare search engine that gathers information about health clinics in the UK and Ireland, and further afield, and display it all comparably. I’ve seen Caelen speak a couple of times, once at last years BizCamp where he talked about fundraising and another time at FOWA  where he talked about UI design and the pain and effort it takes to get it right. This is reflected in the site where the effort has clearly paid off in making it quick and easy for patients to find the information regarding treatments and options. Consumer Healthcare whilst at an early stage is set to grow rapidly and RevaHealth are well positioned. Like Slainte Technologies RevaHealth have a very experienced management team including a Chairman who is a serial technology entrepreneur.

Chief Executive Officer:  Caelen King
Chairman:  Ray Nolan
VP of Product: David Roe

http://twitter.com/revahealth
 http://www.crunchbase.com/company/revahealth-com

 SokoHealth
www.sokohealth.com
Based in the Business Incubation Centre in Sligo IT SokoHealth is founded by Aidan McKenna who was a fellow participant of mine on the excellent CEIM programme based out of Sligo IT.  Sokohealth aims to be an online marketplace for cash-paying healthcare consumers. The company will be an aggregator of US and International Healthcare providers in a wide range of specialities and will offer consumers the opportunity to search, compare prices and book procedures directly with Healthcare providers. SokoHealth aim to capitalise on the growing trends in Medical Tourism, Electronic Health Records and online/Telemedicine.  Here is a video overview of the product (courtesy of Mike Afford Media).

Chief Executive Officer: Aidan McKenna

http://twitter.com/sokohealth

PsychFusion
www.psychfusion.com
These guys are involved in developing a number of products that leverage technology to carry out psychology experiments in a user friendly and feasible manner. One of their key selling points is the fact that their expertise in Psychology and Technology allows them to take the design in psychological terminology from many different modalities and adapt a technology solution without an intermediary simpler abstract document.

Dr Robert Whelan
Colin Lawlor
Helen Treacy

http://twitter.com/psychfusion
http://twitter.com/helentreacy

Automation Intellect
www.automationintellect.com
Based in Dublin and headed by Siobhan King-Hughes Automation Intellect provide integrated technology solutions to assist elderly or disabled people to remain independent and safe in their own home.

The technology is primarily based on Wireless Sensor technologies tracking the daily activities of the patient monitoring their patterns against their normal benchmarked patterns of behaviour. This system has the potential to be invaluable to patients with long term chronic conditions such as COPD where it is key to detect early signs of deterioration in the patient before they need to be admitted to hospital and all the trauma and expense associated with that scenario.

 Chief Executive Officer: Siobhan King-Hughes

 G-Pace Ltd
http://www.gpace.ie/
I don’t know a whole amount about this company but they appear to be creating a database of individuals with pacemakers. This is the information I found from their LinkedIn profile. One of their products is a web based system to cardiac departments all around Ireland, the system connects all participating hospitals and gives them a complete management system for Pacemaker & ICD patients, the system enables patients to travel to any of the connected hospitals and have all their device history easily accessible. Once a patient is registered on the Heart Rhythm Ireland system they will receive a new credit card like ID Card.

Managing Director : Robert Kelly
Chairman & Co-Founder: Gene Kelly

 GariVo Techologies
www.garivo.com
A graduate of the DIT Hothouse programme, GariVo has developed GariNav, an innovative solution which combines wireless computers and patient tracking in a novel application to enhance efficiency and patient safety. GariNav tracks patients going through surgery using WiFi tags which link in to an existing wireless LAN. An electronic operating list displayed on wireless computers can be updated instantly to eliminate bottlenecks.

Imagine Health
Imagine Health is a start-up company in the early stages of launching a new range of products for the Health Care sector. Its Service Areas include:

1. Adult & Children Psychology & Counselling Services

2. Services to Medical Specialists – Diabetes, Cardiology

3. Employee Support

Chief Executive Officer: Dr. Eddie Murphy www.linkedin.com/in/dreddiemurphy

Shimmer Research
www.shimmer-research.com
SHIMMER™ (Sensing Health with Intelligence, Modularity, Mobility and Experimental Reusability) provide a wireless sensor platform to support long-term wearable wireless sensing. The technology was developed as a spin-off venture from  in the TRIL centre . The technology has numerous applications such as for:

• Limb motion analysis of Parkinson’s Disease and stroke patients
• Gait Analysis
• Sleep Studies
• Cognitive Awareness
• Activities of Daily Living Studies
• Vital Signs Monitoring
• Chronic Disease Management

Recently they have opened a R&D centre in Cambridge, MA.

I met Kieran Daly recently at an Enterprise Ireland Connected Health event and he had some forthright views on the current environment in Ireland for Healthcare Technology start-ups and what can be done at a policy level to help stimulate growth in this sector.

 GroupNos Software
www.groupnos.com
GroupNos is a startup healthcare technology company providing online software solutions that facilitate collaboration between clinicians, patients and healthcare managers to deliver consumer-driven services that promote superior patient outcomes. Its target customers are organizations and individual clinicians in the behavioural healthcare field which encompasses mental health, substance abuse and behavioural medicine services. The two core products currently in development are GroupNos Collaborate an on-demand Electronic Healthcare Record that facilitates collaboration between clinicians, patients and healthcare managers in a manner that supports superior patient outcomes.  GroupNos Community  is social software platform to support the development of collaborative and outcome focused clinical practices within clinical communities and provider networks. It allows for the creation of virtual supervision and support networks where clinicians can connect with and learn from each. Behind GroupNos Community front-end our analytics engine monitors and looks for patterns of behaviour exhibiting excellence in the metadata generated from members activity on the network as well as sentiment analysis regarding particular healthcare trends and topics.

 Research Groups
If you’re thinking of starting an eHealth company or have an existing project that you’re looking to collaborate on then these groups could be a good place to start along with interacting with some of the companies listed above.

Clinical Translational Research and Innovation Centre, Derry
www.c-tric.com/

Technology Resources for Independent Living. TCD and UCD
www.trilcentre.org

National Digital Research Centre, Dublin
www.ndrc.ie

 Dundalk IT
www.netwellcentre.ie

 Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) Health Care and Life Sciences Group , Galway
http://hcls.deri.ie/

The shortlist of companies for the IQPrize was announced earlier this evening. They are as follows:

• Decisions for Heroes
• getitkeepit.com
• myhotel.ie
• Octopied
• Our Writers Bloc
• Plink
• Neurosynergy games
• Pendle House

More details tomorrow along with some thoughts on the high quality of the entrants.

Nice write-up on Liam Casey on TechCrunch today. This Corkman has built an amazing supply chain manufacturing business in China over the past few years. It looks like he is the go-to guy if you need anything electronic built in serious volumes at low cost. He recently raised $21m in VC and it’ll be interesting to see how he makes use of that.

Ye know when you find an app that just makes 100% sense? Not the next Flickr or Facebook, just incredibly bloody useful? YellIfItChanges is one of those apps.

It lets you know if:

• a website is updated
• a website changes Google Page Rank
• a website receives more incoming links
• a website changes position on Google search engine results page (SERP)

and it can let you know via

• email
• RSS Feed
• iCal Calendar

Sure, lots of sites have RSS but there are still a huge number that don’t and site-RSS doesn’t provide all those other features above. I’m using it to watch when certain sites come out of closed beta, but there are tons of different ways to use it. Check it out.

Application development on social networking platforms was the hot topic this week at the Graphing Social Patterns conference in San Diego. Ironically it’s like the wild wild west of a few hundred years ago – lots of prospectors in an undefined territory where the opportunity is massive.

Here are the key challenges and recommendations I collected from the speakers and conversations I had at the conference:

Challenges:

• Applications and widgets are hard to monetize. Traditionally brand advertising is related to the web CONTENT (e.g. target “Grey’s Anatomy” watchers because they appear to fit with the brand). Essentially the new world of social network advertising is trying to monetize NEW types of experiences and context-free environments. Since users can create any type of group, profile, page etc. there is some fear over what the ads will be placed next to.
• There are low barriers to entry. Anyone and their dog (who knows a bit about PHP) can create an application on Facebook rather quickly at very low cost. This has lead to low quality, low utility, disposable, spammy apps but the good news is that the trend is quickly moving towards high value, engaging, quality apps.
• The metrics for measuring and analysing applications are minimal. This is an evolving area in itself.
• There are multiple APIs. OpenSocial vs. Facebook/Bebo platform – different audiences, channels, usage patterns etc.

Recommendations:

• Develop apps that have utility and meaning. Facebook is changing the rules of the platform to protect its users and provide an experience that increases communication and improves user engagement.
• Ensure your app is: 1. Clear in its proposition and easy to use, 2. Measurable – track growth, engagement, advertising etc., and 3. Flexible – many crappy trials beats deep thinking/planning (Note: I believe this was the case for the low quality apps but the future apps require significant planning to make them of value. The main point of this is to get it out there early to see how users react – “perpetual beta”)
• Apps have three distinct stages of development: 1. Marketing – use appropriate channels to spread your “call to action”; 2. Growth – tune and track virality; What are the other apps in your category doing?; 3. Engagement – increase page views and time spent on site
• The level of trust must be improved between the users, applications, networks, and marketers.
• Plan for a portable ID. The industry trend points towards a future that allows for an ID that’s shared between applications/networks but will be controlled by the users (e.g. permissions)
• For social games the “social” aspect is more important than the “game” – it’s better when your friends are contacting you to “play”. You still must implement typical aspects of gaming – level/goal progression, turns, leader-boards, incentives/rewards: gifts, unlocking features etc.

You may be familiar with the very smart YouGetItBack concept which provides a lost and found facility for things like phones, iPod etc via simple stickers and a web app. The guys are moving into their next phase of development and it’s looking very exciting indeed. They will soon be rolling out apps for mobiles and laptops along with associated online services.

They are looking for Beta Testers for these apps. If you are interested, head on over to the blog and leave a comment or mail them at the address provided.

If you are looking for Beta Testers for your web app or mobile app, feel free to drop us a line and we’ll mention it here.

Online service @ Carpooling – Carpool.ie

Great idea – now we just need the govt. to create carpool lanes…. operation freeflow

Given the number of Web2 companies here that use freelancers and outsourcers for many aspects of their businesses, would it make sense to have some sort of simple skills board (as opposed to jobs board) here? Even something as simple as a page with a list giving Company Name, Person Name, Services Offered, URL for contact info.

Thoughts?

Haydn Shaughnessy has just launched the virtual art gallery Ten Cubed in Second Life. As a confirmed SL cynic, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this. However Haydn is one of the smartest guys around in media, tech and journalism so it had to be worth a look.

I have to say it’s pretty damned awesome. The idea is radical but seems like a logical progression from e-commerce to v-commerce. You walk around a virtual gallery and look at the art hanging on the walls. Some of it exists in the “real world”, some of it only in Second Life. But here’s the twist – you can buy either!

I initially didn’t understand the concept of buying virtual art but there are tons of companies with their own “offices” in SL who are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars getting them built. As with real buildings, these can only be improved with the addition of art.

The advantage on the real-world side is that you can get a much better sense of the art hanging on a wall in 3-D than you can looking at flat scans on a web-site.

Now I have all the artistic sensibilities of a corpse but there is some fantastic stuff in the gallery. I saw some of it when Haydn had the Gallery in Harbour View and it impresses just as much in a virtual setting. The other thing which is very obvious is the intelligent design of Ten Cubed. You have none of that usual 3-D world “where do I go?”. You are naturally guided in particular directions.

Even if you just want to see what eBay might look like in five years time, it is well worth your while checking this out.

One of the most successful community sites in Ireland, EuropeanIrish, has just had a major re-launch. This site has been quietly growing to an impressive 1 million uniques last year from its beginning in 2003. For most of its existence it was a part-time labour of love for Siasy Collins but with the closure of Motorola in Cork, he finally took the opportunity to give it his full attention.

The site is all about Irish ex-pats on Continental Europe having somewhere to congregate virtually so they can socialise better face to face. In some ways you could think of it as a niche Upcoming.org since it always has a big list of events that are happening around Europe. But there is a lot more to it than that and it has had a thriving community for many years.

In addition to a general re-build and facelift, they have added “MINE” – My Irish Network in Europe. This is effectively a Social Network for ex-pats and is an idea I love. There are only so many generic Social Networks that are going to get traction but a niche one like this, where you know that the other members have much in common with you, should see lasting growth.

Siasy says that 300,000 Irish people have now made their homes across Europe, and there were 3.5 million trips by Irish residents to the Continent in 2006. It looks like many of those Irish have been using the site for years. Whether it’s entertainment, pubs, social clubs, discussion forums, cultural issues or general news, the site has an angle on it.

EuropeanIrish is based in the Rubicon Centre in CIT in Cork and is taking part in the Genesis Enterprise Programme.