Birdie Secures $11.5M Series A Funding - Elderly Caretech

Birdie Secures $11.5 Million in Series A Funding

SaaS provider Birdie has successfully finalized an $11.5 million Series A funding round, spearheaded by Index Ventures. Kamet Ventures, an existing investor, also contributed to this financing.

Company Background and Funding History

The UK-based caretech company has accumulated a total of $22.9 million in funding since its establishment in 2017. A previous funding round in 2018, initially categorized as a Series A, is now recognized as a seed expansion.

Focus on Social Care Efficiency

Birdie concentrates on developing tools designed to enhance efficiency within the social care sector, an area historically characterized by limited resources. The company’s core mission is to provide solutions for care providers.

Platform Functionality and Benefits

Birdie does not directly deliver care services; instead, it offers a comprehensive suite of digital tools to support care providers. These tools aim to reduce administrative burdens and streamline care management.

The platform eliminates the need for paper-based records and facilitates real-time visibility through features like carer check-ins and medication notifications.

Long-Term Vision: Coordinated and Preventative Care

The overarching goal is to empower care providers to deliver more coordinated, personalized, and preventative care. This will enable older adults to maintain independence and live longer in their own homes.

CEO’s Perspective on Transforming Elderly Care

“Technology has the potential to fundamentally change how we care for the elderly, enabling them to age at home for extended periods, with improved health and happiness,” states CEO and co-founder Max Parmentier. He explains that Birdie focuses on supporting the individuals who directly care for the elderly – the care providers.

Parmentier notes that while care providers are dedicated, care delivery is often fragmented, reactive, and generalized. Birdie aims to become the operating system for more efficient and higher-quality care.

Investment Rationale in an Underfunded Market

Parmentier acknowledges the underfunding of the market but argues that the need for solutions is unavoidable. He believes that funding will inevitably be allocated to address the growing demands of an aging population.

Positive Storytelling and Affordable Aging

He emphasizes the opportunity to create a positive narrative around aging, suggesting that it can be a fulfilling and affordable phase of life through tailored care packages and technology-driven personalization. This approach can lower healthcare costs and improve outcomes.

Reducing Errors and Enabling Early Intervention

By digitizing data capture in elderly care, the platform structures information to minimize errors – such as medication errors stemming from handwritten notes – and allows for early detection of potential problems, enabling timely intervention.

Early Detection of Health Issues

For example, early signs of a urinary tract infection can be identified through data analysis, allowing for simple treatment at home. Without early detection, hospitalization and associated risks may become necessary.

Optional Connected Hardware for Fall Prevention

Birdie also offers optional connected hardware, such as motion sensors, to monitor frail elderly adults at risk of falling. However, Parmentier stresses that such hardware is only installed with the full consent of the care recipient.

Data Privacy and Security

The company prioritizes the interests and rights of older adults, ensuring that their data is not shared with third parties without direct relevance to their care.

Enhanced Visibility and Family Communication

A digital platform provides greater visibility into an individual’s care compared to paper records. Real-time data can be shared with family members, offering reassurance about visits and medication adherence, with appropriate consent.

Promoting a Positive View of Aging

Parmentier suggests reframing aging as a positive experience, empowering older adults with the support they need to live fulfilling lives.

Current Reach and Growth

Birdie currently partners with nearly 500 providers across the U.K., supporting the care of over 20,000 older people each week.

Accelerated Growth During the Pandemic

The company has experienced 8x growth in the past 12 months, driven by increased demand for in-home elderly care during the coronavirus pandemic. The new funding will fuel further expansion in the U.K. and potential international growth.

Empowering Caregivers

“Our initial focus is on empowering care providers to excel in their roles,” says Parmentier. “There’s a dedicated army of caregivers, and we aim to equip them with the tools to deliver even better care.”

Research and Preventative Care

Structured data on elderly care provides a foundation for research aimed at enhancing preventative care. Birdie is exploring this through project partnerships.

Polypharmacy Research with Faculty

One such partnership involves research into polypharmacy – the concurrent use of multiple medications – with U.K.-based AI company Faculty. The goal is to understand the impact of medication on older adults’ health.

Identifying Medication-Related Health Impacts

The research seeks to correlate medication treatments with clinical observations from carers, looking for patterns such as changes in appetite, pain complaints, or other health indicators.

Developing AI-Powered Warnings

The hope is to develop an AI model that can alert clinicians to potential risks associated with specific medication regimes, preventing adverse health outcomes.

Data Anonymization and Research Ethics

Birdie’s website states that research uses “anonymized” data, a claim that requires careful consideration given the sensitivity of medical information and the challenges of robust anonymization.

Data Handling Practices

Parmentier clarifies that current research involves correlating data from different older adults and care providers, limiting the data pooled to only relevant information. He emphasizes that unnecessary data is removed.

Avoiding Integration with NHS Data

He confirms that Birdie is not currently integrating its data with National Health Service (NHS) patient data, acknowledging the potential re-identification risks.

Future Data Integration Plans

However, Birdie is exploring the possibility of integrating with NHS data in the future, believing it could further preventative care research, but only under strict anonymization conditions.

Cautious Approach to Data Sharing

“Pooling data with third-party datasets like the NHS is risky because of the potential for re-identification,” Parmentier explains. “We’re being cautious and will only proceed with bullet-proof anonymization.”

Future Vision: Coaching and Personalized Support

Parmentier envisions a second phase of the business where Birdie can directly coach older adults and their family caregivers, leveraging its platform-level view of best practices and AI-powered research.

Shift Towards Value-Based Healthcare

This vision requires a shift towards value-based healthcare, where providers are reimbursed based on health outcomes rather than hours of care provided.

Focus on Efficiency and Quality

For now, Birdie remains focused on its initial phase: building tools to improve efficiency and quality in the under-resourced social care sector.

Addressing the Growing Needs of an Aging Population

“We see the same problem everywhere,” Parmentier adds. “We’re not adequately caring for our elderly, and the costs are rising. We need to invest in new ways of operating, technology, and innovation to move towards more preventative, personalized, and outcome-based models.”

Index Ventures’ Perspective

Stephane Kurgan, venture partner at Index Ventures, stated: “Our ageing society and increasing healthcare costs necessitate a re-evaluation of how we care for vulnerable populations like the elderly. Technology provides the tools, as the care sector has remained largely paper-based and is ripe for disruption.”

“By investing in caretech with Birdie, we are investing in solving the daily challenges of the care community. We firmly believe in Birdie’s vision to make care more personalised and more preventative so that older people can age at home longer, healthier and happier. We’ve been impressed by Birdie’s traction and the calibre of its team, and are very excited to embark on this journey with them.”