By Kristy Dorsey
Edinburgh start-up Current Health has raised $43 million (£31m) in what is believed to be largest Series B funding round in Scottish tech history.
The cash will allow the company, whose platform delivers healthcare in the home, to more than double headcount with the creation of 100 new jobs by the end of this year. About half of these will be data science and software engineering posts based in Edinburgh, where it currently employs 50 of its 90 staff.
Most of the remaining new jobs will be sales and marketing employees based in its main market in the United States. Current Health has an office in Boston, though its 30 US staff are scattered throughout the country.
The money has been raised from several US-based venture capital firms, as well as one of the country’s leading hospital systems. Existing investors Par Equity, the Edinburgh angel syndicate that provided Current Health with its first cash injection of £2.5m in 2016, has also followed on its initial investment.
Chief executive Chris McCann said the company has experienced “explosive” growth this the past year, during which time employee numbers have almost trebled from a headcount of 35 in March 2020. Revenues have surged by more than 3,000 per cent to “the high millions”.
“The patient demand for these services is huge,” he said. “A lot of them have realised they have gotten these services at home during the pandemic, so why can’t they keep getting them going forward?”
In addition to creating new jobs, some of the fresh funding is also earmarked for development of a third generation of the company’s monitoring device, which is worn on the arm and collects data on a variety of vital signs.
The business was founded in 2015 by Mr McCann and chief technology officer Stewart Whiting to provide a “mission control” for all healthcare delivery outside of the hospital. Along with the remote monitor, patients can also enter information about any symptoms they are experiencing through an app.
READ MORE: Medical tech firm raises £2.25m to help patients breathe easier
This can be integrated with other existing remote monitoring devices and in-home healthcare services such as blood tests, medical equipment and meal delivery to provide a single overview to identify and predict the onset and progression of disease. This is backed up by a 24-hour “command centre” led by physicians.
The funding round was led by Northpond Ventures, a science-driven venture capital group based out of Maryland. Other new investors include: Boston’s LRVHealth; medical group OSF HealthCare, which serves patients across Illinois and Michigan; Section 32, a venture capital fund based in San Diego; and Elements Health Ventures.
As part of the deal, Northpond director Andrea Jackson and Tripp Peake, general partner at LRVHealth, will join Current Health’s board of directors.
Ms Jackson said moving healthcare services into the home has become an imperative for both care providers and pharmaceutical companies. While Current Health’s biggest market is the US, the system is also in use in countries around the world by pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca to support complex therapy and home-based drug trials.
READ MORE: Scottish biotech company secures funding in fight against future pandemics
“As healthcare moves into the home, pharmaceutical companies are developing new models that go beyond the pill and enable greater delivery at home with fewer side effects at lower cost," she said. "Current Health’s proven track record of delivering across both pharma and health systems makes them the perfect company to bridge this gap.”
Mr McCann set the business up while in his third year of studying medicine at the University of Dundee, having previously earned a degree in computer science from the University of Strathclyde. The company “started going commercially” in 2019 after receiving approval for its platform from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), having already achieved CE marking in Europe.
US clients include Mount Sinai Health System in New York and Geisinger Health, a regional provider covering Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In the UK, it is used by the likes of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Medway NHS Foundation Trust.
Mr McCann said: “In the next five years, we’ll see a majority of healthcare services delivered in a patient’s home, with the hospital reserved for intensive care, trauma and surgery. To make this shift, healthcare providers must move away from point solutions and develop system-wide strategies to deliver care at home.”
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