As the location services market continues to grow, the development and deployment of the indoor positioning system are gaining momentum. Even though the indoor position market may be in relative infancy, many organisations have started deploying IPS. Navenio, a spin-out of Oxford University is one among them.
The UK healthcare scaleup provides infrastructure-free indoor location solutions, the equivalent of GPS for use indoors, to power a range of apps and platforms in sectors including healthcare.
Raised £828K
Recently, the company secured a $1.1 million (approx £828K) investment from Future Planet Capital to help revolutionise healthcare efficiency worldwide. The funding has come in line just two weeks after when the Oxford-based startup secured a £400,000 grant from the UK government and Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, to address the impact of COVID-19 on hospitals.
Tim Weil, CEO of Navenio, added: “We are delighted to have received this additional funding from Future Planet Capital, topping up our Series-A raise from earlier this year. There is no denying that we live through challenging times but here at Navenio we are using our technology to help and provide benefit to the teams that are fighting on the front line. Our indoor location and workforce solution is crucial and can play a significant role as hospitals experience the second or even multiple waves of COVID-19 patients, ensuring that patient care and team flows are optimised during peak periods and enabling ‘right person, right place, right time’.”
How will the funding be used?
This funding will help Navenio to not only mitigate infection rates in hospitals, but to roll out its technology to ensure ‘right person, right place, right time’, increasing efficiency.
Location-based services for indoor environments
Navenio provides location-based services for indoor environments via mobile applications. It uses smartphone sensors, and the fusion of four unique technologies creates a highly scalable indoor location, providing actionable insight immediately.
The technology will also stop cross contamination of teams traveling from select COVID-19 areas to parts of the hospital that are not treating the virus.
Set to expand further
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Navenio has formed strong relationships with multiple NHS organisations, as well as facilities management businesses and private hospital groups.
The scaleup has so far improved inpatient and caregiver experience and transformed service lines of healthcare teams.
The UK scaleup is set to expand further and to ensure that efficiency and patient flow are not impacted at a time where hospitals can expect higher admittance rates.
Douglas Hansen-Luke, Executive Chairman at Future Planet Capital commented: ‘Navenio exemplifies our investment thesis; best-in-class innovation from the world’s top university wrapped into a highly commercial product and company with the potential to scale its impact to help billions of lives. Having established partnerships with the NHS, Cleveland Clinic, and some of the world’s largest outsourcers, we believe the company is poised to revolutionise healthcare efficiency worldwide. Also, the core indoor geo-location engine developed at Oxford’s computer science lab has achieved what competing tech giants in the space have not, and we believe this will be hugely valuable cross-industry.”
Finalist in KPMG British Tech Pioneers 2020
Right now, it has an established team of more than 60 people. Navenio is a finalist in the KPMG British Tech Pioneers 2020 Programme and its technology has won both commercial and academic awards.