Making it Work: Avoiding delicate situations with the aid of a digital platform

A Galway-headquartered medical technology company is aiming to raise €3 million by the end of the year, as part of a plan to commercialise a new product it believes can vastly improve treatment options for those who have overactive bladder (OAB) problems.

Amara Therapeutics has developed a digital platform which it claims offers a cheaper and more user-friendly option for OAB patients, who number in the hundreds of millions worldwide.

OAB affects about 16 per cent of the adult population, according to a study of more than 30,000 adults from Britain, the US and Sweden. It occurs due to a signalling problem between the brain and the bladder, and can cause urinary incontinence and frequency as well as nocturia, when a patient keeps waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

The condition affects both men and women and can have a debilitating effect on quality of life, causing anxiety and depression in some and leading to higher levels of unemployment among some sufferers.

Amara was co-founded by Brendan Staunton, Emma Carr and Geoffrey Cundiff last year. Its digital platform is designed to be used by OAB patients and offers behavioural therapy, informational videos and diaries to track the condition.

Staunton, its chief executive, had the idea for the company after taking part in NUI Galway’s BioInnovate project in 2017. “As you can imagine, if your bladder becomes unpredictable, it affects every facet of your life,” he said.

Carr added: “It’s that fear of wetting yourself in public, in front of your friends or colleagues, or even strangers. It’s such a powerful fear and a very powerful driver of behaviour.

“People do end up changing their behaviour dramatically to try and manage it. They stop driving, they stop exercising, they stop meeting people.”

Currently, the first-line treatment for OAB is behavioural therapy, which is proven to work. The issue, Carr said, is that it’s delivered by pelvic health specialist physiotherapists, “and there just aren’t enough of them”.

In the absence of practitioners to administer the therapy, many doctors prescribe medication, which also works but has a long list of unpleasant side effects.

Amara believes its platform can deliver unintrusive but effective therapy to patients through its platform. Its aim is to become a prescription application, where doctors advise their patients to use the platform.

The Enterprise Ireland-backed firm is aiming to use its upcoming fundraise to pay for clinical trials in the US, with a view to obtaining regulatory approval both there and in Europe by the start of 2024. As part of that process the company, which is currently a small operation, expects to employ more than 20 people within two years.

It hopes to sell the platform to insurance companies or public health bodies like the HSE, and is confident it can persuade them of the merits of its offering. “We can provide more accessible, affordable, convenient treatments straightaway to patients who need it,” Staunton said.

In the long term, Amara aims to become a global leader in the area of online OAB treatment. “Our goal is to become the number one pelvic health digital therapeutics company in the world,” Carr said.