Cera Care

Cera Care is a London-based technology-enabled home care company.[1] It 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, Emergency care, On-demand transportation, Delivery services
Websiteceracare.co.uk

History

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]

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.[9][10][11] 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.[12][13]

In 2018, Cera Care expanded to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, in addition to acquiring care businesses in Huddersfield and Nottingham.[14][15] 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.[16][17]

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.[18][19][20][21] 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.[22]

It acquired the domiciliary care division of Mears Group in February 2020.[23]

Corporate affairs

Management structure

The founders of Cera Care are Mahiben Maruthappu, doctor, and health policy specialist, and engineers and entrepreneurs Marek Sacha, and Martin Ocenas.[24][25][2]

Former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick Clegg was Chairman of Cera Care’s Advisory Board in 2018, a position later taken on by Sir David Behan, former CEO of the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Among the members of the Advisory Board are Dame Carol Black, former President of the Royal College of Physicians and Thomas Zeltner, former Vice-Chair of the World Health Organisation.[26][27]

Operations

Cera Care provides different kinds of elderly care: palliative care, live-in care, post-discharge care, respite care and dementia care.

According to the Health Service Journal, the firm failed to register with the Information Commissioner's Office until February 2018, and was allegedly operating without the proper regulation. In May 2018, the company was accused of misrepresenting some partnerships with the National Health Service and clinical commissioning groups and placing and placing fake reviews of its services were placed on Trustpilot and Facebook. Following the allegations, CeraCare removed mentions of the partnerships that were not up to date from its website and investigated reviews on Facebook and Trustpilot.[28][29]

Regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the company achieved a rating of Good in December 2019, following an inspection undertaken in October 2019.[30] The company started its operations in London and has since expanded to the rest of England.[31]

Performance

As of 2017, Cera Care claimed to have 20 partnerships with NHS organisations, councils, and public organisations, including Dementia Action Alliance.[32] 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.[33][34][35][36]

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.[37]

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. "Cera". Crunchbase. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  9. Franklin-Wallis, Olivr (May 22, 2017). "This startup wants to solve the social care crisis with AI". Wired. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  10. Frangoul, Anmar (2018-05-03). "Artificial intelligence is helping to transform the way elderly people are cared for". CNBC. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  11. "Cera is building an AI for social care decision support". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  12. Ismael, Nick (September 20, 2017). "Artificial intelligence: from hype to reality in healthcare". Information Age.
  13. Heathman, Amelia (2018-06-26). "OnCare, Cera and Kraydel: start-ups transforming social care sector". Evening Standard. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  14. 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.
  15. Clarke, Sarah (2019-01-15). "Cera Care preps for aggressive growth with double aquisition [sic]". Home Care Insight. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  16. Hacon, Carly (2019-02-07). "UK social care startup Cera Care invests in £10m expansion". Home Care Insight. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  17. Maruthappu, Dr Ben (2018-12-20). "How can we revolutionise social care in 2019?". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  18. Jacob, Aaron (2019-06-03). "IBM begins testing of LiDAR technology in elderly homes". Geospatial World. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  19. Lange, Dr. Ansgar; Maruthappu, Dr. Ben (2019-05-23). "Could Autonomous Car Technology and AI Transform Homecare for the Elderly?". THINK Blog. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  20. Cookson, Clive (2019-06-25). "How smart tech is helping people with dementia". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  21. LaRock, Zoë. "IBM is using self-driving car technology to power a new patient monitor for seniors". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  22. Clarke, Sarah (2019-10-30). "Former CQC boss backs new home care tech from Cera Care". Home Care Insight. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  23. "Cera Care joins top 15 with Mears Care acquisition". Home Care Insight. 3 February 2020. Retrieved 23 March 2020.
  24. Shute, Joe (2018-06-30). "Meet the 30-year-old tech whizzkid reinventing the NHS and social care". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2019-11-29.
  25. Lomas, Natasha (May 23, 2017). "Cera is building an AI for social care decision support". Techcrunch. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
  26. "Sir Nick Clegg has become chairman at on-demand social care startup Cera". CityAM. 2018-03-10. Retrieved 2019-11-29.
  27. "Sir Nick Clegg–backed London startup raises $17m". London Business News | Londonlovesbusiness.com. 2018-05-02. Retrieved 2019-11-29.
  28. "Vaunted health tech firm forced to act on misleading marketing". Health Service Journal. 26 April 2018. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
  29. "Homecare services startup Cera announces $17M Series A". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-12-03.
  30. "Cera Care Ltd". www.cqc.org.uk. Retrieved 2019-12-11.
  31. "Our Partners | High Quality Home Care - Cera". Cera Care. Retrieved 2019-12-10.
  32. "Members of the Dementia Action Alliance". dementiaaction.com. Dementia Action Alliance. June 23, 2017.
  33. "UK Social Care Start-Up to Roll Out New Data Analytics Platform". Insights Europe. November 27, 2017. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  34. "Healthtech platform Cera beats 1000 startups to win prestigious healthcare accolade". Digital Health London. January 17, 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  35. Information Age (September 15, 2017). "Tech Leaders Awards 2017 - winners revealed". Information Age. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  36. "European Innovation Summit, EU TOP 50 STARTUPS" (PDF). Innovators Magazine. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  37. "The future of healthcare: our vision for digital, data and technology in health and care". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
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