Source: Charlie Taylor, The Irish Times, Feb 1st 2021

Digital health start-up Akkure Genomics has easily surpassed its €500,000 crowdfunding campaign target, just days after launching the initiative.

The company has secured €615,000 in funding since Friday with the campaign to run till the end of February.

Akkure was initially looking to raise €500,000 at a pre-money valuation of €4 million.

The company, which is targeting the €60 billion global clinical trials market, was founded in 2019 by Prof Oran Rigby, a consultant in intensive care medicine and surgery, and Dr Amy Hollingworth, a respiratory and lung transplant specialist.

Former senator Prof John Crown, a senior consultant medical oncologist and cancer trials expert at St Vincent’s University Hospital, was announced chair of the company’s medical research board last week.

Akkure is developing improved technology to allow patients partake in precision medical trials. Simultaneously, the company is deploying its patented robotic telemedicine automated clinical consultation technology to facilitate virtual and remote trial participation allowing global access for patients.

The NovaUCD-headquartered start-up has to date secured €1.6 million in funding through the Disruptive Technology Innovation Fund (DTIF), high-net worth medical investors and Enterprise Ireland. That funding, which is for a project involving other partners, is aimed at project developing a blockchain and AI-enabled stratified trial system to better recruit and reward patients for international clinical trials and data sharing. Akkure has sole commercialisation rights for the project.

Akkure’s crowdfunding campaign is being held via Spark, an Irish-founded platform that has completed 15 fundraising campaigns to date.