'Hospital at home' startup Doccla raises $46 million for its European expansion

Hospitals around the world regularly face bed shortages -- an issue that can get exacerbated to breaking point when a health scare or other large-scale disaster occurs. A startup called Doccla is bringing technology to bear to address the issue: It's building "virtual bed" tech to help doctors remotely manage patients who have either been discharged early, or in some cases never go to the hospital at all. After gaining traction in the U.K. and Ireland, it's now raised £35 million ($46 million) to expand in Europe.

Lakestar is leading the Series B round; Elaia and several existing investors are also participating. The funding comes two years after Doccla raised a $17 million Series A.

Doccla, which competes with companies like Graphnet and Huma among others, will use the funding in part to hire local teams in new markets. And while the startup's main focus up to now has been to contract with health services -- they include local NHS Trusts in the U.K and Ireland's Health Service Executive (HSE) -- for "virtual bed" tech for patients, it is also supporting virtual clinical trials for pharmaceutics companies; and it has its eye on building a data insights business around all of it.

Doccla's start came out of COVID-19 headwinds: A big push to keep more people out of hospitals to reduce resource strain led healthcare organizations to sign on to virtual bed solutions like Doccla's to plug the gap. But as life started to return to normal, the startup also pursued more practical growth strategies. "It's in our DNA to be revenue-first," Doccla's co-founder Martin Ratz said in an interview.

At its core, Doccla's service is organized around a set of monitoring devices provided to patients along with a mobile phone pre-loaded with its app. These are used to collect data that gets loaded directly into electronic health records. Doctors view the data via a clinician dashboard, and they get special alerts when diagnostic readings need more attention — a strong selling point for overworked staff, and peace of mind for patients at home.

Ratz told TechCrunch that it's taken a very practical approach to entering new markets: It typically signs a new customer there before it does so.

"First we sell, and then we enter the market with the help of a customer; that's exactly what happened in Germany," he said in an interview, adding that it already has plans to do so in Austria and France. "We're aiming to replicate what we do in the U.K. [while] recognizing that the underpinnings of [newer] markets are very different, particularly in terms of reimbursement," he said.

On the pharma side, Doccla's "hospital at home" technology is being used in drug research. Specifically, during drug trials, Doccla is reducing or replacing the need for patients to physically attend clinics, typically run by third-party contract research organizations, to monitor their progress. "We can help do things faster, better, cheaper than traditional CROs," said Ratz.

The market for virtual hospital solutions is becoming crowded, but Doccla believes details like being device agnostic will help it stay the course.

And while Doccla requires an app, it emphasizes accessibility, with large fonts and a simple interface. It also offers in-app messaging and video calls with live clinicians -- both with those who are staffing your physical clinic, but also clinicians from Doccla itself.