Medtech, edtech start-ups come out on top at NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition
Emerging start-ups, Clia and Orgo, have been announced as winners of the 2024 NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition, an intensive accelerator programme for student entrepreneurs, at University College Dublin (UCD).
Following pitches to a judging panel at the culmination of the competition, Clia, an emerging medtech start-up, was named winner of the €3,000 tech sustainability prize sponsored by Terra Solar. Orgo, an emerging edtech start-up, was named winner of the €3,000 one to watch prize sponsored by NovaUCD.
Clia is developing software which plugs into existing cardiac rehabilitation services to improve support and treatment for people at risk of cardiac disease. Using wearable health data Clia aims to track and provide insights in heart health, offering links to structured exercise services and give check-ups with cardiac specialist physiotherapists.
The founders of Clia are physiotherapists Rory Lambe and Ben O’Grady, who are currently research masters students, investigating wearable technology at the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science.
O’Grady said: “Wearable health data is a rapidly expanding industry. At Clia we are building a team of exercise specialists in wearable data accuracy and who have worked in the Irish healthcare and cardiac rehab systems to monitor heart health and to ultimately improve cardiac health and reduce cardiac disease inline with the UN SDG 3 of good health and wellbeing.
“We are passionate about health, technology and innovation, and our vision at Clia is central to this. We aim to validate and progress our concept to bring our research knowledge in wearable health to market with the goal of improving heart health and wellness.”
One to watch winner Orgo is developing a mobile e-learning platform focused on organic chemistry to enable students across the academic spectrum to become comfortable with the subject. The mobile app will help with bite-size lessons and revision questions to ensure success throughout their college careers.
Zackary Musumeci, Orgo founder and undergraduate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UCD College of Science, said: “It is a great honour to have been named the winner of the One to Watch Prize at the end of the 2024 NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition, given the many fantastic early-stage student start-ups which took part in this year’s competition.
“A key reason for high attrition rates among students of health sciences or medicine is the difficulty of preparatory course content, particularly Organic Chemistry. This subject is fundamental to these students, but it can be unintuitive and requires extensive practice, which requires a significant time investment. With Orgo studying for Organic Chemistry is easier than ever. Our solution consists of a mobile app that includes a gamified learning experience, with bite sized lectures and revision content. This allows students to get practice in at any time of the day. With long term learning, consistency is key even if students are only using the app for a few minutes a day.
“My future plan with Orgo is to try and build out a full prototype by the end of the summer. With consumer facing apps, especially ones that prioritise education, having the best possible user experience is a must. I am looking for talent to assist me to this end and wish to take this idea as far as I can.”
Thirteen early-stage student ventures and 26 participants completed this year’s programme. More than 80 early-stage start-ups and some 200 students have now completed the NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition over the last 10-years.
The four-week programme, which uses the Lean Startup and Business Model Canvas approach, included a series of structured workshops and interactive workshops delivered by Raomal Perera, Caitlin Hafer and Nirisha Manandhar from Lean Disruptor. Topics such as, customer development; value proposition; working in teams; design thinking; prototyping, environment mapping; financial planning and effective fundraising and pitching, were covered.
This year two new components were introduced to the programme. The first was focused on supporting the students to think further about how they can create AI powered start-ups, and to consider what are the tools and opportunities to leverage generative AI, not only in their products or services, but also in their business operations. The second was to provide ‘checkpoints’ as the students refined their business ideas where they could reflect on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how best to align their emerging start-ups with these goals.
Many of the students who completed this year’s competition had also participated in Nova Vision, NovaUCD’s new entrepreneurship initiative, which took place earlier this year.
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