UK health tech startup, Kidney Beam, has received £610,000 in seed funding to help with improving virtual kidney care.
The Kidney Beam app offers a range of physio-led virtual exercises, education, nutrition and wellbeing programmes specifically designed for people with kidney disease. With the funding, Kidney Beam plans to expand its reach into more unrepresented communities to “enhance the usability of its platform and forge new partnerships”. The organisation notes that “thousands more people living with kidney disease will be able to improve their health” as a result of this investment.
The funding comes after a clinical trial by Kidney Research UK and Kings College Hospital London, which reported a “significant improvement” in quality-of-life among those using Kidney Beam’s 12-week digital rehabilitation programme.
Executive Director at Kidney Research UK, Lucy Sreeves, commented on the impact of using this platform: “We have shown the rate of growth that the kidney population threatens to overwhelm the NHS, therefore investment in innovative approaches to patient care is essential. Kidney Beam offers just this, spearheading the shift from bricks and mortar-based care to digital delivery.”
Investing in digital healthcare and innovation
South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub recently announced £500,000 of funding for seven innovative projects to help with disease diagnosis and address health inequalities across the region. The selected projects are designed to help improve treatment for a range of problems through the creation of novel clinical tools that utilise smartphones, wearable technology and data.
As part of the government’s Plan for Change, the Department of Health and Social Care announced £126 million in funding to help support hospices in making improvements to IT systems and facilities. The aim is to ensure access for citizens to “high-quality end of life care” and to develop a health service that is “fit for the future”.
Earlier this month, a framework valued up to £10 million opened for a national agreement for the provision of data validation services, enabling NHS organisations to “access highly specialised support to enable the testing and validation of patient data, as part of the process of migrating from a legacy PAS to a modern EPR system”.
Finally, Patients Know Best has announced the securement of a £6 million loan to help scale its digital personal health record platform and expand internationally.
