Neu Health - winnng in US and UK

Sometimes it seems that UK healthtech startups have to choose between heading straight for the lucrative US market or trying to make it in the cash-strapped NHS.

So it is good to hear that Neu Health, the Oxford-based company developing a system for monitoring Parkinson’s patients via their smartphones, is prospering on both sides of the Atlantic. This week the company has announced that it has won the approval of the American regulator the FDA for a tremor measurement module in its smartphone app.

Neu Health has been waiting for this moment to announce its arrival in the US market. The idea it is selling to doctors and their patients is a system which bridges the gap between face to face appointments, with the smartphone able to detect any sudden deterioration in the neurological state of someone with Parkinson’s.

Neu’s co-founder and Chief Medical Officer Kinan Muhammed told me: “In some parts of the U.S., large geographic distances between patients and specialists are a big challenge, limiting access to timely care. With our FDA clearance, Neu Health’s assessments can now be used throughout the U.S. healthcare system, allowing improved care access and benefiting greater numbers of patients with Parkinson’s.”

When I wrote about the company 18 months ago, the focus was on getting the system into the NHS. Here, the gap between appointments is often very long and so moving Parkinson’s care away from the hospital outpatients department and into the community is partly about dealing with a desperate shortage of neurologists.

Back then, I thought Neu might find itself facing a familiar problem for UK healthtech businesses - the NHS is very keen on running free or very cheap pilots of some of their products, a lot less eager to sign contracts which would allow them to start recouping the large sums they have spent on research and development.

But Kinan Muhammed says the system, which has gone through a number of upgrades since I last tested the app, is now being deployed in 8 NHS trusts which are producing real revenues for Neu Health. This ambitious young company is also preparing to enter the field of dementia care, a big market which will require substantial investment. That means it is courting new backers.

Right now, despite having operations in California, Boston and the UK, Neu Health is still a minnow with fewer than 20 staff. The next 18 months will be a crucial period full of potential and peril, as the company tries to become a major force in a new wave of digital healthcare on both sides of the Atlantic.