Dundalk-based start-up PlayerTek secures €1m investment

Ronan Mac Ruairi and Kevin McDaid of PlayerTek

Dundalk-based tech startup PlayerTek has secured a €1m investment for its wearable sports tracker, ahead of the product’s imminent launch in Ireland.

The firm was founded by Ronan Mac Ruairi and Kevin McDaid, both of whom have worked in education and technology development for years.

The founders claim that PlayerTek is the world’s first consumer wearable sports tracker designed to give aspiring amateur players the ability to optimise their training and matches – something previously available only to professional players.

The system measures more than 2,000 variables every second and uses algorithms to produce measurements and simple charts that help players improve their performance.

Investment into PlayerTek has come from Danu Investment Partners and entrepreneur Brendan Gilmore.

According to co-founder McDaid: “PlayerTek is a system that can give a player pinpoint accuracy.

It is much more sophisticated than the GPS in a jogger’s watch because it has to be – football, rugby, GAA, and hockey players, for example, don’t run in straight lines.”

The company is taking pre-orders for the PlayerTek device from its website, with an RRP of €249.

Its founders said that, following the Irish launch, PlayerTek will be launched in the UK to coincide with the start of the 2016 Premier League season.

Mac Ruairi added: “There has been huge interest in the product, as wearable tech is the area that so many brands are focusing in on at present.”

GPs asked not to refer patients to Lourdes Hospital

The letter to GPs

Sinn Féin councillor Tomás Sharkey has learned that GPs in the area have been asked to stop referring patients to the Acute Medical Assessment Unit of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital while the hospital has an overcrowding crisis.

Commenting on the matter, Cllr Sharkey said: “This is the latest in a series of crises in the Drogheda Hospital. The trolley crisis in the A&E Department is as bad now as it ever was under Mary Harney. The letter to GPs gives us an insight into the failures of the hospital’s systems.

“This letter explains that there is a huge number of acute medical patients in the hospital and asks that GPs stop directly referring any more medical patients into the hospital. But this is a nonsense. It means that a sick patient with an acute medical condition will have to present at A&E to be triaged to receive attention.

“The people of Louth do not need reminding that acute medical services were withdrawn from Louth County Hospital in Dundalk. We warned that this type of crisis would happen. I am calling on all government TDs and senators in Louth and Meath to admit that there is a crisis in our hospital and to demand the reopening of acute medical wards in Dundalk.”