London’s GripAble gets $11 million to increase its grip on the US market

With many patients being isolated at home and unable to attend therapy appointments owing to the Covid-19 situation, home monitoring health care startups have been getting a lot of attention. While last week, Grenoble-based company CardioRenal raised €3.3 million, London-based GripAble has now raked in $11 million funding. The Series A round was led by IP Group and Parkwalk Advisors.

The new funding will accelerate the platform’s journey to delivering end-to-end patient care and connecting patients to their own personal home-based clinic. The new cash will enable the digital healthcare startup, delivering rehabilitation programmes to people with neurological and musculoskeletal conditions, to expand its data platform and therapy services as well. The company plans to increase its focus on growing markets in Europe and the U.S.

It had raised £1.6 million in March last year.

Driving improved outcomes while decreasing the burden on healthcare systems, the startup’s digital platform enables home-based rehabilitation, allowing more patients to access care from professional therapists for longer periods. The digital platform includes bespoke hand-held sensors, mobile hardware, software, in-built gamification and data services.

After establishing itself in the remote health care market in its home turf in the U.K, the platform is looking at spreading its wings in the U.S. In the U.K., it is being used by 8,000 patients with over 100,000 activity sessions and 27 million movement repetitions. 

“Patients with physical and cognitive impairments require guided therapy to improve their quality of life. The more rehab they do and the more they adhere to professional guidance, the greater their chances of having better outcomes, with a wealth of evidence backing this up. However, due to resource costs and poor logistics, current health systems cannot deliver the amount of therapy needed, with significant backlogs, and few patients receiving anywhere near what they require to get better. This is a common problem faced by hundreds of millions of patients around the world, with inefficient care pathways not only costing health systems hundreds of billions of dollars every year but costing people a chance to live their lives to their full potential,” Dr Paul Rinne, GripAble co-founder and CEO said. 

Dr Sam Williams, managing partner of life sciences, IP Group said: “IP Group has had great success in the digital therapy market with our investment in Hinge Health and we see similar potential in GripAble.”

Martin Glen, investment director, Parkwalk Advisors, said: “We are hopeful that GripAble can reproduce its strong initial success in the U.K. in the significantly larger U.S. market. This would enable many more patients to access the sustained level of rehabilitation therapy that they require for a positive outcome post-injury.”