Tech
Little Journey helps children prepare for hospital procedures and clinical trials. Check out the 12-slide deck it used to raise $3.1 million.
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- London-based Little Journey has raised $3.1 million for its children’s health platform.
- The startup helps children and families prepare for hospital procedures and clinical trials.
- Check out the 12-slide deck Little Journey used to raise the fresh funds.
A startup that has developed a platform to support children and their families during hospital procedures and clinical trials has just raised $3.1 million.
London-based Little Journey aims to support all children in the personalized delivery of care, according to cofounder and CEO Dr Chris Evans, who is also an anesthetist. Evans often witnessed how distressed and uncertain children were when they came in for surgery.
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This uncertainty can lead to anxiety “which leads to worse health outcomes for children,” he added.
“We were giving out adult leaflets to children. I had seen my nieces and nephews interact with technology — and I thought, why can’t we do the same for children coming into hospital?” he told Insider.
Little Journey has developed an app that makes children aware of who they’re meeting and where they’re going and also incorporates animated characters that explain what happens during surgeries and clinical trials.
Little Journey makes children aware of who they’re meeting and where they’re going and gives them coping strategies before their clinical procedures. It provides children with coping methods to relax as well as guidelines on how they can keep track of their medication.
The startup has also developed a platform for management staff at hospitals and clinical trials. Healthcare staff can personalize a patient’s pathway on the app, and the platform is currently deployed across over 50 National Health Insurance (NHS) trusts.
The cofounders decided to tackle pediatric clinical trials because a key issue is a shortfall in recruitment, with many children dropping out — often due to the emotional pressures involved in being a part of a trial.
Families and carers of children are also regularly kept in the loop, and provided checklists and guidelines to help support patients. The startup claims its platform has reduced anxiety in children by 32%, recovery time by 30%, and, same-day cancellations by 42%.
Amid a drought in the UK’s health tech funding landscape since 2022, with pediatric care being an especially neglected sub-sector, Evans found that expanding Little Journey’s client base beyond a single market to pharma companies helped cinch the funding.
“We know in the NHS, there’s not a lot of money for patient experience, so there’s challenges getting in there,” he said. “By working with pharma, keeping a patient in a trial to enable that data collection is of much higher value.”
As a B2B product, the startup licenses its platform to healthcare organizations; its end play is to use that data for personalized care and move that data for use within the life sciences sector.
The $3.1 million round was led by Octopus Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm that has backed the likes of Cazoo, Depop, and Elvie.
With the fresh funding, the startup will look at how the data collected from these procedures and trials can drive better-personalized care, based on children’s behaviors and needs.
Check out the 12-slide deck used to raise the funding:
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