The elite sports industry is a trailblazer in so many areas, but its prized assets have been left open to potential injury in one crucial area: the quality of their movement in the gym.
Emma Meehan is now looking to change that as she looks to raise seed investment for her startup Precision Sports Technology. Meehan, who will represent Ireland in the KPMG Global Tech Innovator grand final at Web Summit in Lisbon on Wednesday, had to wait for technology to catch up before pressing ahead with her idea for movement tracking to rival full motion capture using just an iPad.
“My background is a really strong mix of tech and fitness: I’m a computer science graduate software engineer, but I’m also a competitive weightlifter and a qualified personal trainer,” she tells BusinessCloud ahead of the final.
“As I was training for competitions in the gym, I could see when my form was wrong in the mirror, and knew how to fix it; but most people don’t have that luxury and may actually end up injuring themselves.
“I could see the value in this for professional sports teams. To take one example, there were teams in the Premier League and across the NFL that were using manual angle measurement devices, like a ruler or protractor, to see right how mobile an athlete’s shoulder is and recording that information in an Excel spreadsheet.
“When that star player then gets injured as a result of bad training, the club has to continue paying their salary; but not only that, there might be a knock-on effect for revenue while they’re out… and they might lose games or even a league title.”
Meehan wrote the first prototype using the now distinctly retro Xbox videogame Kinect camera. “That wasn’t going to be remotely accurate enough for our use case!” she says. “I then worked with an Intel 3D sensor plugged into my laptop, which was accurate – but the form factor just wasn’t there.”
By this point she had graduated and was “cutting my teeth” on the tech team at Cisco while working on her side hustle. “When I saw that Apple were launching their flagship devices with LiDAR 3D scanning, I thought: ‘Okay, right now is the time!’ I could then see a path to a viable business model.”
Biomechanics lab in the palm of your hand
The tech bringing the biomechanics lab into the palm of your hand is being developed in-house. Existing and planned partnerships with universities in Ireland, the UK and US validate the product, says Meehan.
“You just hold up the iPad and we see how accurate your movement tracking is compared to a motion capture lab,” she explains. “We’re actually more than 95% accurate compared to the labs, but the results are delivered in less than 1% of the time – and you don’t need any equipment or experts to run the device.”
The results around quality of movement are fed back to team staff who can see any key changes – such as red flags for potential injury – as well as monitor rehabilitation of injured players.
Looking at the consumer market, people undergoing rehab at home can also be remotely monitored, with physiotherapists only stepping in when required to prompt or amend activity. “That is such a huge untapped market,” says Meehan.
Family business
The founder worked in her family’s chain of Spar shops from the age of 10 until graduation so she is no stranger to hard work and has an eye on the bottom line.
“We’ve just opened our seed round financing: we’re looking to raise $3 million and we have the first million dollars available on a safe note, where any investors that come in before the end of the year will get a 10% discount on the equity that they invest in, with a valuation cap on that as well,” she reveals.
One of 23 businesses to reach the KPMG Global Tech Innovator final from 1,500 applications, she has already raised the profile of her business. What else is she looking for from Web Summit, Europe’s biggest tech conference attended by 70,000 people?
“We have investor meetings lined up… and will also be looking to generate further investor leads while we’re here.”
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