Amara was founded by Dr Emma Carr and Brendan Staunton, above, and Geoffrey Cundiff last year. Picture: Clive Tanner
OAB affects about 16 per cent of the adult population, according to a study of more than 30,000 adults from Britain, the US and Sweden. It occurs due to a signalling problem between the brain and the bladder, and can cause urinary incontinence and frequency as well as nocturia, when a patient keeps waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.
Staunton, its chief executive, had the idea for the company after taking part in NUI Galway’s BioInnovate project in 2017. “As you can imagine, if your bladder becomes unpredictable, it affects every facet of your life,” he said. Currently, the first-line treatment for OAB is behavioural therapy, which is proven to work. The issue, Carr said, is that it’s delivered by pelvic health specialist physiotherapists, “and there just aren’t enough of them”.