Carlow teen creates app to transform healthcare therapy
Carlow teen Darren Maher and his co-founder Ava McGurk who together created the ReCreo health app.
A 19-year-old Carlow student is making headlines once again with the launch of his second mobile application, this time targeting a critical gap in healthcare support for children in long-term care.
Darren Maher, a software development student at South East Technological University (SETU), has partnered with 17-year-old Ava McGurk from Belfast to create ReCreo, an innovative app designed to streamline administrative work for recreational therapists.
The application aims to increase precious face-to-face time between therapists and their young clients by dramatically reducing the hours healthcare providers spend on paperwork outside of sessions.
“Both Ava and I have experience of younger relatives being in long term care, which is where the idea of therapeutic recreation (TR) first came from,” Maher explained. “TR can help children with long term illnesses to restore the confidence they may have lost as a result of an extended stay in hospital.” The app utilises a ‘therapy-through-play’ approach, helping to enhance children’s physical, emotional, and social well-being, particularly important for young patients who have spent significant time away from friends and family in hospital settings.
ReCreo was developed during the prestigious Patch summer programme at Dublin’s Dogpatch Labs, an accelerator programme for innovators aged 16 to 21 focused on projects that drive societal progress through science, engineering, design, technology, and entrepreneurship.
This marks Maher’s second successful app launch. Earlier this year, the Carlow teen captured national attention with Píosa Beag, an Irish language learning app that attracted over 3,500 early sign-ups following its social media preview campaign. The app, whose name means “a small piece,” offers daily words and phrases with a gentle streak-based system designed to make learning Irish feel approachable and achievable.
Following the completion of the Patch programme, Maher’s entrepreneurial journey continues as he has been selected for the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) pre-accelerator programme, which will help him further refine ReCreo and develop it into a comprehensive tool for therapeutic professionals.
