The Irish Tech News Podcast

A new digital healthcare approach, developed by patientMpower, an Irish digital health company specialising in solutions for remote patient monitoring, has been found by independent researchers to reduce health service costs by 92% and cut outpatient appointments by 80%.      The results were confirmed in a randomised controlled trial conducted by researchers in Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and The University of Manchester.     To find out more about this I spoke to Eamonn Costello, CEO of patientMpower. Eamonn talks about his background, what patientMpower does, wearable devices, and more.More about patientMpower:patientMpower is a specialist provider of digital healthcare solutions, initially founded by CEO Eamonn Costello in 2015, following his own experiences in caring for his father.Their mission is to empower patient-centred specialist healthcare and data insights through digital innovation.Today, patientMpower enables clinical care and research in diverse condition types, empowering thousands of patients, in centres across the US, UK and EU. But those founding principles of innovation, patient-centricity and partnership remain central to their work.

Here at Irish Tech News we love hearing about new Irish tech, websites, apps and startups. A new Irish website that caught our interest is Irish Grants & Supports, a free online website that brings  all the grants, payments and supports together in one place and make them easier for people to find. I recently caught up with Dan O’Hara the  founder of Irish Grants & Supports to find out more.Dan talks about his background, how he started Irish Grants & Supports. and more.More about  Irish Grants & Supports:Irish Grants & Supports went live two months ago and in the first few weeks and it's already had over 800 questions from 15 countries, with hundreds clicking straight through to start a claim. People in Ireland and right across the diaspora are using it daily. Irish Grants & Supports can also be found on Instagram. 

🎙️Agentic Commerce's Real Bottleneck Isn't the Technology — with Jas ShahA year and a half ago, agentic commerce was going to change everything. Type a prompt, get a package. So what actually happened?In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau sits down with fintech product expert Jas Shah for a clear-eyed look at where agentic commerce really stands. The technology has mobilized, but as Jas puts it, becoming ready is not the same as being ready. Disputes, chargebacks, and fraud liability haven't been solved for a world where transaction volume could rise exponentially. And consumer behavior hasn't moved at all: they will use AI for discovery, then still tap Apple Pay to buy. The conversation turns on a single test: utility. Where an agent removes genuine administrative burden, it wins. Where the person actually wants to choose, it doesn't. Which is why Jas argues the real early adopters are businesses: inventory systems, product codes, predictable repeat purchasing, and a procurement decision that comes down to price and delivery speed. Ready for a bold bet for 2030? It involves a wallet … 💬Hot take: "The tech is becoming ready, but I don't think anyone can say it's ready yet."🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, AI, Agentic Commerce Timestamp:00:00 Welcome and Intro00:57 Agentic Commerce Reality Check04:45 Trust and Value Exchange08:55 Why Businesses Adopt First11:29 Authorization and Fraud Guardrails13:22 PSPs and Wallets Strategy17:27 What People Get Wrong19:23 Agentic Finance for SMEs24:37 Personal Finance Utility27:18 Bold Bet for 2030More about our guest 🌐Jas Shah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jas-shah/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

Tara Murphy, is an Irish PhD student at Cambridge working in quantum technologies, who has recently written a children’s book called Qubit the Cat. It’s a children’s story that introduces quantum computing in a playful and accessible way. Tara knows quantum computing usually sounds like something only researchers or tech companies talk about, but she wanted to show that children can meet these ideas much earlier, through imagination and storytelling.I recently caught up with Tara to find out more about her and her latest book. Tara talks about her background, stem, her books, quantum and more.More about Tara Murphy:Tara is a recently graduated Theoretical Physics Student at Trinity College Dublin Ireland and last year she completed her MRes in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at Cavendish Laboratories, Cambridge. Tara has  an interest in both Mathematical Physics and Machine Learning and hopes to combine these areas of physics throughout her future career. Tara also has a wide knowledge of various mathematical concepts in physics as well as experience in experimental physics, having completed four experimental and computational internships at Tyndall National Institute, VULCAN Laser Research Facility, IBM Research Ireland and Quantum Motion Technologies at UCL. Tara is currently pursuing her PhD on applying Machine Learning strategies and simulating Quantum Technologies with Quantum Motion Technologies.

Doing these podcasts gives me a chance to meet some great Irish start-ups and one such start-up is ViveoAI. Based in Coleraine, ViveoAI is a voice AI receptionist built specifically for dental practices and I recently caught up with Sean Higgins the founder of ViveoAI. Sean talks about his background, what ViveoAI does, creating a clone of a voice, AI receptionists and more.More about ViveoAI:The focus is on helping clinics answer missed calls, handle routine patient enquiries, and support appointment booking, rescheduling and cancellation workflows. Building the system around UK and Irish dental practices specifically, rather than using a generic US-style AI receptionist. This means local accents, Irish and UK phraseology, dental terminology, practice-specific workflows, and the kind of patient language people actually use when calling a clinic.As AI has to be deployed responsibly in healthcare settings and because dental practices handle sensitive patient information, there is a careful GDPR tightrope to walk. This ensures ViveoAI has to be useful, while also being tightly bounded, transparent, and clearly administrative rather than clinical. You can find more info on LinkedIn.

In this week’s One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau hosts Kathryn Outlaw, Co-Founder and COO of Spheros, a B2B SaaS platform that aims to unify client data into a single source of truth, enabling accurate, consented data sharing and supporting reliable AI agents. Kathryn talks about her entrepreneurial journey, the inspiration behind the startup, and the goal of making Spheros as essential as DocuSign for on-boarding.💬Hot take:  ”Banks don't have a data scarcity problem. They have a data comprehension problem.” 🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, Data, Banking Industry Timestamp:00:00 Welcome And Guest Intro01:27 From Banking To Startup04:06 Why Spheros Exists07:58 Agents And Data Consent10:30 Open Banking Pathways15:31 Founder Lessons Learned17:01 Defining Success AheadMore about our guest 🌐Kathryn Outlaw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynoutlaw/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 

Here at Irish Tech News we love meeting and introducing new Irish startups to our readers and podcast listeners. One such startup is SelenaVoice AI  that builds custom AI phone receptionists for Irish service businesses. I recently caught up with Jack Power the founder of SelenaVoice AI.Jack talks about his background, what SelenaVoice AI does, coming up with SelenaVoice AI, guardrails, future plans, and more.More about Jack Power:Jack Power is a 20 year old entrepreneur from Co. Meath, currently studying Digital Business and Innovation at DCU while building SelenaVoice AI. After a business partnership collapsed and cost him every client he’d built, Jack started again from scratch under his own name. SelenaVoice AI builds custom AI phone receptionists for Irish service businesses, helping eliminate interruptions and stop them losing money to missed calls. Available and answering 24/7, so no lead is ever lost. Jack documents the journey daily on TikTok and Instagram.

🎙️ "Delight is a deposit strategy."In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Angela Scott, Sales Enablement leader at Zions, joins host Theodora Lau, to discuss her idea that “delight is a deposit strategy,” arguing banks can win deposits by creating intuitive, responsive, and even enjoyable experiences that make money movement easy, especially when digital experiences are constrained by shared core and app vendors. They get into: Why delight isn’t fluffWhy the best deposit strategy makes money easy to move in and outThe chick-and-egg trap of building on the same handful of core and app providersFinancial literacy, and why communities shouldn’t bear the burdenWhy we need to make banking more legibleAngela stresses balancing efficiency and humanity through employee, digital, and brand experience to build trust. 💬 “If you want deposits, you have to bring the right environment to set them free.”🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.Keywords: Fintech, FinancialServices, Banking Industry, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy 00:00 Welcome and Introductions01:05 Delight as Deposit Strategy04:43 Banking UX and Vendor Limits07:16 Neobank Story and Micro Delights11:46 Angela’s Origin Story17:22 Inclusion and Literacy Work25:29 Digital Efficiency vs Human Touch33:02 Brand Experience and Differentiation36:56 Takeaways and GoodbyeMore about our guest 🌐Angela Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-scott-a2348827/ More about our host and One Vision Podcast 🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision **

The EU AI compliance deadline arrived on August 2nd and it’s important that companies have been preparing for it. According to AI expert Cathal McCarthy of Kore.ai, companies that establish robust AI governance frameworks today will be better positioned to deploy AI faster in a highly regulated industry. To help leaders assess their preparedness, Cathal has developed a six-question diagnostic that evaluates the maturity of an organisation's AI governance program. The framework is designed to quickly identify whether key governance structures, accountability mechanisms, and oversight processes are in place, or where gaps still remain.  I caught up with Cathal to find out more about the EU AI compliance and how businesses should prepare for it. Cathal talks about his background, AI compliance, AI adaptability, the ability to learn, AI transparency and more.More about Cathal McCarthy:Cathal is Chief Strategy Officer at Kore.ai, an enterprise AI and agentic AI platform serving Fortune 500 and PE-backed customers globally. He has twenty-five years scaling enterprise technology businesses and has held leadership roles at Apple during its growth from $8B to over $200B in revenue, and at eBay leading initiatives across 163 million users. He also brings P&L instinct, GTM design experience, and credibility in the boardroom on AI transformation.

Here at Irish Tech News we love meeting and introducing new Irish startups to our readers and podcast listeners. One such startup is Montro that helps companies with their AI and SaaS governance. Earlier this year at Dublin Tech Summit my colleague Billy Linehan brought Montro onto out radar and I recently caught up with Ankur Arora one of Montro’s Co-Founders to find out more about Montro.Ankur talks about his background, compliance, what Montro does, shadow AI, EU regulations and more.More about Montro:Montro is a Dublin-based AI governance and SaaS intelligence platform that discovers unmanaged software and automates European regulatory compliance.  Discover every tool, classify against EU AI Act, DORA, NIS2, and GDPR before auditors do.