WEALTH June 13, 2026 0 Comments

How Mark Barry’s Vertigenius Is Poised to Defy Gravity and Rewrite the Rules of Success

Ever wonder what it takes for a seasoned tech veteran, eyeing a smooth downhill into semi-retirement, to pivot back into the hustle of startup life? That’s exactly where Mark Barry found himself early in 2023, ready to ease off the gas and play advisor to fresh Irish innovators. But then—a chat with Dr. Dara Meldrum, a mastermind behind a breakthrough wearable device targeting vertigo, flipped the script entirely. In just thirty minutes, Barry was hooked, lured away from his “quiet” plans to steer Vertigenius, a company aiming to revolutionize treatment for a condition that turns the world into a dizzying nightmare for millions.

What’s captivating here isn’t just the tech—though the wearable head sensor paired with a smart app and clinician monitoring system is nothing short of brilliant—but the blend of relentless ambition and deep medical expertise fueling this venture. With an estimated 390 million people worldwide battling vertigo, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Barry’s not just along for the ride; he’s running full tilt, outpacing competitors and setting sights on dominating a $3.5 billion U.S. market. It’s a tale of timing, tenacity, and a bit of serendipity—a reminder that sometimes, the right conversation can spin your world around in the best way possible. LEARN MORE

Founded by Dr Dara Meldrum in 2021, Vertigenius has high hopes for its wearable device that treats vertigo. CEO Mark Barry tells George Morahan how he was “lured” on board and why the company has ambitions to dominate the market

Three years ago, Mark Barry was considering a sort of semi-retirement.

A veteran of the deep tech industry with experience of bringing products to market, he had decided by early 2023 that it was time to “back off a little bit” and take on more of an advisory role to the next generation of innovative Irish startups.

One conversation with Dr Dara Meldrum, the Trinity College Dublin professor, vestibular and neurological rehabilitation researcher and founder of Vertigenius, changed all that.

“I was looking to invest in companies, advise Irish companies — something I’ve been passionate about my whole life — and I actually reached out to about 40 Irish startup companies,” Barry says.

“I had a chat with them about potentially investing, potentially helping them, and I was blown away when I spoke with Dara. After 30 minutes talking to her, I was hooked.”

Dr Meldrum asked Barry to help put together Vertigenius’s seed funding round and “lured him into” becoming the company’s interim chief executive, a role he has since taken on full time.

A combination of things attracted the Corkman to the project.

Chief among them was the prevalence of vertigo, a disorder of the balance system or the vestibular system possessed by an estimated 390 million people worldwide.

“It’s an awful condition. You wake up in the morning, the room spinning, you feel sick, you feel nauseous, you can’t drive the car,” he explains.

A second factor was Dr Meldrum being, in Barry’s words, a real powerhouse and key opinion leader in addition to the respect she carries globally.

The company’s chief scientific officer boasts 25 years of clinical, research and academic experience as well as 70 peer-reviewed articles and five book chapters

“I’ve learned throughout my career that you not only have to get out of the blocks first, you have to keep on running faster than everyone else and having someone who’s an expert in the field can always make sure you’re ahead,” Barry says of the founder.

Third was the Vertigenius product itself, which combines a wearable head sensor medical device, a mobile app for patients and a monitoring platform that allows clinicians to track their progress with rehabilitation and adjust prescribed treatment accordingly.

Dr Meldrum developed the sensor and its attendant products after 10 years of research. Barry believes it “solves a real problem in the field”, citing the fact that one in 30 emergency department visits in US hospitals are due to vertigo and “how it clogs up the system, the impact it has economically on insurance companies.

“When we hear about older people falling, we always think it’s because of muscle degeneration. But half the time it’s because of degeneration of the balance system that happens as we get older,” he adds.

At the time Vertigenius offered Barry the chief executive position, Dr Meldrum was still working full-time at Trinity but the company was being spun-out to meet a regulatory deadline.

Over his career Barry has brought around 80 products to market, and he has the commercial experience Dr Meldrum knew she needed to progress the company.

With Barry on board, the firm started to engage investors in spring 2023, leaning on his prior relationships with venture capital groups and support from Trinity’s technology transfer office.

By the following May, Vertigenius had secured €2.1m in a seed funding round led by Atlantic Bridge, Enterprise Ireland and Ascentifi.

That first year was also spent developing Vertigenius from minimum viable product to market-ready medical device, specifically by integrating consumer feedback about the user experience and making it “volume-ready” in terms of reliability and quality.

Barry describes his first 18 months at the helm as “frantic”.

He also compares life at a startup to like being on a treadmill (“If you stop running, you just fall off the back”), although it took longer than he expected to pull the round together.

The addressable market for vertigo treatment in the US, where the company launched last year after securing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance, is worth $3.5 billion (€3bn) to Vertigenius. This is based on the per-patient selling price for the product multiplied by a potential “sweet spot” of 5,000 vestibular clinics and estimated patient throughput.

“What we would do is put together a subscription. So a clinic who might be treating five patients per month can sign up to a light model, for example. A clinic that’s treating 15 patients a month can sign up to an enterprise-level model,” Barry says.

Since launching in the US in October, Vertigenius has been adopted by 21 clinics that have a combined 3,000 patients. Barry expects to be in at least 50 clinics by the end of the year. The firm is currently onboarding clinics at a rate of four per month.

The prospect of swift expansion is helped by Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM), reimbursements of $220 per patient available to clinics under Medicare and Medicaid introduced in 2022 to facilitate remote patient care, opening new income streams.

Barry expects the company will achieve greater US market penetration before expanding into Europe and the Asia-Pacific region over the next five years, although the product has already been used by more than 1,000 patients in Ireland.

The company has engaged plenty with Irish and UK clinics for customer market fit and feedback, but its focus is squarely on the US for the time being.

“We want to dominate the market and be the market leader,” says Barry.

“It’s not to do with competition or anything like that. It’s more to do with [the fact that] it’s a new technology being adopted. And with any new technology adoption, it’s always [the case] that you have the early adopters and fast followers and so on.”

Vertigenius recently completed a second funding round worth €2.55m with its existing investors as well as MedTech Syndicate, IRRUS Investments and Xcendra Ventures.

The company hired two US salespeople in December to lead its expansion efforts. It will recruit six more staff this year to be based in Ireland, working in the areas of clinical research, product R&D, quality assurance and regulatory affairs.

Mark Barry — Dr Dara Meldrum and Conor O’Sullivan with the Vertigenius wearable device

Vertigenius generated less than €1m in turnover in 2025, but the company has been “ramping up revenue substantially” since the first quarter of the year and at a greater rate than expected, according to Barry.

Additionally, the firm has submitted patents to protect its intellectual property as well as its market opportunity. Considering the length of time it takes to clear medical devices for market, Barry does not anticipate any immediate competition.

“Having Dara on board as a key opinion leader is something that really gives us a competitive moat as well. So even if there is competition, which we expect, we [also] expect to continue to dominate the market from a leadership perspective.”

The latest accounts for Vertigenius show a loss of €1.3m for 2025, the year the product was formally launched, bringing accumulated losses to €2.7m, and cash reserves of €2.14m following the seed funding round.

Photo: Left to right: Mark Barry, CEO, Vertigenius; Dr Dara Meldrum, founder and chief scientific officer, Vertigenius;