Digitise or Die

Engineer, Entrepreneur and Inventor, Aaron is focused on taking on patient needs in healthcare, attempting to make a big difference, and learning as much as possible along the way.  Aaron is Passionate about putting the patient at the centre of the design and commercialisation process. On today's podcast we discuss his current mission to eliminate hair loss during chemotherapy with his new organisation Luminate Medical.  www.luminatemed.com.Aaron received the much coveted  Thiel Fellowship recipient whilst studying Engineering at NUI Galway but has been an inventor and entrepreneur from his early teens. He founded EnableArm, an assistive technology company with an innovative way to make facial shaving more accessible, which was part of the 2018 TCD LaunchBox Accelerator cohort. Aaron was an Inaugural member of the Unilever Williams Engineering Academy - a unique academy for young engineers, the first of its type in Formula One, which gave him an introduction to both motorsports engineering and manufacturing and supply chain engineering at the highest possible standard.He has won several accolades including: Best Medical Device Winner at SciFest National Champion & Boston Scientific , 2017. Overall Winner at Ireland Funds Business Plan Competition, 2019 and most recently JCI Ten Outstanding Young People of the World Winner, 2020. Aaron remains humble, empathetic and patient focused throughout all and determined to continue putting the humanity back into medical care devices.

Anne is an award-winning entrepreneur, currently the co-founder and CEO of Journey Protector an organisation that looks to protect haulage trucks as they cross boarders. Her system protects the cargo, the driver but most importantly aims to prevent human trafficking or  threats to migrants. Anne is passionate about the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. She believes that it is vital to strive to leave the earth in a better place than you entered it. To this end, she is a staunch proponent of women in STEM and has mentored university students in entrepreneurship. Anne tells her incredible Entrepreneurial story which includes anecdotes about the bomb squad taking her prototype, selling her engagement ring for funding and reminding us that if we can do anything at all to help even just one person then we absolutely should and to forget any limitations.

 Jordan Scott is a decision-making entrepreneur and content creator. She is the founder, CEO and Chief Editor of Cobble , an app designed to help people make better, faster decisions together. Jordan graduated from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2015. She began her career as a news associate at CBS This Morning before launching her startup.To date, she has raised $3 million in seed funding, with thousands of users who have swiped over 200k times on dates and experiences and is quickly expanding Cobble’s offerings and to new cities adapting to culture. Jordan has been profiled in Forbes , FOX 5 Good Day New York , and more.In 2017, Jordan created idk tonight , a website and newsletter that provides NYC couples with curated date night plans to help couples answer the timeless question: “What do you want to do tonight?” After winning NYU x New York Jets No Huddle Challenge and Entrepreneur Magazine’s LIVE 5-minute pitch competition, Jordan launched Cobble , the first app that supports couples in “life after the swipe.”

Jack Garrett is a young entrepreneur and inventor who currently serves as the Managing Director of G3 Marine, a family-owned business dedicated to developing innovative and conservation minded products in the marine and water-sports industries.  After graduating (with departmental honors) from the University of California at Los Angeles with a degree in Marine Biology, Jack worked on the Great Barrier Reef as a SCUBA Divemaster before returning home to work on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic as an Emergency Medical Technician.  An avid traveler, Jack has traveled to nearly 30 countries and has studied in Italy, Ireland and Tahiti, where he performed research on fish and see urchin herbivory along with the impacts of dredging on coral reefs.  Jack is a named inventor and utility patent holder, and is currently developing an app, along with a cloud based platform, to gamify fishing while also encouraging marine conservation. In doing so, Jack has developed skills in building business model canvases, creating pitch decks, designing workable UI interfaces, and learning how basic CAD functions work in order to develop and 3D print relevant hardware so that he can rapidly prototype ideas.

Michael Parkes is CEO & Founder at Bios.Working across the corporate, social services and environmental sectors, Michael leads, manages and consults to programmes of work seeking to impact global challenges to serve people and planet.  Participating the MIT Portugal PhD program at Institutio Superior Tecnico in Sustainable Energy Systems his focus is on the practical application of his PhD project with corporations and industry. By integrating learning from various dimensions, Michael can work with corporate partners on social innovation at the intersection of environment, sustainability, food and human behaviour. Currently he is leading a start-up, Bios to execute the Bios Life project in partnership with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Nova School of Business & Economics. He is working to reduce energy in urban buildings whilst at the same time growing clean conscious food. Bios' aim is to provide a solution for greenhouse gas emission reduction and food production amidst the backdrop of the many challenges facing the urbanization of food. 

Andrew Kilgallen is one of the co-founders and CFO of Covid Interns. Graduating from Economics and Finance in UCD last Summer, he joined his college friends Rob Muldowney and Paddy Ryder as they finished their final exams and looked around at the bleak employment prospects facing many of their peers, and sought to do something about it. Since then, Covid Interns has helped successfully partner 150 students and businesses in roles spanning from New York to Singapore, in areas equally as diverse, from digital marketing, to software engineering, to finance and NGO roles. With all 6 members of the team engaged in either full-time employment or education, they spend their evenings and weekends seeking to improve the employment opportunities available to recent graduates and students, as well as offering a helping hand to Irish SMEs as they look to adapt to a business trading environment which has been upended by the pandemic. The emergence of remote working has been instrumental in their operating model, and has been hugely helpful in mobilizing students and graduates with organisations that require flexible, predominantly short-term, inexpensive help on projects which deliver mutual value.

It is a fact that 33% of all food produced worldwide is wasted. On today’s podcast we talk to a remarkable woman, Iseult Ward, co-founder and CEO of the award winning social enterprise FoodCloud. FoodCloud put simply is an app that connects those with surplus food with those who need it. The FoodCloud app allows supermarkets to quickly notify local charities of any surplus food they have that is good to eat.  FoodCloud have established two national solutions for food redistribution in Ireland - a network of three food banks that redistribute large quantities of surplus food across Ireland and a technology solution that connects food businesses directly to local charities. Working with over 600 Irish charities, an average of 2,200 tonnes is rescued annually with an estimated value of €6.7m and leading to an avoidance of estimated 7m tonnes of Co2 emissions equivalent. To date, FoodCloud has enabled the redistribution of food equivalent to 100 million meals. Their big idea has been recognised internationally and has scaled across Ireland and the UK. Iseult is a One Young World ,Ambassador and one of Time Magazine’s Next Generation Leaders. In 2017 Iseult was included on Forbes 30 under 30 Social Entrepreneurs European list, received a Humanitarian Award from the Muhammad Ali Centre in Louisville, Kentucky, received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Special Achievement Award and was named the overall winner of the IMAGE Businesswoman of the Year Award. In 2018 they also received a Humanitarian Award from the Irish Red Cross. Let’s hear more from the incredible Iseult. 

On today’s podcast we have Greg O’Gorman, Co-founder & Director at DHR (Digital Health Resource Ltd). Greg is a  former Group Marketing & Ecommerce Director at the Kilkenny Group and for over 14 years, ran the family business with over 17 stores & restaurants nationwide as well as a very successful ecommerce business. Three years ago, Greg and co-founder / Irish Olympian Derval O’ Rourke, established Digital Health Resource. DHR is a leading Tech Business specialising in supporting influencers, celebrities and businesses monetise their brand through an online membership platform. Greg talks about his journey setting up DHR  and discusses their most promising enterprise yet, the membership platform Derval.ie. Derval.ie offers their over 8k members, a platform for home workouts, mindfulness programmes, recipes, chat forums and most recently & a highly successful ecommerce store that launched in November 2020. The business is currently reviewing and planning for 2021 with some exciting advances in the pipeline.  If you’d like to know more about DHR head over to www.digitalhealthresource.com or if you’d like to find fantastic home workouts, recipes and much more thsan go to www.derval.ie  

Andrew is EMEA Director for IoT and Engineering Services - A Graduate of Plymouth University, England having studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Over 25 years’ experience in the Semiconductor and Wireless Communications market supporting consumer, industrial medical and mobile customers. Has held regional and global positions in both Semiconductor Manufacturers and Distributors including placements in Silicon Valley, North America and Sweden and Finland.If you don't know what IoT is or why it's exciting, we promise that after this podcast you'll be all the wiser and all the more excited. Andrew explains The Internet of Things in a digestible and understandable way that intrigues even the most non tech among us to wonder "how can we use this technology to better our futures". 

Emer Keaveney is a marine mammal ecologist, ocean educator, co- founder and Executive Director of Ocean Research and Conservation Association Ireland or for short ORCA Ireland. ORCA Ireland “for-impact” non-profit organisation that is dedicated to monitoring and minimising disturbance to marine wildlife through innovation and awareness.  Emer is the first marine biologist in Ireland & the UK to pioneer the use of automated solutions for marine wildlife survey and data analytics  using AI for machine learning in partnership with Huawei Ireland and Rainforest Connection. With multidisciplinary experience in and across a range of megafauna research, Emer is a leader in her field of STEM Sciences. Her research interests include applied ecology, remote sensing, telemetry and bioacoustics, along with cognitive behaviour, population genetics and physiology.Emer’s passion for marine life is absolutely infectious and by the end of the podcast she had myself and Laura completely enamoured with the ocean and conserving it. 

Today’s podcast is focused once again on healthcare and we are bringing it back to the all important demographic of children. Our guest is the fabulous Shona Darcy founder of Kids Speech Labs a digital health platform to support children’s speech and language development. Kids Speech Labs aims to manage the early stages of speech development at home, with children playing voice enabled games that, through continuous monitoring, can adapt training modules to their ongoing speech and language skills. Parents have access to a dashboard that informs them of their child’s progress, helping them make informed decision about their child’s needs. Shona has a PhD in children’s speech recognition and 10 years’ experience in digital health and has researched and validated digital health applications across several clinical areas.Kids Speech Labs uses speech recognition, data, machine learning and predictive analytics to take the guessing game out of speech and language development. Shona’s goal is to help parents and healthcare providers ensure that no child misses out on the care they need, when they need it. Lets dive in and hear more from Shona on her journey. 

Today’s Podcast has the incredible Becca Hume, founder of TapSOS, a smartphone app that allows people to contact emergency services in a non-verbal manner. At 16 Becca worked alongside a deaf person in her afterschool job and decided to learn sign language to be able to communicate with him. She spent 8 years learning and has completed British Sign Language level 6.  She went on to graduated from Ulster University in 2015 with a Masters in Multidisciplinary Design. Becca saw a gap in the market for the deaf community to access emergency services and with using her design degree created TapSoS. She is curious about users, behaviours and needs in order to design functional products for accessibility. Becca is a ‘Global Shaper’ – a World Economic Forum initiative comprising of a  network of under 30s working together to address regional and global challenges to play an active role in shaping policy, innovation, health, education and more. 

Our first episode features an incredible nursing graduate, Ali-Rose Sisk who is the founder of SafeCare – an innovative system aimed at nurses, which digitalises written documentation, allowing more time for patient care. Until recently, the East Cork native was based in London, where she was working on a Marie Curie PhD scholarship to develop NHS palliative care services for people with early-onset dementia. However, when the pandemic hit, Ali-Rose returned home to help on the frontline and is now balancing clinical work with her PhD studies and her business. She has a special interest in dementia care having created VERA, a dementia communication intervention project, as part of her master’s degree at UCC. Ali-Rose is also a former World Powerlifting Champion.