Michele Kelsey
GripAble, an innovative London-based healthcare startup specialising in delivering rehabilitation programmes to people suffering from neurological and musculoskeletal conditions, has just closed an $11 million Series A funding round.
The new funding, led by IP Group, with equal investment from Parkwalk Advisors, will enable GripAble to expand its industry-leading data platform and therapy services, with a particular focus on growing markets in Europe and the US.
Partnerships
The successful fund-raise follows a period of significant activity in the US by the company, including its recent partnership with leading medical equipment distributor, Medline. GripAble is also part of a pioneering group of health tech companies led by the ABHI, with recent trade missions to the US accelerating the company’s traction with both national payers and providers.
GripAble’s mission is to make outcome-driven care scalable and accessible to all, delivering high volumes of efficient and personalised therapy from hospital to home.
Through its digitally led care pathway, combining bespoke hand-held sensors, engaging, gamified app software, and hybrid tele-therapy services, GripAble will allow more patients to access gold standard physical and cognitive rehab for longer, driving improved outcomes whilst reducing costs.
With more than 8,000 individuals having already used the platform, GripAble has established itself as a leading technology in the remote-rehab space in the UK, recording 100,000 activity sessions and 27 million movement repetitions across its users.
With initial evidence highlighting an eight-fold increase in patient training through its platform compared to current standard care, and following rapid provider adoption in the UK, GripAble has attracted and signed partnerships with both multinational pharmaceutical companies and distributors.
Dr Paul Rinne, GripAble co-founder and CEO explained:
“Patients with physical and cognitive impairments require guided therapy to improve their quality of life. Simply put, 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.”
Rinne further added:
“The evidence is clear. The new funding will accelerate GripAble’s journey to delivering end-to-end patient care and connecting millions to their own personal home-based clinic. We welcome IP Group and Parkwalk, who have a wealth of insight and experience that will support us in growing our industry-leading platform in the US market and enable us to expand our clinical and commercial evidence base.”Dr Sam Williams, Managing Partner of Life Sciences at IP Group plc, 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. We’re therefore delighted to be joining the company’s journey as it develops into a fully-fledged commercial organisation.”Martin Glen, Investment Director at Parkwalk Advisors, said:
“Parkwalk is excited to be backing this breakthrough digital rehabilitation technology as it grows and enters new markets. In particular, we are hopeful that GripAble can reproduce its strong initial success in the UK in the significantly larger US market.
This would enable many more patients to access the sustained level of rehabilitation therapy that they require for a positive outcome post-injury. GripAble was an early investment in the Parkwalk-managed Imperial College Innovation Fund and is the second such company to receive further investment from Parkwalk. It is a reflection of the strength of Imperial College’s research in STEM subjects that this breakthrough technology emerged from its labs.”
