‘I always had entrepreneurial ambitions and this was first-hand evidence of an unmet need’

Neuromod’s chief executive Dr Ross O’Neill says his company’s Lenire device, which aids tinnitus sufferers, can establish a sizeable market — particularly in the US among military veterans

Dr Ross O’Neill, founder and chief executive at Neuromod Devices. Picture: Julian Behal

One day, while Dr Ross O’Neill, chief executive of Neuromod, the Irish medtech firm, was cleaning in his house, he noticed that the high-suction mode of his vacuum was oppressively loud. He decided to hold his phone’s decibel reader up to the device, and its leonine roar to see how loud it truly was; the reading came in at 85 decibels.

According to noise comparisons compiled by the University of Purdue, this is equivalent intensity ...