15 Nov Sapien Health raises £2m and rebrands to Surgery Hero as it eyes US expansion
Article taken from: https://www.lifearc.org/
Headquartered in London, Surgery Hero is a digital clinic that helps people prepare for and recover from surgery at home. The £2 million of seed funding will be used to scale their solution to be able to support more people undergoing surgery, as they begin their expansion to the US where roughly 50 million major surgeries are performed each year.
This latest round of funding welcomes new investors LifeArc Ventures, Crista Galli Ventures, Clarendon Fund Managers, and NorthInvest, with pre-seed investors SFC Capital following on. Damien Lane (founding partner of Episode 1 Ventures) and Imran Hamid (former surgeon and Senior Investment Principal at LifeArc Ventures) both join the board.
Founded in May 2020, Surgery Hero has seen a spike in demand for its services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1 in 8 people in England now on surgery waiting lists. They are currently commissioned by multiple Integrated Care Systems in the UK and committed to provide over 8,000 programmes for people currently awaiting surgery.
Members access the virtual programme via the Surgery Hero app, and each programme is unique to the individual, tailored according to their personal risk factors for surgery and upcoming procedure. Every Surgery Hero member is also paired with their own human, health coach, who supports them throughout the duration of the programme. Members can choose to communicate in a way that suits them — either through phone calls, video calls, text chats, or a combination.
Early results from the intervention have been impressive. In a recent study in collaboration with South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the average length of stay in hospital for patients following the Surgery Hero programme fell by more than a day, representing a significant cost saving.
Asked about the announcement, Dr Matthew Beatty, Surgery Hero CEO and co-founder, said the following: “We’ve been thinking about a name change for some time, as we wanted something that more accurately reflects our values and identity as a company. With the closure of this funding round, it felt like the right time to announce the change publicly.
The name is inspired by our members — the people at the centre of everything we do, who overcome new challenges every day to become heroes of their own surgical journey. We want to help as many people as we can on that journey, and so this injection of capital comes at an important time, as we look to scale the reach and impact of our coaches”.