Tickets at the ready for Northern Ireland's prestigious night of invention

e+press was created by Becca Hume from Newtownabbey and is the first app of its kind designed to provide non-verbal instant connectivity to Emergency Services in a highly efficient and visual manner. Since its formation in 2014, the app has been developed whilst collaborating with the UK’s emergency services, establishing a strong relationship resulting ine+press being placed onto the app accreditation scheme with BAPCO (British Association of Public Safety-Communications Officials) ensuring full integration with the BT telematics system. Due for completion in 2017, this integration will ensure that e+press alerts are treated as any other 999 emergency call.

Locate a locum was founded by Jonny Clarke and Michael Budden from Belfast. It is an online platform connecting pharmacists with employers. There are 14,000 pharmacies across the UK. Legislation states that to be open - a pharmacy must have a registered pharmacist on the premises at all times. It is a major problem for pharmacy owners if their regular pharmacist is absent from work as it can very difficult to find locums who are available and eligible to work. Locate a Locum provides an online platform for the two parties to communicate.

EmBed was invented by Eve McLelland from Belfast, was designed to bring hope, restore worth and rebuild confidence when disaster strikes, through high quality and innovative design. Founded in October 2015, Embed manufacture and distribute cardboard, foldable beds packed with personal essentials (food, hygiene products, medical supplies) for people impacted by natural disasters. Funding will allow creation of a die for the mass manufacturing process and bring the product to market. Further investment will be directed towards research and development for new products and to advance existing models.

JumPack has been invented by Philip McIntosh (Downpatrick) and Mike Crowe (Belfast). It is a tough, lightweight, easily portable and foldable extreme sports jump ramp. It is designed to be carried 'hands free' whilst riding a bike or skateboard. Phil McIntosh, a former All-Ireland mountain bike champion invented Jumpack when he was out with his family and saw three young people with BMX bikes and the components of a ramp (a plank and bricks). Two of the young people were carrying the planks and bricks and the other was trying to control the three BMX bikes. This was Phil’s ‘light bulb’ moment and he his co-founder Mike Crowe have designed and built JumPack. Click Here to see it in action.

Purple Magic has been invented by Paul Watts from Lurgan. It is a patented, purple-flesh potato variety with high levels of anthocyanins, developed at AFBI, Loughgall in 2003. Consumption of highly coloured fruits and vegetables that have high levels of the antioxidant anthocyanins is thought to have many health benefits as they can reduce free-radicals found in cancer types. Purple Magic was derived from a cross breed and was selected along with several other coloured flesh varieties for evaluation in Canada, eventually achieving varietal status in 2015. Production has been licensed to a Canadian company and the variety has shipped 44 tonnes in 2015, and aiming to produce over 800 tonnes in 2016.

Oran Oak 'Dip Fast' was founded by the Kelly Family of Beragh, Co. Tyrone. The current task of dipping sheep (assisting with parasite control) is time consuming and labour intensive. Oran Oak Engineering has developed a unique, rotational moulded sheep-showering unit that reduces labour time and potential health & safety risks associated with performing this task. Once manufactured, Oran Oak plans to assemble the units at the manufacturing location in Beragh, Co.Tyrone. The primary export markets are the UK and Ireland, Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Kraydel established by Paul Moorhead (Belfast) and George Redpath (Lisburn). Kraydel is a technology start-up developing a system that provides non-intrusive monitoring of elderly people living alone. Their product consists of a base station with environmental sensing capabilities and a tablet interface, paired with a wrist-strap which provides heart-rate, and temperature measurements and an accelerometer to detect falls, seizures, and to monitor tremor. It will also provide range and location data in later releases.

TakeTen (founded by Fintan Connolly) has developed a gaming app that monitors stress levels through real-time biofeedback, allowing users to regulate and manage their stress levels. This innovative technology helps children and young people retrain their body to deal more effectively with stress and anxiety. The games have a novel mode of action – they respond to the user’s physiology and will only progress whenever the user is calm. Positive benefits have been recorded particularly for children with special needs and learning difficulties and the visual element has been especially appealing to children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. TakeTen has established a strong presence in over 190 schools in the UK.

Eleso was established by a group of Queens University Belfast students. Their product Fuel & Drive turns a vehicle into a method of payment through the integration of a number plate recognition system installed at forecourt pumps. It will provide a system that increases security at forecourts whilst decreasing the payment processing time, allowing for a higher throughput of vehicles and 24-hour operation. In the future the current system will be developed for use in settings including ‘Drive Through’ areas such as fast food and pharmacies, car washes and parking. The team consists of Jonathan Browning (Belfast) Joseph Quinn (Coalisland), Connor Duggan (Randalstown), Mark McAleer (Dungannon), Orla Martin (Derry)

Point Energy was founded in 2016 by Prof. Kang Li, Dr. Joe Devlin and Dr. Jing Deng (Belfast). It provides data driven insight and an energy saving service to the manufacturing industry through an energy monitoring and data mining system. Point Energy delivers end-to-end energy monitoring as a service solution for manufacturing systems. Their novel, non-intrusive hardware and award winning solution collects high granularity data on the energy utilisation of every component in every machine in factories. This data is sent securely to the cloud and provided to the customer. The statistical analysis enables manufacturers to understand their energy usage and deliver significant savings.

Elemental Software specialises in providing software solutions for the Connected Health sector. Elemental’s product is My Social Prescription (MSP), a cloud-based platform that helps health care professionals to generate ‘Social Prescriptions’ for citizens with chronic health risks, connecting them with quality assured community-based lifestyle interventions across the domains of exercise, diet/nutrition and mental health. It is helping to activate healthier communities by fundamentally changing how stakeholders interact to avoid increased risk and progression of chronic health conditions.

The Shield has been developed by Paul Goodchild from Belfast. It provides scalable security software that protects WordPress sites from criminal and malicious hacking. The team was able to design countermeasures to hacking after recognising that the overwhelming majority of website attacks are conducted by automated bots.