Digital health platform Vinehealth has raised $5.5m (£4.1m) in seed funding.
The round was led by Talis Capital, with participation from previous investors Playfair Capital and Ascension.
A number of angel investors 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 says it will use the funding to further develop its product, scale its team and expand in the US. It also plans to increase the representation of women on its board to 75% and rapidly grow its presence across the life sciences sector.
Founded in 2018 by Rayna Patel and Georgina Kirby, the platform aims to improve the quality of life and outcomes of cancer patients.
Using a combination of behavioural science and AI, the company’s digital technology provides scalable patient support programmes and collects rich data.
Patients can also use Vinehealth’s app to better self-manage their medications, side-effects and symptoms, and can regularly enter ‘patient-reported outcome’ (PRO) data to support clinical decision-making, inform service delivery and drive clinical research.
Commenting on the funding round, Rayna Patel, founder & CEO of Vinehealth, said: “We are delighted to have received such credible investor support to continue on our mission to empower and support those with cancer.
“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.”
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.”
Faisal Mehmud, angel investor, VP Pharmaceutical Physician and former executive at Bristol-Myers Squibb, added: “The Vinehealth platform’s ability to efficiently support precision patient activation in an automated manner; rapidly amalgamate rich high volume frequent patient data; use AI to identify clinically relevant patterns that can serve as important patient interventions – combined with an industry-leading interface and user acceptability – will, I believe, make Vinehealth’s tool the benchmark against which other platforms will be measured in the future.”
