PwC and Digital Catapult are launching Scale | Health, part of a series of programmes across the UK, to support businesses in the digital health industry which have big potential to scale-up.
Ten companies have been selected as the first cohort for the programme, which aims to provide the missing link between fast-growth scale-ups and the health industry, helping them find mutually beneficial commercial opportunities.
Scale | Health is being delivered together with Digital Catapult, a technology innovation centre that unlocks digital growth in the UK economy. PwC and Digital Catapult are collaborating closely with DigitalHealth.London to deliver the initiative, which is working to speed up the development and scaling of digital innovations across health and care. The programme will be sponsored by Microsoft which is bringing tech advice to the cohort.
The 12-week programme will focus on identifying commercial opportunities and unlocking additional funding for the cohort. The programme will introduce the 10 companies to potential customers, industry decision makers and investors who may procure services, partner, go-to-market together, or invest in their business. The selected scale-ups will also have access to an extended community of experts through the combined networks of Digital Catapult, DigitalHealth.London, Microsoft and PwC.
Previous participants in PwC’s scale-up programmes raised £80 million in equity on joining and have since gone on to raise a further £20 million, demonstrating rapid progression and quality. As well as investment, the cohorts were introduced to over 500 relevant stakeholders which has so far enabled over 70 pilot projects.
Nigel Howlett, UK Digital Private Business Lead at PwC, said: “At PwC we believe interacting with startups and scale-ups is at the heart of successful innovation. Our work with Digital Catapult, DigitalHealth.London and Microsoft combines our respective experiences and client networks to create a programme which can help more high potential companies successfully scale-up.”
Andrew Chapman, Digital Health Sector Lead, Digital Catapult, commented: “Digital health has huge untapped potential to deliver future economic growth in the UK. However, at Digital Catapult through our health programme, we have seen that scale-ups in this sector face significant barriers to initiating collaborative partnerships and navigating the complexity of large organisations. Scale | Health is designed to break down these barriers, so these high-growth firms can scale their innovations rapidly across the sector.
“The breadth of solutions they’ve developed are based on technology advances in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, and the Internet of Things, demonstrating the widespread potential for early adoption and positive impact on patients, carers and the wider sector through digital health.”
Nick Page, Director Startup Partnerships, Microsoft, commented: “I’m delighted that we can be supporting PwC’s Scale | Health programme and its respective scale-ups. With the power of Cloud and AI technology becoming ever more pervasive, the opportunity for software solutions, to empower patients and health professionals, has never been greater.
“With an ever growing cloud platform and a strong set of AI services, we have the technology to help startups build, deploy and manage their solutions quickly across the globe. With healthcare a priority market for us, our strong partner ecosystem and customer base; I believe we are in an unrivalled position to help bring the startups’ innovative solutions to market. It’s an exciting time and we want to play our part helping in their success and supporting transformation in healthcare.”
