Cera Care announces 15 digital hubs to care for patients in their own home

The health care startup Cera Care is to create 15 digital healthcare hubs over the next six months to deliver telehealth and medication to elderly and vulnerable patients.

Cera Care’s SmartCare platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to predict health deterioration in a patient before it happens. Using data input by a carer, it calculates the risk, for example, that the patient might need hospitalisation. It then alerts carers and families to what they need to do to stop the patient becoming worse and falling ill. The SmartCare platform was trained on data from 68,000 care records reviewed by professionals.

In early deployments of SmartCare, Cera Care claims the technology identified 715 cases of previously undetected health risks and was 93% accurate at correctly identifying the next best action for a patient’s health needs.

The firm also has a patient care dashboard that enables patients to gain access to care, medication, transportation, food, and doctor’s services directly from their tablet computer.

Cera Care claims that its technology could save the NHS millions of pounds.

Nursing care in patients’ own homes

The digital health care hubs consist of teams of health care professionals who can carry out home visits to patients identified as being in need. The professionals are then able to provide nursing care and prescriptions in a patient’s own home.

Ben Maruthappu, co-founder and CEO of Cera Care, said: “The pandemic has greatly exacerbated, and accelerated, many of the historic challenges that the NHS and social care sector have battled in the UK.

“It has also, in turn, reaffirmed the need for reform, and to embrace technology and innovation to ensure our older community have access to timely, quality healthcare services. Our launch of 15 digital healthcare hubs will alleviate pressures on the NHS and support older people when they need it most, so that they can receive high quality, proactive and digital-first healthcare in the comfort of their own home.”

The company says that the hubs will enable it to match the capacity of 1,000 care homes every day. The hubs will be located in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland, Bournemouth, Brighton, Burnley, Colchester, Southampton, Peterborough and Southend-on-Sea.

In February last year, Cera Care secured £54m in funding from investors. It also took over Mears Care, a traditional care provider.