DECISIONS FOR Heroes, software to help emergency services record and analyse their rescue operations, has won a €10,000 prize in a competition for start-ups.
The competition was held by iQ Content, a Dublin-based internet consultancy, which offered €10,000 of its own money for the most interesting technology-based business plan.
The competition was launched in March and received 249 entries.
The winner was chosen after eight finalists made pitches to judges from Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, as well as indigenous internet firms Daft, StatCounter and LouderVoice.
Decisions for Heroes was founded by Robin Blandford, who is also a volunteer cliff rescue climber with the Irish Coast Guard.
“The software helps rescue teams to save lives by recording all incidents around their rescue and training exercises, such as the weather conditions, the treatment used and the members of the team,” Mr Blandford said.
The more information entered into the system, the easier it would be for rescue units to analyse patterns in the data, he added.
A separate people’s choice prize of €1,000 went to Plink, which developed a search engine for images.
Morgan McKeagney, managing director of iQ Content, encouraged other companies to take similar initiatives.
“The big lesson is €10,000 was enough incentive for hundreds of people to sit down and write a business plan, and 50 to 60 per cent of those had real merit,” he said.
State development agencies should also review how they allocated funds to start-ups, Mr McKeagney added. “If the process is made easier, more people will engage with it and better results will come from it,” he said.
