Scottish health tech startup Care Sourcer has secured its largest contract to date and is now working alongside NHS Gloucestershire Foundation Trust in phase 2 of a project won through the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) procurement process, connecting public sector challenges with innovative ideas from industry.
Care Sourcer was selected by a SBRI panel of technology and care specialists as one of the leading solutions to address delayed discharge across the NHS. They will be working in partnership with NHS Gloucestershire Foundation Trust and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust on a contract valued at £757,000.
Looking ahead, Care Sourcer is on track to have 5 NHS Trust contacts secured by the end of 2018.
Scottish tech stalwart Dr Graham Jones, previously Senior Director of Engineering at daily fantasy sports site FanDuel, has joined the Care Sourcer team as Chief Operating Officer and is already on boarding a technical team as the company enters its next phase of growth.
Dr Jones is well known in Scottish tech circles for building the teams that helped to develop mobile applications for both FanDuel and online travel search site Skyscanner.
Care Sourcer uses a technology platform that matches care seekers with care providers in a particular region and builds on the success experienced by the team in providing home care and care home solutions.
The overall UK care market is estimated to be in excess of £20 billion and is facing unprecedented challenges with a daily delayed discharge cost to the NHS of over £2 million per day.
Since launching in June 2016, Andrew McGinley and co-founder Andrew Parfery, both former healthcare industry executives, have built a customer base that includes care home groups, live-in care providers and home care providers. Care Sourcer is working with national care groups and smaller independent care providers in a fragmented sector with over 27,000 registered providers in the UK alone.
Andrew McGinley, CEO and co-founder of Care Sourcer, said: “Our clear mission is to reduce delayed discharge across the UK by helping individuals in need of care find a a provider as quickly as possible and we know we can do this because the status quo is not working for anyone.”
Andrew Parfery, Chief Commercial Officer and co-founder at Care Sourcer, comments: “We have created the UK’s first marketplace in which people can easily compare and source care.”
“It takes vision, experience and commitment to disrupt an established system when starting out in business and that’s why we chose to partner with highly rated VCs like ADV and BGF.”
Dr Graham Jones, COO at Care Sourcer, said: “Care Sourcer is one of the most exciting young companies on the UK tech scene. The team is tackling one of the great socio-economic challenges of the early 21st century and that gives us even greater ambition to create a world-beating product that can alleviate not just the financial tribulations associated with the provision of care but also the huge amount of physical and emotional suffering that impacts so many people and families.”
During Q2 of 2017, Care Sourcer completed its first external investment round at £500,000 with two of the UK’s most respected VCs – Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV) and BGF Ventures. The investment by BGF and ADV represents the first occasion on which either VC has invested in a Scottish startup.
Harry Briggs, Partner at BGF Ventures, said: ”This contract recognises that not only does Care Sourcer solve a pressing problem for care seekers, they can also make a transformative impact on the NHS – saving time, money and considerable stress in handling patient discharges. It’s great to be backing a team that cares so deeply about patients, and also the impact their technology can have at a broader national level.”
