<\/p>\n
Doccla, a Sweden founded but London-headquartered health tech startup that sells a remote patient monitoring platform to hospitals to run so-called \u2018virtual wards\u2019, has closed a \u00a315 million (~$17M) Series A funding round a year after raising a $3.3M seed.<\/p>\n
The Series A is led by US VC General Catalyst, with participation from funds managed by healthcare investors KHP Ventures (a collaboration between King\u2019s College London, King\u2019s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and Guy\u2019s and St Thomas\u2019 NHS Foundation Trust). Existing investors Giant Ventures, who led the seed round, and Speedinvest also backed the Series A \u2014 which sees Chris Bischoff, MD at General Catalyst, joining the board.<\/p>\n
General Catalyst is an investor in US remote care health tech\u00a0unicorn Cadence which also sells a remote monitoring service, so could be seen as a potential competitor to Doccla. Although the (currently) different target markets (US vs Europe) and specific product presentation \u2014 we understand Cadence is focused on populations with chronic disease, while Doccla talks in terms of building virtual wards\/\u2019Hospital at Home\u2019 \u2014 are, evidently, distinct enough to convince the VC firm there\u2019s value in backing both for growth.<\/p>\n
Doccla\u2019s growth trajectory must certainly have helped: The 2019-founded startup only launched its remote patient monitoring service during the pandemic but says it\u2019s now present in a fifth (20%) of all Integrated Care Systems (ICS) in the UK, with patient intake from 20+ hospitals. In total it says it\u2019s monitored 50,000+ patients to date. (NB: ICS are a feature of the UK\u2019s National Health Service (NHS) in England \u2014 essentially partnerships between relevant organizations and local authorities with the goal of joining up the planning and delivery of health services across their region.)<\/p>\n
The startup\u2019s platform allows clinical staff from hospitals to monitor the vital signs of those under treatment remotely (either continuously or intermittently) \u2014 freeing up hospital beds for new patients to be admitted by enabling early discharge via at-home monitoring. That\u2019s important because the NHS suffers from a particular low average number of beds per 1,000 people compared to other OECD EU nations, with just 2.4 beds vs the OECD EU average of 4.6 and Germany\u2019s average of 7.9.<\/p>\n
It sells an end-to-end remote patient monitoring service which covers provisioning the devices used for monitoring (including pre-configured smartphones with large fonts to improve accessibility for the visually impaired\/frail etc; and wearable medical devices to measure a wide range of physiological parameters); and taking care of software integration, logistics and customer service, and tech support for the elderly and non-digital natives \u2014 with its pitch being that it differentiates from competitors by significantly reducing the workload on hospital staff.<\/p>\n
Doccla says its current clients include a number of NHS trusts across the UK, including Northampton General Hospital, Cambridgeshire Community Services, and Hertfordshire Community Trust.<\/p>\n
On the competition front, it name-checks Huma, Current Health, and Docobo as UK rivals \u2014 but co-founder Martin Ratz points to three main areas where he argues it\u2019s serving up something \u201cvery different\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor starters, we are CQC [Care Quality Commission, aka the independent regulatory body for healthcare providers in England] accredited and therefore can take clinical responsibility for patients, reducing the workload for healthcare personnel,\u201d he tells . \u201cWe are device agnostic and are not pushing our own device. Finally, our service layer enables us to deliver market leading patient compliance \u2014 exceeding 95% across all pathways.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Series A funding injection will be ploughed into further developing its tech stack to support the integration of more medical devices into its patient monitoring platform and electronic healthcare record systems; and for data analytics and AI \u2014 to \u201cexpand clinical capacity and availability\u201d to meet demand for \u201cvirtual hospitals that alleviate pressures on healthcare systems\u201d, as it puts it.<\/p>\n
Or, put another way, with both beds and doctors in chronically short supply AI-powered efficiencies are the new, transformative tool to enable already stretched-to-breaking point health services to (safely) stretch even further \u2014 or that\u2019s the claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the future, we will be able to cover additional clinical specialties, with an even more advanced level of care as well as logistical improvements of the service delivery,\u201d suggests Ratz.<\/p>\n
Asked what Doccla is using AI for, he confirms it\u2019s working on developing predictive alerts that could help clinicians monitor more patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoccla will use data insights to develop automation and AI for further improvement of service delivery and clinical outcomes,\u201d he tells us. \u201cThis will include various support tools for clinicians, such as predictive alerts.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are plenty of safety pitfalls here, given \u2014 for example \u2014 the bias risks around AI if training data is not representative of the patient population, so how Doccla goes about integrating automated alerts and other AI-powered support tools into its platform without compromising patient safety will certainly be one to watch. (Getting regulatory accreditation on such features will also be less straightforward, with more agencies and oversight bodies in play.)<\/p>\n
Still, it looks important that Doccla\u2019s investor roster includes a fund with direct links to a number of NHS Trusts.<\/p>\n
On the question of scalability, especially around patient support \u2014 which may require a lot of patient one-to-one interactions with tired and\/or frail people who may not be accustomed to using connected technology \u2014 Ratz says: \u201cDoccla places significant value on our service layer, as it\u2019s crucial to building and scaling a virtual hospital. In particular, new models of care, especially at the intersection with behavioural change, require it. Doccla\u2019s virtual patient support teams, as well as our clinical teams, are highly efficient and enjoy economies of scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also on the slate for the Series A: Expansion to new European markets and segments, per Ratz. But he won\u2019t be drawn on where exactly it\u2019s eyeing for new launches. \u201cDoccla\u2019s current focus is the UK where we serve a range of customers and our European expansion will be shaped by upcoming public tenders, notably those in larger markets,\u201d he says, adding: \u201cI can say that we\u2019re already in dialogue with significant operators in several countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
The funding will also be used for fuelling the startup\u2019s growth by running virtual clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry, according to Ratz \u2014 presumably with the fully informed consent of any patients who agree to sign up to such trials. (Doccla\u2019s current privacy policy states that it will not share users\u2019 personal data \u2014 and further claims to \u201conly collect the data that we need to deliver care safely and effectively\u201d.)<\/p>\n
The startup\u2019s platform is able to serve a \u201cvery diverse range\u201d of patients, from palliative care to pre- and post-surgery patients, says Ratz \u2014 although this type of remote care is clearly not suitable for every type of patient (even if you\u2019re going to start throwing AI into the mix).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe largest patient groups we work with include COPD [Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and heart-related health. The applicability of remote care is exceptional however some patient groups \u2014 for example, those who require in-person support such highly acute patients or people with dementia \u2014 are less suited for remote monitoring,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Commenting on the Series A funding in a statement, General Catalyst\u2019s Bischoff added: \u201cThe virtualisation of hospital wards is a critical step in efficiently expanding health resources and enabling timely, safe transition of care into the home. Doccla has immense potential and is driving real impact by not only providing a much-needed lifeline for overwhelmed hospitals but also improving patient outcomes through remote monitoring. The founders\u2019 vision to drive more digitally-enabled, decentralised healthcare that combines physical and virtual pathways aligns with General Catalyst\u2019s Health Assurance thesis. Importantly, their partnership approach with NHS Trusts echoes our core values of radical collaboration and responsible innovation \u2014 innovation that improves society. At General Catalyst, we support companies that bring about powerful, positive change that endures, and we believe Martin, Dag and the team will do just that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doccla, a Sweden founded but London-headquartered health tech startup that sells a remote patient monitoring platform to hospitals to run so-called \u2018virtual wards\u2019, has closed a \u00a315 million (~$17M) Series A funding round a year after raising a $3.3M seed. The Series A is led by US VC General Catalyst, with participation from funds managed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1213030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1213029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1213029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1213029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1213029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1213029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}