Decently raises £500k investment with its AI-powered brain injury platform

This week, Manchester healthtech startup Decently announces a £500,000 investment.

Founded in 2021, the company has developed a healthcare platform called Melo, which helps clinicians and hospital staff to track patients' behaviour whilst they recover from brain trauma, to address potentially adverse episodes in healthcare settings.

Melo simplifies and streamlines the data capture process, using AI to spot trends and behaviour escalation patterns in patients suffering from acquired brain injuries (ABI) and injuries caused by non-birth-related incidents, such as accidental trauma or a coma.

Clinicians upload observational patient data via a real-time dashboard and reporting tools that facilitate information sharing between staff and departments. This increases safety and accountability and lowers costs.

James Burch, co-founder at Decently, said: 

"Acquired brain injury is not a new problem, but the statistics show it is a growing issue, causing a strain on both the public and private health sectors. 

With Melo, our focus is to provide a duty of care to staff responsible for looking after ABI patients who may express challenging behaviour due to brain injury.

By using Melo, we can help ease the manual and time-consuming burden of data capture and incident logging on an already stretched workforce."

Jessica Jackson, investment manager at Praetura Ventures, who is joining Decently's board as an investment director shared that Melo is a great example of how tech innovation can drive improvements within the NHS, which continues to face cost and staffing pressures on a major scale.

As well as providing investment, the investment firm will support Decently with scaling its team and connect Decently with key healthcare stakeholders "while drawing on our track record for backing businesses that have sold into the NHS and the private healthcare landscape." 

Dr. Alistair Teager, consultant clinical neuropsychologist at Salford Royal Hospital, commented:

"We've been working with the team from Decently to pilot Melo on our wards to ensure that it's designed and built in the right way and ultimately helps us to make better clinical decisions for our patients."

The funding was raised from the GMC Life Sciences Fund by Praetura, supported by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Cheshire & Warrington LEP and Bruntwood SciTech, with SFC Capital participating in the round.

The investment will help Decently launch Melo across the NHS and private rehabilitation care centres. The platform is piloted by three strategic Northern NHS Trusts, including the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Lead image: photo of the Decently / Praetura team (left to right: Jessica Jackson, Praetura Ventures; James Burch and James Chapman, Decently; Sim Singh-Landa, Praetura Ventures) via Decently. Photo: Uncredited.