b'Where Are They Now? KIDS SPEECH LAB2018 WINNERAsfirst-timeentrepreneurs,participatingintheBusinessPlan Competition gave us the tools to critically analyse our business plan and gave us the confidence to fully commit to the business.Kids Speech Labs is the first digital health platform for childrens speech and language development. They are using speech recognition and artifi-cial intelligence (AI) to develop objective bench-marking and intervention applications for childrens speech skills, enabling parents and clinicians to identify speech and language delays as early as possible. Their goal is to be the first stop for all stakeholders as a child begins to communicate, to ensure that no child misses out on the interventions they need to develop communication skills that are so critical for future development. Since winning The Ireland Funds Business Plan Competi-tion, Kids Speech Labs has secured private funding as well as the highly competitive H2020 SME instrument phase 2 grant. These allowed the team to develop a prototype application which has generated one of the largest data-sets of childrens speech for a clinical application. They are more than half way through raising a seed investment from private investors and Enterprise Ireland, and plan to kick-off development of their first product in Q1 of 2020.connect 202047'