Public health care systems are struggling to reset after the pandemic around the world, and the UK is putting pressure on services, particularly in the West, where a growing population of older people is putting pressure on services.The NHS in crisis It's a regular topic in the media. As a result, technology-enabled private companies are seeing a gap in the market. This is with this background. SeraThe UK-based private software platform and home healthcare provider has raised $150 million in a mix of debt and equity. The company said it was mostly debt, but declined to break even and slammed its valuation.
Led by funds associated with BDT & MSD Partners and Schroders Capital to expand Cera's platform. The company says it's highly AI-driven, with a proprietary model based on its own data, though it admits to using soma features of both Google's Gemini AI platform and Microsoft's version of ChatGPT.
Cera in 2022 rose up $320m (£260m) in equity and debt financing round; Split roughly 50/50.
It has 14 investors, according to CrunchBase. Accredited equity investors to date include Earlymarket; Guinness Ventures; Including DigitalHealth. London Accelerator and long-term UK investor Robin Klein.
A spokesperson for Cera said the company was EBITA-positive by 2023, free-cashflow positive by 2024 and “increasingly a self-sustaining business”, although this is not yet reflected in publicly filed accounts. This round of credit can be raised.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Cera's founder and CEO, Dr Ben Maruthappu MBE, said: “We are working to be profitable and there are very significant barriers to how we use our technology and AI, and we are expanding services further. In-house.”
Cera caregivers use its app to plan their work and record patient symptoms. Using its AI modeling, Cera can take that unstructured data (such as “the patient fell at night,” etc.) and use it to predict the likelihood of more illness or injury for patients. This has reduced hospitalizations by up to 70%, reduced patient falls by 20% and discharged patients five times faster, the company said in a statement.
The company has raised more than $407 million to date in a mix of equity and debt.
Competitors in the UK include Home Instead and Bluebird Care, which use non-proprietary apps to direct their staff. In the US, Closest comparisons to Cera include Signify Health and CVS Health, both of which were acquired by Nasdaq-listed CVS Health. Next is Honor. rose up $625 million.
Maruthappu said, “We are taking pressure off the NHS and providing more capacity to care for other patients. We have also expanded into other service lines such as providing nursing services, physiotherapy, learning disability, physical disability and in-home mental health services. So we are a more complete healthcare provider at home.”
The AI-driven aspect of the business is based on the data it collects: “Another key advantage is what's being done with technology, especially AI… We're recording information about patients from those visits on our app. It gives us now one of the largest home healthcare datasets in the world, certainly the largest in Europe, and we've been able to analyze that dataset in a number of different ways to build algorithms. If someone falls before they do relate.”
“More than 80% of falls in a week are predictable. That's statistically significant… so our AI algorithm reduced the drop by more than 20%… we could also predict 83% of hospitalizations a week before… reducing hospitalizations by up to 70%,” he said.
Rob Platek, partner and global head of credit at BDT & MSD, said, “Cera has achieved strong growth through its demonstrated ability to leverage technology to deliver exceptional care. We believe Cera is well positioned to further expand its business.”
Cera says it is the UK's largest non-NHS healthcare provider, covering around 30 million people with 10,000 carers and nurses and more than 150 local authorities and around two-thirds of NHS Integrated Care Systems.
Separate analysis by the UK consultancy also found that Cera's AI-led home healthcare model could save the UK healthcare system £1m a day.
Cera is eager to avoid tarnishing the reputation of healthcare startups like Babylon Health; Admittedly, it is a very different business. Bankruptcy After trying to do healthcare with just a chatbot, it was sold for parts.