Dublin health‑tech start‑up Akara raises $5.5 m to expand hospital AI

Dublin‑based health‑tech spin‑out Akara has secured $5.5 million in venture funding to speed up the rollout of its AI‑driven hospital operating system.

The round was led by Locke Health and included VTC Ventures, the EIC Fund, CommonKind, NovaVector Holdings and existing backers such as ACT, Atlantic Bridge, Enterprise Ireland and several strategic angel investors, taking total capital raised to $12.3 million.

Technology and deployment

Akara, founded in 2020 by engineers Conor McGinn, Cian Donovan, Niamh Donnelly, Michael Cullinan and Eamon Bourke, combines wall‑mounted thermal sensors, robots and edge AI to monitor clinical spaces, flag key events and answer staff queries in natural language. The thermal data is processed locally, avoiding detailed visual images and reducing the need for additional computing infrastructure.

According to co‑founder and CEO Conor McGinn, the solution aims to give staff back time and help hospitals treat more patients while protecting privacy and keeping deployment affordable.

Akura already has installations in hospitals across Ireland, the UK and the US and will use the new funding to expand its operations and engineering teams in Ireland and broaden its AI agents into more healthcare applications.

Source: Silicon Republic. Photo: Mikhail Nilov / Pexels.