For some, food allergies are an annoying inconvenience. For others, they are a life-threatening condition that requires constant vigilance. Adults at least can manage their own situation, but for parents of children with severe allergies, monitoring everything they eat is a full-time job.
Now 22, Tiarnan O’Rourke has lived with serious allergies all his life and, determined to do something to alleviate the stress they cause families, he has become the driving force behind Anaphero, a start-up developing a wrist-worn device that detects early signs of anaphylactic reactions in children.
“Most major health conditions, like heart disease and diabetes, have dedicated wearables, but the allergy space remains critically underrepresented in health tech,” O’Rourke says.
“Existing allergy management tools are mainly reactive. For example, EpiPens are only used after a severe reaction has reached a critical point.
“Anaphero is proactive. It is designed to detect the earliest signs of anaphylaxis in children. Once this happens, the device immediately alerts parents or supervising adults via our app, sharing the child’s exact location and making direct contact with emergency services.
“We are not just a software add-on,” O’Rourke says. “Devices such as smart watches cannot do what we do, as their sensors are too inaccurate for blood pressure measurement, which is the key biometric for anaphylaxis.”
O’Rourke says that today’s standard of care requires a child to recognise the symptoms of anaphylaxis themselves. However, many don’t, and every second without care significantly increases the risk of death or long-term health complications.
The Anaphero device detects a problem in about 60 seconds and uses a combination of real-time data, AI, and 5G connectivity to monitor the key physiological biometrics of anaphylaxis, including heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels.
Co-founders
O’Rourke is a graduate in actuarial and financial studies from UCD who met his four co-founders at the Huawei Seeds for the Future, a business talent competition open to third-level students.
The multi-disciplinary team of five, who combined their skills in software, data analysis, engineering, instrumentation and portable detection technology, to bring O’Rourke’s idea to life, went on to win the European round of the Huawei competition. They also reached the world finals of the Hult Prize, a prestigious international competition for student start-ups with over 200,000 participants. Both competitions are centred around using technology as a force for social good.
Anaphero is still pre-launch, with the device for children scheduled to hit the market in 2027 and an adult version to follow. “We will definitely add a device for adults in the future, as I know the challenges of living with severe allergies firsthand,” O’Rourke says.
“I can’t really eat out for fear of mistakes or cross-contamination, even where allergens are listed. When I do eat out, I double and triple check ingredients, but I’m always worried, so I set the timer on my phone to remind me to stop after a few bites to watch for any kind of reaction.
“We currently have an early-stage prototype that’s continuously tracking the biomarkers we’re looking for, and we also have an early-stage machine learning model which connects to the wearable and flags whenever biomarkers go under a certain threshold. We’re building towards a comprehensive paediatric database, but we would like to partner with allergy testing clinics to amass more data for clinical studies,” O’Rourke says.
The company’s potential customers are parents of children aged 5-18, as well as schools, camps, and other child-focused institutions with responsibility for allergy safety. The company will also be selling B2B to allergy testing clinics, which can use Anaphero as a safety net during oral food challenge testing and immunotherapy procedures.
As a bootstrapped student start-up, the bulk of the investment so far has been in time, with a modest €15,000 from competition prizes spent on research and prototype development.
The company is now actively seeking funding to secure clinical validation, regulatory approval and product refinement as the device moves toward clinical trials and commercial launch. Ireland and the UK are the company’s initial target markets, followed by the EU and the US.
“We’ve already built a community of over 2,500 parents, and online sales will allow us to scale internationally. In Europe alone, 2.8 million children are at daily risk of anaphylaxis, and the global figure is around 50 million,” says O’Rourke, who is currently in the final stages of a Master’s programme in business, technology and entrepreneurship at the University of Notre Dame in the US.
“Navigating the intersection between medtech, AI and child safety, which are all highly regulated, high-stakes sectors, has been our biggest challenge so far and designing a life-saving, trustworthy, affordable device is a massive responsibility,” O’Rourke says. “But with every parent who tells us they would sleep better at night if a device like ours existed, we know we’re building something that matters.”
Anaphero’s technology is patent pending, and O’Rourke says the company has recruited an experienced advisory board to steer the device through to commercialisation with global medtech founders and clinical allergy researchers represented.
“Delay is deadly in anaphylaxis. Anaphero is tackling two really urgent problems − deaths and complications from delayed treatment, and the extreme anxiety that families face daily when managing food allergies in children, especially when they move outside the home.
“As someone who has come within minutes of death from allergic reactions, I know first-hand the fear that families live with, and I want to ensure no child is ever alone during an allergic reaction,” O’Rourke says.
