Cera Care

Cera Care is a London-based technology-enabled home care company headquartered in London, England. Founded in 2015, the company provides different kinds of elderly care including palliative care, live-in care, post-discharge care, respite care and dementia care.[1] Cera Care allows families to arrange and manage home care for elderly relatives and uses a digital platform to match people seeking in-home assistance with carers.[2]

Cera Care
IndustryElderly care
Healthcare
Health technology
FoundedNovember 2015 in London, England
FoundersMahiben Maruthappu and Marek Sacha
Headquarters
London
,
England
ServicesHome care
Number of employees
6000
Websiteceracare.co.uk

History

Founding and seed funding (2016-2017)

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

Early development and investments (2017-2020)

The firm introduced a chatbot in May 2017. Created with Bloomsbury AI, it can review patients' digital records and answer questions for both patients and carers, basing the answers on data gathered by care workers and digitized care records.[8][9][10] The firm 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 hospitalizations based on carer input.[11][12]

In 2018, the firm expanded to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, and acquired care businesses in Huddersfield and Nottingham.[13] They invested £10 million to expand to 14 cities across the UK and roll out new technologies, and to launch a recruitment drive for the social care sector through social media.[14][15]

In 2019, the firm 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.[16]

Acquisitions and expansion (2021-present)

Cera Care acquired the domiciliary care division of Mears Group in February 2020.[17]

In August 2021, Cera Care expanded into nursing services at home for people with complex conditions or long COVID-19 and planned to offer clinical training courses for existing care staff. [18]

Partnerships and awards

As of 2017, Cera Care claimed to have 20 partnerships with NHS organisations, councils, and public organisations, including Dementia Action Alliance.[19] 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. It was also included at the European Innovation Summit as one of the EU's Top 50 Startups.[20][21][22][23]

In April 2018, following allegations of misleading marketing, CeraCare removed mentions of the partnerships that were not up to date from its website and investigated reviews on Facebook and Trustpilot.[24][25]

At the beginning of 2019, the firm partnered with IBM to test sensors used in self-driving cars to help with monitoring of elderly people.[26][27]

References
  1. Manthorpe, Rowland (May 15, 2016). "WIRED Health 2016 startup stage: changing healthcare with an app". Wired. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  2. Donnelly, Laura (November 20, 2016). "Uber-style service to book carers 'on demand' launched nationally". The Telegraph. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  3. "Cera Care Limited - Overview (free company information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  4. Meddings, Sabah (August 6, 2017). "Care app lands big-name backers". The Times of London. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
  5. Perez, Jessie Yello (November 21, 2016). "HealthTech startup Cera lands £1.3m from investors including JustEat CEO". UK Tech News. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  6. Wulfovich, Sharon; Meyers, Arlen (2019-06-20). Digital Health Entrepreneurship. Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-12719-0.
  7. Keane, Jonathan (April 20, 2017). "Cera raises 1.4 million in funding for on-demand carer platform". Tech EU. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  8. Franklin-Wallis, Olivr (May 22, 2017). "This startup wants to solve the social care crisis with AI". Wired. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  9. Frangoul, Anmar (2018-05-03). "Artificial intelligence is helping to transform the way elderly people are cared for". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  10. "Cera is building an AI for social care decision support". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  11. Ismael, Nick (September 20, 2017). "Artificial intelligence: from hype to reality in healthcare". Information Age.
  12. Heathman, Amelia (2018-06-26). "OnCare, Cera and Kraydel: start-ups transforming social care sector". Evening Standard. Archived from the original on 2018-06-30. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  13. Torrance, Jack (2018-05-02). "'Uber for carers' startup raises £13m to buy struggling home care firms". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  14. Hacon, Carly (2019-02-07). "UK social care startup Cera Care invests in £10m expansion". Home Care Insight. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  15. Maruthappu, Dr Ben (2018-12-20). "How can we revolutionise social care in 2019?". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2018-12-20. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  16. Clarke, Sarah (2019-10-30). "Former CQC boss backs new home care tech from Cera Care". Home Care Insight. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  17. "Cera Care joins top 15 with Mears Care acquisition". Home Care Insight. 3 February 2020. Retrieved 23 March 2020.
  18. "Cera expands into nursing services amid growing demand for 'hospital care at home'". Home Care Insight. 4 August 2021. Retrieved 14 September 2021.
  19. "Members of the Dementia Action Alliance". dementiaaction.com. Dementia Action Alliance. June 23, 2017.
  20. "UK Social Care Start-Up to Roll Out New Data Analytics Platform". Insights Europe. November 27, 2017. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  21. "Healthtech platform Cera beats 1000 startups to win prestigious healthcare accolade". Digital Health London. January 17, 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  22. Information Age (September 15, 2017). "Tech Leaders Awards 2017 - winners revealed". Information Age. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  23. "European Innovation Summit, EU TOP 50 STARTUPS" (PDF). Innovators Magazine. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-12-09. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  24. "Vaunted health tech firm forced to act on misleading marketing". Health Service Journal. 26 April 2018. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
  25. "Homecare services startup Cera announces $17M Series A". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  26. Cookson, Clive (2019-06-25). "How smart tech is helping people with dementia". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  27. LaRock, Zoë. "IBM is using self-driving car technology to power a new patient monitor for seniors". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
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