Digital health platform SilverCloud Health raises €14.7m

SilverCloud Health, an Irish tech company that provides online therapy and wellness programmes, has confirmed a new $16 million (€14.7 million) funding round.

The financing brings total funds raised to date by the Dublin-headquartered company to over $30 million.

SilverCloud has developed a digital health platform that is used by over 300 organisations. These include the Health Service Executive and Britain's National Health Service, for whom the company delivers over 70 per cent of its mental health programmes.

A spin-out from a collaborative project between the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC), Mater University Hospital and Trinity College Dublin, SilverCloud was established following over 10 years of advanced clinical and academic research.

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The company’s platform enables healthcare organisations to deliver a broad range of evidence-based clinical content, programmes and support in the areas of mental health and chronic/long-term illness.

Founder and chief executive Ken Cahill said the new financing will be used to expand its programme portfolio, conduct additional research and clinical trials and further boost its presence in international markets.

The latest fundraise was led by LA-based Memorial Care Innovation Fund, LRV Health, OSF Ventures and UnityPoint Health Ventures. Existing backers, Dublin-based Act Venture Capital, and B Capital, a venture capital firm established by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, also participated.

Mr Cahill said the syndicate of investors were representatives of major US healthcare providers and that the company would be looking to use their expertise to expand further in the region.

“The funding will help us push deeper in North America and in Europe as well as allow us to make further investments in the platform and in research,” he said.

SilverCloud’s programmes have been found to deliver clinical results that are on a par with face-to-face therapy. The company’s services are currently used by more than 370,000 people globally with over 15,000 new users every month.

Mr Cahill said the company had in recent weeks made its platform available for free to a number of healthcare providers during the Covid-19 crisis.

Last week, SilverCloud announced a deal to deliver access to its digital health platform for 130 million North Americans during the crisis. It has also agreed a deal with Greater Manchester in England to provide an online therapy programme for people which is proven to help with stress, anxiety, low-mood and depression.

Mr Cahill said its platform is currently available to about 150 million end users for free, including frontline workers.

“What we have is a solution that has been validated many times over and which can of course be delivered remotely. This is important in a crisis such as now because we’re seeing a lot of healthcare systems having to prioritise care,” said Mr Cahill.

It has developed specific programmes around sleep, resilience and stress and it also working Covid-19 specific add-ons covering issues such as anxiety and isolation.

“We are probably all experiencing a greater degree of anxiety than our generation have ever experienced before so the ability to provide services to a huge number of people while achieving the same or equivalent outcomes as face-to-face services has been well received,” he said.

Stressing that the company was not looking at Covid-19 in commercial terms, he did say that it was serving as a great validator of digital health platforms generally.

“Covid-19 has absolutely changed things in terms of digital health with governments around the world no longer looking at it as the poor cousin of treatment,” he said.

SilverCloud has previously stated it was looking to achieve turnover of approximately €20 million by 2022/2023. Mr Cahill said the company “is more than well on track to reach this target.”