Investment ready: Our next cohort of start-ups prepare to pitch
Our Partnerships & Programmes Lead Sarah Bruce White reflects on Q1 2022 investment activity among companies supported by MedCity, and introduces the six impressive start-ups pitching at our upcoming event on 29 June.
Pitching companies images above, clockwise from top left: iFAST; Mint Diagnostics; Raj Kohli and Peter Huang, co-founders of Healthtech-1; Revive; Babblevoice; Melissa Berthelot, CEO of WarnerPatch.
Investment ready
As we head into Q2 of 2022, we have been seeing yet more positive news on investment into UK life sciences. The UK BioIndustry Association (BIA)’s report on Q1 of 2022 indicated a record first quarter for private biotechs. We have also been seeing lively investment into early-stage companies that have been through our supported programmes. Notably, our Company of the Month in this newsletter edition, MitoRx, who pitched at our last event and successfully secured co-investment as a result. Other MedCity alumni founders raising investment included: Jorgen Ellis of Strolll; and Alex Blyth of LiFT Biosciences, part of our Collaborate to Innovate: Advanced Therapies cohort, who secured £5 million.
Over the next few months, we will be highlighting other companies who have successfully raised investment following recent MedCity initiatives.
Given the recent successes of MedCity cohort companies, we are especially excited to announce the six start-ups chosen to pitch at our next Investor Showcase on 29 June, being held in person at the London offices of IP firm Potter Clarkson. Each of these start-ups has been invited to pitch after a diligent assessment by our expert panel on the basis of technology, commercial viability, and investment readiness.
Here, the six company founders give a brief overview of their company’s product and prospects, all within digital, diagnostics and medtech. All companies have been supported through MedCity business growth programmes.
Mint Diagnostics
Mint Diagnostics is developing a proprietary digital health platform to make hormone monitoring simple, based on saliva testing and commercialised under the Hormonix® brand, with a special focus on female health and wellness. The use of saliva, in combination with point-of-care technology, opens the door to home self-testing, with enormous advantages in terms of data interpretation (more frequent data), user experience, and cost savings for several applications in high-growth markets such as in-vitro fertilisation, corporate wellbeing, menopause and human performance.
Babblevoice
Babblevoice helps primary care providers deliver better care for their practice, patients and staff. At its core, it’s a user-friendly telephony system which automates the booking of appointments, verifies patient ID, reports on metrics and integrates with the leading patient management software across the NHS. Babblevoice is part of the current Digital Health London.Accelerator (DHLA) cohort and growing rapidly across primary care.
WarnerPatch
WarnerPatch is a medical device that enables virtual ward monitoring for high-risk patients suffering from incurable chronic disease. With their innovative non-invasive sensing method, the device connects to a secure online web-app where clinicians can remotely access the results and augment their decision-making process toward preventive care, should the patient’s condition decline. Peripheral vascular disease (PVD) is incurable, and worldwide, 200M people are at risk of developing this condition with 600K annual amputations performed, leading to 50% death rate within two years while 30% are unnecessary due to late recognition of disease-worsening.
WarnerPatch received £1.13M of grant funding to finalise R&D, manufacturing set-up and regulatory work. The solution has been developed with the support of the Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust and the NIHR Surgical MIC.
Revive Innovations
Revive Innovations is developing adrenaline auto injectors (AAIs) for self-management of severe allergic reaction – delivering lifesaving adrenaline in a compact and patient-centric form, to become the bridge that connects patient needs and current pharmaceutical offerings. Addressing a growing global market that is seeing increased spending on AAIs across the NHS and worldwide, their patent-granted device was recently awarded significant grant funding.
Healthtech-1
For every doctor in the UK, there’s 2.5 admin staff who are burning out with a backbreaking to-do list. Using intelligent automation, Healthtech-1 removes admin tasks, giving NHS staff more time to focus on patient care. Based inside a GP practice, they’re starting by automating the nation’s 190K monthly patient registrations. Named after the registration clerk who taught them how, their first product – Sanny – is now live and paid for in 10 GP practices. Last month they processed 955 patient registrations.
Backed by the DH.L accelerator program and the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur program, and having recently won the London Business School Healthtech Challenge, Healthtech-1 are one to watch. DigitalHealth interviewed Raj (their Co-founder) to learn why they’re committing the next 10 years to Primary Care.
iFAST
iFAST enables every patient to receive the optimal antibiotic on day 1. Current bacterial testing takes 2-3 days and these delays cause a million deaths per year (more than malaria and AIDS, combined). iFAST is a low-cost, high-throughput Antimicrobial Susceptibility Test (AST) that will inform the clinician of the correct antibiotic to prescribe, within 4 hours of taking a urine sample. This avoids patients being prescribed drugs that don’t work, which increases resistance in the community, costing money and lives. Already validated by the UKHSA (formerly Public Health England) through over 500 tests with 50 different bacterial strains, and at Southampton General Hospital on clinical patient samples, this technology looks set to change the game by preventing the 20% of patients with resistant infections from having prolonged hospital stays acquiring sepsis and potentially dying.
Get in touch
If you are an investor interested in attending on 29 June, or joining our network of life sciences investors, please get in touch: sarahbrucewhite@medcityhq.com
If you are a start-up interested in joining future pitch events, please join our free virtual Community for 1:1 support and the opportunity to be part of our investor readiness programme.