Anybody within the U.Okay. who has tried to e book an NHS medical appointment of late will know simply how a lot of an ordeal it may be, with median ready instances for consultant-led elective care (i.e. pre-planned medical therapy) at the moment sitting at round 14.6 weeks in England. This has led to a spike in individuals turning to the private medical sector, a pattern some argue heralds the beginning of a two-tier healthcare system the place these with monetary means successfully pay to fast-track their therapy.

In tandem, a floundering public healthcare system has created fertile floor for healthtech startups to flourish, addressing everything from staffing shortages to improving radiologists’ tech stack.

One such firm is Scan.com, a London-based medical imaging startup that connects sufferers with scanning facilities, masking MRI, ultrasound, CT, and X-ray. The corporate as we speak introduced it has raised $12 million in a Sequence A spherical of funding, because it seems to construct on its current U.S. launch.

Ready instances

The issue, in keeping with Scan.com, is that even when a affected person is ready to e book a health care provider’s appointment within the first place (a process that’s changing into more and more troublesome in itself within the U.Okay.), the following referral course of to get an applicable scan can take a number of months, after which they might have to attend even longer to obtain the outcomes.

Scan.com has partnered with tons of of scanning facilities to allow people to entry medical imaging providers with or and not using a GP’s referral, with user-friendly reviews replete with clickable diagrams delivered inside per week.

To make use of Scan.com’s on-line referral system, customers pay up-front to safe their scan, after which they’re booked in for a digital session with a clinician inside 48 hours.

Costs differ based mostly on various elements resembling location and the kind of scan required, however tough ball-park figures run wherever from £180 to £395 or extra, and contains the session, the scan, and all of the follow-on reviews.

If a scan identifies a major problem, the affected person enters Scan.com’s “pressing findings pathway,” the place a medical staff contacts the affected person and their physician to elucidate the outcomes and supply steerage on what to do subsequent.

However the means to bypass a GP (basic practitioner) and self-refer for a medical scan certainly may result in all method of time-wasting endeavors — what if a affected person doesn’t really want a scan?

“Our medical staff presents consultations and steerage to all sufferers as soon as they’ve booked, which is a core a part of the service we provide,” Scan.com CEO Charlie Bullock defined to TechCrunch. “Their time is included in our scan pricing, which is why we take cost on the level of reserving. Through the session, the clinician can amend the scan kind, add or amend physique components, and make sure the scan is each secure and medically justified for the affected person’s wants.”

Bullock added that if the clinician determines that there isn’t any justification for the scan, Scan.com refunds the total value and supplies steerage on what the affected person ought to do subsequent. “This occurs in round 3% of circumstances,” Bullock stated.

However most sufferers who’re on the stage of enthusiastic about scans are prone to have had some medical assessments already that counsel some a scan is perhaps wanted to get to the basis of their issues, and a big chunk of the goal user-base are merely trying to circumvent the prolonged ready instances at the moment encumbering the NHS.

“Sufferers might select to self-refer for imaging for quite a lot of causes, however one of many core elements is pace,” Bullock stated. “Some sufferers might have already seen a GP, physiotherapist, or different healthcare supplier, however have reached a bottleneck of their healthcare pathway attributable to lengthy ready instances. They could know what scan they want, and in lots of circumstances have been knowledgeable of the ready time, and so they select to come back to us to entry the subsequent steps quicker.”

In fact, there are quite a few eventualities which will require a service resembling that supplied by Scan.com. Some individuals may need basic considerations and need a preventative screening with out taking on the time of a main healthcare supplier, and Scan.com presents full-body MRI scans for such circumstances.

“Household historical past or life-style elements that might result in illness may be investigated and checked on this manner,” Bullock stated.

Additionally, greater than 10,000 girls under the age of 50 are identified with breast most cancers within the U.Okay. annually, whereas the nation’s nationwide screening program solely begins from the age of fifty. As such, Scan.com is gearing as much as launch early mammogram screenings later this 12 months concentrating on girls below the age of fifty particularly.

“We goal to fill that hole to hurry up entry to therapy,” Bullock added.

The story to date

Scan.com was based some 5 years in the past by clinicians Khalid Latief and Jasper Nissim who had grown exasperated by “inefficiencies” in organizing diagnostics for his or her sufferers. Launching initially as a side-project, the duo introduced on board CEO Charlie Bullock, COO Oliver Knight, and front-end designer Joe Daniels as co-founders in 2019, bootstrapping their manner by means of to 2021 earlier than going full-time and raising some £4.2 million ($5.2 million) in seed funding from traders together with Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield.

In the present day, Scan.com claims round 30 workers throughout the U.Okay. and U.S., having launched its product Stateside two months in the past.

“We ramped as much as $1 million in annualised income within the first 5 weeks within the U.S. following this launch,” Bullock stated.

To this point, Scan.com has been piloting its service in Georgia, and the corporate is trying to develop to 5 extra states to “cement ourselves because the main diagnostic imaging platform within the U.S.,” Bullock stated. “We additionally know there’s vital alternative inside Europe, however with language limitations and extra diversified healthcare programs, our focus is the U.S. and U.Okay. in the interim.”

With one other $12 million within the financial institution, Scan.com is well-financed to proceed its U.S. enlargement and likewise lengthen its service providing to incorporate the likes of DEXA scans, echocardiograms, and the aforementioned mammograms, whereas additionally pursuing enterprise contracts throughout digital well being suppliers, worker profit platforms, amongst different business organizations.

“Medical imaging covers such quite a lot of modalities that our focus is to launch as many of those as we will,” Bullock stated. “Alongside scans, we additionally need to design pathways so as to add worth for our sufferers, resembling guided injections for ache reduction, or including in-vitro testing and pathology options to our preventative screenings to make them extra complete.”

Scan.com’s Sequence A spherical was co-led by Oxford Capital, Aviva Ventures, YZR Capital, Triple Level Ventures and Simplyhealth Ventures, with participation from Forefront Enterprise Companions.