POCDOC SECURES LARGEST OVERSUBSCRIBED PRE- A FUNDING ROUND FOR UK DIGITAL DIAGNOSTICS OF £5 MILLION

The company, which was launched in 2020, is revolutionising access to cardio, metabolic, and renal diseases by enabling patients to use smartphone-based technology to undertake screenings that provide almost instant results in workplaces, communities and at home.

This most recent heavily oversubscribed funding round has seen the business raise £5 million from leading investors MMC Ventures, Molten VC and Simplyhealth Ventures. A fourth major investor joining in this round is KHP Ventures, the first NHS-anchored venture fund, which invests in health tech innovators and supports the adoption of transformative solutions at scale across digital health and MedTech.

The conclusion of this round brings the total pre-A funding raised by PocDoc to over £10 million, the largest raise at this stage for a UK digital diagnostics business. This new investment will support the company’s continued rapid growth, fuelled by its growing list of pharmacy, retail, and corporate partnerships, as well as its deepening relationships with the NHS across the UK.

2024 has been a breakthrough year for PocDoc, with explosive growth in both public and private sectors. In the summer, it unveiled its first-of-its kind integration into the NHS app, enabling patients to undertake its ‘Healthy Heart Check’ - a point-of-care diagnostic test for Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) that lets patients see their results immediately in the NHS app. 

To date, the Healthy Heart Check service has been used by tens of thousands of patients across the country and patient feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with 97% saying they would recommend the service to a family member or friend.

With the NHS actively seeking to make digital health checks more widely available, PocDoc has been commissioned in a number of NHS regions to increase access to critical screening for cardio, metabolic and renal diseases, particularly in areas of health inequality.

In the pharmacy sector, PocDoc’s commitment to Community Pharmacy has continued apace. The business has launched a national partnership with Asda, while continuing to scale its relationship with Pharmacy2U and Lincolnshire Co-op Pharmacy. A number of other notable high street chains are set to launch PocDoc’s Healthy Heart Check before the end of the year.

PocDoc’s growth is being turbocharged by wider health trends and the focus of the NHS on 3 shifts – ‘Analogue to Digital’, ‘Hospital to Home & Community’ and ‘Sick Care to Prevention’. With chronic conditions such as CVD and diabetes costing the NHS billions a year, the promise of rapid screening for cardio, renal, metabolic and whole-body health in workplaces, communities and home is substantial. One study, for example, finds it could save the NHS £27 billion over the next 10 years in reduced costs and help save up to 1 million people annually from heart attacks and strokes.

It also explains why the investor community is viewing PocDoc’s proprietary and patented technology with such confidence, with the company perfectly positioned to continue its rapid ascent in a market worth over $200 billion globally. 

PocDoc’s tests are available for free in regions where the company is already working with the NHS, in community pharmacies across the UK, via online retailers such as Pharmacy2U, and on PocDoc’s website. 

Steve Roest, CEO and Co-founder at PocDoc, comments:

 “Today’s announcement of our heavily oversubscribed investment round is a major endorsement of our incredible technology and our journey to date. We are delighted to see such healthy interest in our vision of revolutionising access to screening from the investment community and we’re thrilled to have Molten Ventures, MMC Ventures, and Simplyhealth Ventures investing. The inclusion of KHP Ventures as a fund backed by NHS institutions is a clear signal of our NHS traction and alignment with overall NHS priorities – we couldn’t be happier that they’re investing in our journey.

“Prevention is the lifeblood of our business. Through our screening technology we believe we can drive a fundamental shift in how we treat chronic diseases, helping people detect problems earlier and faster, get treatment sooner, and, in doing so, reduce the burden on under pressure health services.

“As proven by our growing list of partnerships in both public and private sectors and the tens of thousands of people that have already benefitted from PocDoc’s diagnostics, we’re already making a massive impact. But the good news is that we’re only just getting started. We have new tests for metabolic, kidney and whole body health in the pipeline, and we’ll be scaling into new international markets next year.”

Tim Irish, Partner at KHP Ventures, comments: 

“At KHP Ventures, our focus is on investing in innovators and technologies that are going to deliver the transformation required to deliver the best possible outcomes for patients, staff and health systems, starting with the NHS. PocDoc is demonstrating excellent traction and we’re looking forward to working with Steve, Vlad, Kiran, and the team on the next phase of their growth journey.

About PocDoc:

Founded by Steve Roest, Dr Vladimir Gubala and Dr Kiran Roest, PocDoc‘s mission is to make diagnostic testing for Cardio, Metabolic and Renal disease as accessible as possible, to prevent these diseases from crippling health systems all over the world.

PocDoc is an app-based technology platform that combines proprietary, patented Microfluidic Assay (MFA) technology and cloud-based AI diagnostics to deliver end-to-end digital pathways for the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of major diseases.

PocDoc’s patented MFA (Microfluidic Assay) Platform is the first, truly portable, quantitative, digital diagnostic test platform that can perform complex multi-marker interactions to a clinically valid standard.

PocDoc’s 10-step AI diagnostic pipeline (HUESnap^®) is capable of accurate colorimetric quantification of multiple biomarkers in the field from a single assay, producing clinically valid concentration predictions in seconds.

The PocDocOS^® platform provides the digital infrastructure for the future of point of care testing. Using machine learning, data and process integration, dynamic workflows, clinical teams and real-time alerting, PocDocOS enables anyone with a smartphone or tablet to receive a full health assessment and critical follow on services, including speaking to a clinician, notifying your GP, sending your results to your patient record and providing real-time treatment options to do in minutes what could otherwise take weeks - or never.