NEWS
Mental health
Elysium acquires Huntercombe eating disorder unit Elysium Healthcare has acquired the specialist eating disorder centre, Cotswold Spa Hospital from The Huntercombe Group. The site in Broadway, Worcestershire, provides specialist hospital care to young people and adults with serious eating disorders. Joy Chamberlain, Elysium Healthcare chief executive said: “The
Cotswold Spa Hospital provides a highly specialised service caring for very vulnerable young people and adults who have serious eating disorders. This is a very complex service and I have been so impressed by the level of expertise within the hospital. I am looking forward to welcoming the service into our Cchildren and education division.
Sylvia Tang, chief executive of The Huntercombe Group added: “Cotswold Spa is a brilliant service with an excellent reputation and I am pleased it will continue to be supported by Elysium, a provider who has experience in operating NHS Englandcommissioned specialist services, including CAMHS Tier 4 services.” Elysium Healthcare was launched in
November 2016 and now has 75 sites. The group provides learning disability services, neurological services and specialist mental health care through secure services, child and adolescent mental health services, rehabilitation services, acute and intensive care services, and private outpatient services across England and Wales.
Technology
DrDoctor raises £3m to expand digital platform Health tech company DrDoctor has closed a £3 million Series A funding round from venture capital firms Ananda Impact Ventures and 24Haymarket. The company said it will use the funding to hire across the business and add new functionality to DrDoctor’s patient communication platform, which it claims improves the way hospitals communicate with their patients, ensuring fewer missed appointments across the NHS, lower administrative costs for hospitals and clinics, and more timely and clinically effective care for patients. DrDoctor added that new funding
will help it to expand its remote patient management and data solutions, reducing face-to-face appointments and helping improve clinical risk stratification. Results from these products have shown a 40-60% reduction in face-to-face appointments. DrDoctor is currently partnered with 27 NHS trusts and health boards across England and Wales and has increased its staffing complement by 43% since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, as hospitals and clinics across the country use new ways of communicating and treating their patients with hospital
visits severely restricted. The company currently employs 60 staff and expects to add another 35 staff over the coming year as it expands its development and sales teams to meet the demand for its services. During the pandemic DrDoctor said it offered its Covid-19 Toolkit free of charge to any NHS trust who wished to use it. The toolkit helped oversubscribed hospitals and clinics broadcast messages to their patients, ensuring appointments that had to be cancelled were rescheduled with minimal disruption. The company said it is now helping clients break the backlog in patient appointments
– now estimated to be ten million across the NHS – by implementing recovery programmes built on remote assessments, patient-initiated follow-ups, and video consultations. Ananda Impact Ventures and 24Haymarket are both early stage investors with a key focus on accelerating the growth of digital healthcare companies. It is the first investment for both firms in DrDoctor. DrDoctor was founded in 2012 by Tom Whicher, Rinesh Amin and Perran Pengelly with an initial seed investment of £15,000 from Bethnal Green Ventures.
Virtual healthcare provider Medefer raises £10m Medefer, a business-to-business virtual healthcare provider today announced a £10 million funding round led by private investment firm Nickleby Capital. The company was founded by NHS consultants Dr Bahman Nedjat-Shokouhi and Dr Andrew Millar, who still works in the NHS. Medefer is a digital platform that connects GPs, consultants, and patients. Underpinned by its outpatient operating system, and a nationwide ‘grid’ of contracted remote NHS consultants, Medefer stated that it manages the entire patient pathway from referral to triage, to investigation, diagnosis
and discharge, without the need for physical outpatient appointments. The company stated it will use the new funding to invest in people and technology to service new contracts, enable new product development and ensure scalable growth from its pipeline. Medefer said it has already helped over 20,000 NHS patients claiming patients experience improved care, with their case reviewed by NHS consultants within 10 hours on average, compared to 18 weeks using traditional models. Medefer also said that due to its alerts-driven digital tracking process, patients cannot fall between the tracks,
HealthInvestor UK • September/October 2020
which is a significant problem within the NHS. It adds that for NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups, outpatient costs are cut by a third, and waiting lists reduced by 70%, improving consultant capacity and creating far better use of resources. Nedjat-Shokouhi, chief executive of Medefer and consultant gastroenterologist at Whittington Hospital NHS Trust, said: “Medefer was born out of a desire to empower the NHS to deliver a radically faster, safer and more effective service from referral, through diagnosis, to treatment and discharge. Our software can fundamentally
transform the delivery of outpatient services. This funding round will enable us to support the NHS during its most challenging times in its 72-year history, and to continue to innovate in virtual specialist care.” Marco Schiavo, managing partner at Nickleby Capital, said: “Medefer is a business whose time has come. They have a unique model with huge, growing, demand. They help the NHS slash waiting lists and save money, as well as improving patient outcomes. The Medefer team is outstanding and we’re very excited about working with them to help achieve their incredible vision.”
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