ADAPT Spinout MoveAhead featured in the Irish Times recently with the news of a new deal with the globally known confectionary brand Kinder. The deal aims to integrate MoveAhead’s technology to increase activity levels among children into Kinder’s digital products.
Founded by Dr Johann Issartel and Dr Jamie McGann in 2020, MoveAhead started as an ADAPT Spinout and has since developed into an incredibly successful Irish tech company. MoveAhead has created a movement analytics platform that allows companies operating in the kids app space to bring movement elements into their digital products.
MoveAhead was developed in response to the increase of sedentary lifestyles among children. The project transforms sedentary-focussed screen time into safe, effective and fun movement-based interactions for kids with health and cognitive benefits. Specifically built for children, MoveAhead utilises existing body tracking technology to understand a child’s movement. The app has been designed with children’s security as a top priority and captures only skeletal data which is then converted to numbers.
The deal with Kinder sees MoveAhead’s technology included in the release of Kinder’s Applaydu app through the ‘Joy of Moving’ experience. The app will accompany the Kinder egg which currently has an impressive annual sales figure of 3.5 billion.
Dr Issartel is quoted in the article highlighting the importance of movement based technology for children:
“Play habits have changed and children are simply not developing physical skills the way they were developed in the past. We are not trying to replace real-life play, instead, we want to empower children to also develop key movement skills whilst they are on their phones and in front of their TVs etc, so that they can take these new competencies and experience success in real life play situations and hopefully, be active – for life.”
Read the full article over at the Irish Times here.
