Healthcare company Wellola has raised €2.2 million to expand its platform and accelerate its growth amid a growing demand for digital healthcare programmes in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The round was led by Elkstone, with additional funding from Enterprise Ireland, and will be used to grow the company across Europe. It also plans to recruit technical and operational staff across Ireland and the UK, increasing from the 21 staff members it currently employs. It is hiring in technical, operational and project management roles, particularly in Dublin and in Leeds.
Irish-based Wellola was founded by Sonia Neary in 2016. It offers a communications portal that covers everything from appointment management and two-way messaging to symptom tracking and remote device connectivity.
“It’s ultimately about supporting patients to self-manage so that they don’t need to present face to face in a hospital setting,” Ms Neary explained.
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Among the clients that have deployed the Portasana platform Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, the northeast London Foundation Trust and Birmingham Community NHS Trust.
The new investment follows €1 million in funding from BVP that Wellola raised in 2022, bringing the total raised by the company to date to €4 million.
Ms Neary said as an Irish company Wellola was keen to work with an Irish investor, and Elkstone felt like a good fit from early on in the process. Getting backing from Enterprise Ireland’s research, development and innovation fund was also a win for the company, backing up its perception as a cutting-edge healthcare company.
“Wellola is revolutionising how hospitals and clinics care for and communicate with their patients,” said Barry Brennan, partner at Elkstone. “We are excited to support the team at Wellola as they continue to usher in a new era of healthcare in hospitals right across Ireland, the UK and Europe.”
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