Parkinson’s treated by Beats Medical app

Beats Medical has created an app that turns a smartphone into a medical device used to deliver treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

Launched on the market this year, the app works by providing Parkinson’s sufferers with a beat that they use to cue movement and overcome symptoms.

Prior to entering the entrepreneurial arena, Ms Clancy, chief executive and founder of Beats Medical, was a physiotherapist working with Parkinson’s sufferers. She used metronome treatment and beats to help cue movement and prevent freezing symptoms.

Ms Clancy said: “I decided to step back and research the algorithm that would allow for an individual beat prescription daily, outside of the clinic.”

Using private funding, she set up in Dublin city centre, recruiting a doctor and securing the technical services needed to develop the app. Helped by a feasibility study grant from Enterprise Ireland, the company researched the area and, over the following two years, developed a prototype and tested it on Parkinson’s sufferers in Ireland. Beats Medical was ready for launch in January this year and began selling the app, which costs €1 a day, on an annual subscription basis.

In late 2014 when development of the app was being finalised, Beats Medical was named by the local enterprise office as winner of the overall award in the Dublin City Best Young Entrepreneur. In recent weeks the company was named as one of 18 finalists in this year’s Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, an international competition that assists early-stage female entrepreneurs.

Ms Clancy estimates that there are 10m people worldwide who suffer from Parkinson’s and who could be helped by the Beats Medical app. The company’s key target is the US, which has an estimated 1m Parkinson’s sufferers. Ms Clancy says future plans include launching the app in other languages.

Ms Clancy said: “We are first to market with this product and have an international patent pending. Our biggest markets now are UK and Ireland but we have users from the US, Australia, Singapore, and Europe Our plan now is to get to users across the globe as quickly as possible.”