A startup targeting cancer has raised £4.2 million to improve the quality of life and survival of cancer patients.
Founded in 2018 by Rayna Patel and Georgina Kirby, Vinehealth uses a combination of behavioural science and AI to provide highly scalable patient support programmes and collect rich data.
It featured in 12th spot on our recent MedTech 50 ranking.
MedTech 50 – UK’s most innovative medical technology creators for 2021
Using Vinehealth’s app, patients can better self-manage their medications, side-effects and symptoms, and can regularly enter ‘patient-reported outcome’ data to support clinical decision-making, inform service delivery and drive clinical research.
The seed funding was led by Talis Capital, with participation from previous investors Playfair Capital and Ascension.
A number of angels also participated, including Keith Gibbs, former CEO of AXA PPP Healthcare; Pam Garside, partner at Newhealth; VOYAGERS Health-Tech Fund, led by David Rowan, founding editor of WIRED; David Giampaolo, healthcare entrepreneur and founder of PI Capital; Deepali Nangia, venture partner at Speedinvest and Atomico Angel; Faisal Mehmud, Vice President and former Medical Director of Bristol Myers Squibb; and KHP, a collaboration between King’s College London, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust.
The company will use the funding to further develop its product, scale its team and expand in the US.
Vinehealth has already secured its position as the preferred supplier to six top-10 global pharmaceutical companies and CROs, including Novartis. Vinehealth feeds PRO data into its machine learning algorithms to drive even more personalised support to patients and further improve their outcomes.
Without sufficient PRO data or patient engagement, pharma companies can see significant delays in bringing drugs to market, losing anywhere between $18m-$240m of revenue for every month a drug is delayed.
The traditional approach of collecting PRO data – typically via postal paper surveys – is expensive, slow, low quality and garners poor patient engagement of around 30-40%.
In contrast, Vinehealth secured 100% compliance with PRO collection in its first major study with the Royal Marsden NHS Trust. Companies with access to Vinehealth can see this data via a fully interoperable web dashboard, which can be fully customised to suit any project. This Royal Marsden NHS Trust study also saw patients report an 87% improvement in quality of life.
The Vinehealth app is rated 93% by ORCHA, the world’s largest single source of digital health compliance. This makes Vinehealth the highest-rated cancer tool in the world by a significant margin.
“We are delighted to have received such credible investor support to continue on our mission to empower and support those with cancer,” said founder and CEO Patel.
“It’s imperative that we start understanding how therapies are affecting patients: for pharmaceutical companies, our technology enables deeper patient understanding which leads to better drugs, greater differentiation and faster licensing, as well as the ability to provide personalised scalable support to patients.
“For patients, this means better care and improved outcomes from cancer. We’re now looking forward to applying our rich data and machine learning capabilities to novel predictive analytics to generate even richer insights for our life science partners.”
With 15,000+ downloads to date, the Vinehealth platform is set to scale rapidly across the life sciences sector.
The funding follows a number of grants already secured by the company, including a £1m grant from Innovate UK’s Biomedical Catalyst, which saw Vinehealth deliver its product to eight NHS trusts in a randomised control trial.
Vinehealth has embedded across the cancer ecosystem, working with the leading cancer charities including Macmillan and Bowel Cancer UK, whose invaluable supportive content features in the app.
This round of funding will also see Vinehealth’s board become 75% represented by females.
Beatrice Aliprandi, principal at Talis Capital, said: “We’re hugely excited to be partnering with Rayna and Georgina: we’d been keeping a close eye on Vinehealth’s growth for several months before we invested in the company, given its unique value proposition where healthcare outcomes work in direct correlation with financial outcomes.
“It’s a win-win-win for patients, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, which is rarely the case in the healthcare space where parties are often at odds with one another.
“From our first meeting, the resilience and mission-driven attitude of the founders was immediately clear and is really what made this opportunity so compelling.
“Both Rayna and Georgina are clearly incredibly driven to improve the lives and survival of cancer patients, and as a team they possess a unique combination of expertise, skills, and drive to make Vinehealth a success.”