DCU Sports scientist showcases technology that led GAA champions to victory

By Gillian Fitzsimons

An Innovation Dublin event, Cool Research That Can Help Your Business, took place in the Invent building last Wednesday, explaining various new technologies developed in DCU and how they can work with commercial businesses.

Leaders in innovation at DCU provided a snapshot of some of their new developments, including breakthrough research in medical imaging, sensors, cloud computing and health and human engineering.

Leading sports scientist at DCU, Prof Niall Moyna, has developed new technologies in health and human engineering. These technologies include individual and team performance indicators, fitness assessments, sensors, receivers and heart rate monitors.

 

Prof Moyna has worked with the All-Ireland Gaelic champions, successfully integrating his technology into the Dublin team, and believes it played a major part in their success.

The technology allowed Dublin manager Pat Gilroy and his team to work on the individual needs of players. In monitoring individual performances they were able to design a personalised programme for each player, configured around their specific performance outcomes.

Scientia Sports Managing Director, James Carroll, and international rugby coach Matt Williams have been working with Prof Moyna in testing and developing the product, now known as ProVue.

Mr Carroll said working with DCU “allows us to sustain a profitable project and in the long run hopefully create jobs here in Ireland.”

It solves a major problem faced by coaches; it provides a two way communication tool enabling them to stay in constant contact with their team and the “e-diary” function allows coaches to review each player’s specific needs. This data focuses on areas like sleep, diet and exercise.

The tool also acts as an incentive for players as they can compare their performance with other team members, identify weak spots and certain trends in their game.

Paddy O’Boyle, who works with the commercialisation of information and communications technology at Invent, said he hoped the event would “give a nice overview of the research areas and hope companies would be interested.”