How is your business helping to solve the health, social, or economic challenges created by COVID19?
Existing methods for disinfecting rooms of infectious pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, are ineffective, time consuming, labour intensive and impractical. This is leading to high numbers of healthcare workers contracting the virus (more than 25% of recorded cases in many countries have been healthcare workers) and massive reduction in workflow. This has been especially problematic in radiology departments where recommended infection control cleaning times between patients has been elevated to 60 minutes, and where radiographers (not cleaners) are required to manually clean expensive equipment (such as CT scan machines). Akara has developed a robotic disinfectant solution that uses UV germicidal radiation to rapidly disinfect rooms, reducing the time to disinfect radiology suites to less than 15 minutes, and helping to keep health workers off the front lines. Our solution has been validated by a leading microbiology lab in Ireland's top University, and a beta version of the robot has been deployed in 2 Irish hospitals. Our initial focus is in radiology departments, however we have received strong interest for using the system in other parts of the hospital, in nursing homes, retail, and on public transport.
Does your business contribute most to recovery, response, or resilience?
Resilience - we're improving the broader infrastructure for responding to pandemic outbreaks.,Response - we're responding directly to issues caused or exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak.
What is the stage of your product development?
I have a prototype or a simple version I can show my customers
What strengths does your team bring? Include skills and personal experience with the problem.
Akara is a spin out from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland’s leading University. The company is led by Dr. Conor McGinn, a recognised international expert in robotics and recently named as one of Europes top innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review. In addition to possessing technical knowledge, Dr. McGinn has more than 4 years’ experience managing global product design projects with multinational organisations (such as Daimler, MediaMarktSaturn, Swisscom, Ubotica, and Worten) through involvement with the SUGAR design network. The founding team have been working together for more than 3 years, and have core expertise spanning AI and machine learning (Niamh Donnelly), actuation and control (Dr. Michael Cullinan), software development (Carl O’Connor), design and manufacturing (Eamonn Bourke), electronics and embedded systems (Cian Donovan), and business development (Eoin Carroll). The team have a proven track record developing and deploying advanced robot solutions. In November 2019, they were featured on the cover of Time magazine, and a previous robot developed by the team was named by Time magazine as one of their best inventions of 2019.We are supported by nine advisors from executive and academic backgrounds. They bring a wealth of knowledge and experience from sectors including healthcare, manufacturing, product development, artificial intelligence, marketing, sales and user experience.
What countries do you operate in?
We have conducted beta testing in the US and Europe (UK and Ireland).
Is your company headquartered in a US "Opportunity Zone"?
No
