We all want to feel independent and in control of our lives. When age or illness takes away independence, preserving dignity becomes even more important. John Kelly, founder and CEO of airCeption®, is on a mission to advance that. His multi-award-winning ambient sensing platform is designed to improve caregiving workflows and patient dignity through non-contact monitoring.
airCeption uses environmental sensing, intelligent detection logic, and AI-enabled analytics to identify continence events and other patient-proximate biosignals without requiring wearable devices or adding to the caregiver workload.
During our conversation, we saw that John always keeps dignity at the core of his innovation.
How would you characterise Ireland as a place to build a startup?
Ireland is a strong place to build an early stage company, particularly in healthcare. There is excellent talent, a supportive innovation network, good access to decision makers and numerous government initiatives and incentives supporting R&D and early stage investment. The limitations can be a somewhat risk averse market and the potential to scale, so founders need to think internationally from the beginning rather than treating expansion as something for later.
What is a decision from airCeption’s early days in Ireland that you would make completely differently if you were starting today?
I would focus earlier on the commercial pathways alongside the technology. We invested heavily in proving that airCeption could work, which was necessary, but a successful healthcare product also needs clearly identified buyers, integration pathways and routes to adoption. The plurality is intentional, as you cannot put all your eggs into a single route to market. I would build those relationships much earlier and develop the technology around several clearly defined commercial pathways.
Running a MedTech company across two very different regulatory and healthcare systems, Ireland/EU and the US, what is the trade off nobody warns you about until you are living it?
Personally, I have not found regulation to be the biggest issue. Regulations provide a clear set of stipulations and, when properly followed, they make you stronger and help you understand your technology and its implications more thoroughly. The real challenge is understanding the different purchasing processes, along with the cultural nuances involved in sales, marketing and implementation workflows. Those are much harder targets to hit.
Founders often talk about the moment they knew they were onto something. Was there a specific one for you with airCeption, or did conviction build more gradually?
Conviction built gradually. The first time we detected a continence event without anything being worn by or attached to the person was an important moment. I happened to be in the nursing home speaking with the owner when an alert appeared on his application. He asked a caregiver to check on the resident, and the alert was correct. I remember feeling delighted that we had helped that older woman. From that point, it felt less like a project and more like a mission that simply needed to be undertaken.
If you had to describe the culture of airCeption in one sentence to someone who has never met the team, what would you say, and how much came from its Irish roots versus its US growth?
We are a small, practical and persistent team focused on solving a difficult human problem in a way that genuinely works in the real world. The resourcefulness and willingness to keep going came largely from our Irish roots, while working in the US has added greater commercial urgency and ambition around scale.
Looking ahead, where do you see the next real breakthrough in healthcare, particularly within your own corner of MedTech, and how central is AI to getting there versus being one tool among several?
I believe the next breakthrough will come from ambient healthcare technology that can understand changes in a person’s environment without requiring them to wear, operate or continually interact with a device. AI is central to interpreting those signals, but it is still only one part of the solution. The real value comes when sensing, AI and clinical workflows work reliably together and lead to timely human action.
