A SCOTTISH tech start-up behind software dubbed the Facebook of the healthcare sector has revealed its ambition to attract up to £5 million of investment to fuel its expansion across the Atlantic.
Glasgow-based StoriiCare, which allows the families of care home residents to be kept up to date with their relatives’ progress by recording activity digitally, unveiled its plan to secure venture capitalist backing in California as it launched a new office in Silicon Valley.
It comes after company founder and chief executive Cameron Graham travelled to California in April to personally pitch to leading financier Sir Michael Moritz, chair of the Sequoia Capital investment house which successfully backed Edinburgh-based Skyscanner.
Sequoia, which has also backed Apple, Google, YouTube and PayPal, made a profitable exit from Skyscanner when the travel search specialist was sold to China’s Ctrip International in a £1.4 billion deal late last year, having invested $200 million in the company in 2013.
Mr Graham is understood to have received a sufficiently encouraging response from Sir Michael and other potential backers that he has relocated to California to focus on raising finance from venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. A target of between £3m and £5m in Series A funding has been set.
Mr Graham, who resolved to develop the software after his own experience in hospital, will use the funds to support product development, including its StorriCare platform, and build a sales and management team in the US.
He said: “The US is the largest healthcare market on the planet and we’re now winning our first contracts Stateside, which is a massive boost on top of the business we’re already doing in the UK. Overall, our aim is to set the gold standard for what we describe as person-centred care.
“There are 20,000 care homes in the UK and around 60,000 in the US. The US market alone is a billion dollar market for us. The sector has been slow to embrace technology, relying on paper-based systems as technology advances in other sectors worldwide.
“In the past two years, large care groups and healthcare providers have installed wifi. As a result, our experience is that providers are looking at technology to evidence care for the first time.”
StoriiCare’s US fund-raising efforts come shortly after it launched £300,000 crowdfunding drive on the Seedrs platform in July. The funds raised will be used to drive the expansion of the company in the UK, where it currently employs 10 staff at its head office in Glasgow.
Mr Graham, who set the company up in 2014, wants StoriiCare to set a gold standard for “person-centred” care, allowing those in care to build their life stories. Care staff now regularly to the software as the “Facebook for care”.
But as well as helping care residents keep in touch with their loved ones, Storiicare also aims to ease the burden on care staff. Its software allows staff to keep records digitally and cut down on repetition when keeping records.
As such it echoes a mobile app developed by fellow Glasgow firm Kelvin Connect, which allows police officers to compile reports digitally on customised electronic forms.
Mr Graham, whose backers include Four Seasons Health Care founder Robert Kilgour, now a board director at StoriiCare, added: With a worldwide ageing population, and an increasing demand for tech within the care sector, there is a real growing need for StoriiCare. We’re leading the way in modern reminiscence therapy.”
“The care sector has strict regulatory bodies that require detailed records to be kept, which can lead to staff spending hours completing arduous paperwork. With StoriiCare, paperwork is digitised and repetition reduced significantly, with staff saving on average six hours a week through the platform.”
“We originally started off as a life story app solely for reminiscence, then after listening to feedback and requests from early clients, we realised there was so much more we could add to improve the quality of care provided.”
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