Local entrepreneur in top 30 under 30

Among this year’s top 30 under 30-year-olds is Dr Tom McCartan from Clonmellon and formerly from Milltown, Rathconrath. According to the Sunday Business Post, we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr McCartan, whose work saved many lives during Covid-19.

Announcing the top 30, the Business Post said that there is no doubt that the work done by Dr McCartan has saved many lives and we all owe him a debt of gratitude. The bioengineer developed the national Covid-19 Critical Care Index, a clinical risk tool the HSE used to alert medical teams to deteriorating patients and to predict ICU bed demand.

Twenty-eight-year-old Tom is the son of Ursula, née Flood, and the late Tom McCartan Senior. He spent much of his childhood at Rathcastle, Rathconrath. He and his family are fondly remembered in the Milltown area, where he attended the local primary school. He also attended St Finian’s College, Mullingar, before going on to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was awarded the ‘Schols’ scholarship.

In addition to his Critical Care Index initiative, Tom has set up his own business, Nazata Bio, a digital therapeutic start-up that empowers patients to reduce their blood pressure using an app that acts as “a specialist dietician, an exercise coach and a behavioural scientist”, according to the Business Post.

Winner of the MIT’s Hacking Medicine award, Tom is passionate about real world outcomes from digital therapeutics.

“We’re absolutely delighted with the response we’re getting on our work at Nazata Bio – from patients, doctors, investors – it’s fantastic motivation to see how many are interested in our work,” Tom told the Westmeath Examiner.

He said blood pressure is a massive problem for global health. “It’s the number one risk factor for death worldwide, and we’re excited to bring the control our solution offers into patients’ hands.”

Tom worked in the Royal College of Surgeon’s prestigious INCA Group and in Beaumont Hospital in the specialties of orthopaedics, respiratory medicine/academia, gastroenterology and nephrology.

He also conducted an intercalated MSc in Bioengineering with research focusing on developing an early detection system for asthma exacerbations to facilitate earlier and more effective treatment paradigms.

He was awarded first prize in MIT’s Hacking Medicine 2016 European event, for the development of a mobile platform for facilitating neurorehabilitation in stroke patients and was awarded entrance exhibitions and a foundation scholarship from Trinity College Dublin.

Tom has three siblings: his sister Jennifer, who is a pharmacist living at Fairy Park, Clonmellon, with her husband Niall Carson and their three children – Lana, Charlie and Tom; and two brothers, who are both chemical engineers, Bernard who lives in Perth, Australia, with his wife Jinie and their three children, Aiden, Elara and Declan, and Terence, who lives in Dublin.