Cera Care

Cera Care was formally launched in 2016.[3] In November 2016, the company raised £1.3 million from investors including David Buttress, the former CEO of JustEat, and Peter Sands, the former CEO of Standard Chartered.[4] At the time it was the largest seed-round funding in European healthcare history.[5][6] In April 2017, Cera Care raised a further £1.4 million in financial backing.[7] To date, the company raised £20 million over the past three years.[8]

In March 2017, Cera Care partnered with the Barts Health NHS Trust to provide carers for elderly patients in their own homes and accelerating patients' discharge from the five Barts Health hospitals, in order to prevent bed blocking.[9] The partnership also allowed NHS doctors to refer patients to carers through the Cera platform, potentially matching up to 6 million patients with carers.[10][11][12]

As the agreement with the NHS was finalised, Cera contracted Uber to transport both patients and carers.[13][14][15]

Following the launch of its partnership with Uber, Cera Care commenced a partnership with taxi service Gett to deliver items from London chemists to patients at home.[16]

Cera Care introduced a chatbot, Martha, in May 2017. Created with Bloomsbury AI, Martha is a virtual assistant able to review patients' digital records and answer questions for both patients and carers, basing the answers on data points gathered by care workers and digitized care records.[17][18][19] Cera Care later developed a patient care dashboard to provide patients with on-demand access to care, medications, transportation, food, and doctor's services via tablet computer. It also claims to have developed a platform that predicts patient deteriorations by computing the risk of events such as hospitalisations based on carer input.[20][21]

In 2018, Cera Care expanded to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, in addition to acquiring care businesses in Huddersfield and Nottingham.[22][23] As part of their growth plans, they invested £10 million to expand to 14 cities across the UK and roll out new technologies, as well as launch a major recruitment drive for the social care sector through social media.[24][25]

At the beginning of 2019, Cera Care partnered with IBM to test sensors used in self-driving cars to help with monitoring of elderly people. The aim of this new product was to use the data collected by sensors and alert caregivers of any change in patterns that could signify a deterioration in patients’ health, allowing them to respond faster and consequentially reduce avoidable hospital stays.[26][27][28][29] Also in 2019, Cera care launched its Smart Care app, which uses machine learning and data from 68,000 care records, reviewed by professionals, to predict and alert carers to possible health deteriorations with 82% accuracy.[30]

It acquired the domiciliary care division of Mears Group in February 2020.[31]

As of 2017, Cera Care claimed to have 20 partnerships with NHS organisations, councils, and public organisations, including Dementia Action Alliance.[40] It won the Health Startup of the Year award at the British Startup Awards; the Award for Dementia Care and Rising Star at the LaingBuisson Awards; and the Digital Health Innovation of the Year award at the Global Awards. Cera Care was also included at the European Innovation Summit as one of the EU's Top 50 Startups.[41][42][43][44]

In October of 2018 the UK Government and Secretary of State for Health launched their Vision for the Future of Healthcare in the country. Cera Care was used as a case study for what the future of British care could look like.[45]

In 2019, it was named the Most Outstanding Home Care Provider and awarded prizes for Live-In-Care Expertise, and Best Technology, at the Home Care Awards.[46] It also received the award for Best Use of Artificial Intelligence by Health Tech Digital and ranked 37 in the Escape 100 list of the Best Companies to work for in 2019.[47][48] It was also named top AgeTech startup in the UK in Beauhurst's analysis of the sector.[49]

• Official website