London-based Doccla, a healthtech startup offering remote patient monitoring solutions to hospitals, announced on Thursday that it has secured £15M (€16.7M) in an oversubscribed Series A round of funding.
The round was led by US VC firm General Catalyst with participation from funds managed by healthcare investors KHP Ventures (a collaboration between King’s College London, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust).
Existing investors, Giant Ventures and Speedinvest, also participated in the round.
Chris Bischoff, Managing Director at General Catalyst, will be joining the board of Doccla.
Doccla, a Sweden-founded company, says it will use the funds to expand to new markets across Europe, broaden its clinical availability and further develop its tech capabilities.
The announcement comes around a year after raising £2.4M in a seed round led by Giant Ventures and Speedinvest.
Born out of personal experience
Martin Ratz founded Doccla in 2019 after he suffered a heart attack at a young age. According to Martin, the experience of hospital stay and discharge without any monitoring was ridiculous when new technology was available.
At that time, he realised a clear need for someone to help patients to bring them closer to their carers while recovering safely at home.
Martin partnered with Dag Larsson, who had extensive experience scaling tech companies, to establish Doccla.
Remote patient monitoring solution
Doccla provides a remote patient monitoring service that allows hospital clinical staff to monitor the patient’s vital signs remotely, continuously, or intermittently.
The company’s solution consists of a tailor-made box of equipment, which includes:
- A pre-configured smartphone with large fonts that are easier to read for those with vision impairments
- A wearable medical device that measures heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, sp02, and blood pressure.
It also takes care of software integration, logistics and customer service, and tech support for the elderly and non-digital natives.
Doccla claims that it has one of the highest customer-compliance rates in the industry, exceeding 95 per cent.
The company’s solution aims to free up hospital beds and minimise NHS costs by enabling the early discharge of patients and reducing the need for hospital visits for those with long-term or chronic health conditions.
Doccla says it has saved thousands of bed days for the NHS and client health trusts. It has achieved a 29 per cent reduction in Emergency Admissions and a 20 per cent reduction in A&E attendance.
The startup launched its service during the pandemic in the UK and is present in 20 per cent of all Integrated Care Systems (ICS) in the UK, with patient intake from 20+ hospitals.
Doccla’s clients include several NHS trusts across the country, including Northampton General Hospital, Cambridgeshire Community Services, and Hertfordshire Community Trust.
Martin Ratz, Doccla’s founder, says, “From the company’s beginnings in 2019, we have continued to grow and expand and have received contract extensions from all of our clients, proving the inherent value of Doccla to the healthcare sector. Combining new technology with a service layer and clinical capacity reduces work for the NHS. We look forward to using this new level of support to further build on our success by getting more hospitals on board and developing our technology and clinical capacity to help solve the hospital bed crisis and alleviate the immense pressures on the NHS and other healthcare systems.”
Chris Bischoff, Managing Director at General Catalyst, says, “The virtualisation of hospital wards is critical 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 providing a much-needed lifeline for overwhelmed hospitals and improving patient outcomes through remote monitoring. The founders’ vision to drive more digitally-enabled, decentralised health care that combines physical and virtual pathways aligns with General Catalyst’s Health Assurance thesis.”
