Meridian Health Ventures, formerly known as KHP Ventures, has announced a transatlantic fund to provide healthtech superscalers with global and domestic growth opportunities, while supporting UK innovation to be adopted in the NHS.
The Fund brings together leading health systems, venture investors, institutional investors and academic centres of excellence to provide the country’s top healthcare innovators with a supportive pathway into the US market, while also enabling them to scale in the UK.
Scaling domestically is a long-standing challenge for UK-founded healthtech companies, with many forced to relocate to the US for growth opportunities – resulting in lost economic value for the UK and missed opportunities for the NHS to benefit from homegrown innovation.
Backed by leading health systems Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital and University College London Hospitals in the UK, as well as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the US, the Fund will help healthtech superscalers to thrive domestically in the UK while fast-tracking their growth in the US. Hartford HealthCare is also set to join the Fund imminently, showing the momentum both here and in the US. As partners to the Fund, the health systems will enable start-ups to generate real-world data and evidence which supports the case for adoption within broader UK and US healthcare environments.
Dr Nadine Hachach-Haram, Co-Managing Partner at Meridian Health Ventures said: “With this Fund, we want to supercharge the growth of the most promising innovations so they can deliver direct benefits to the NHS’s patients and workforce, as well as the wider UK economy. Through transatlantic collaboration, we are also creating an environment where ambitious founders can scale at pace – both domestically and internationally – bridging the gap between UK NHS and US healthcare systems for a start.”
Daniel Dickens, Co-Managing Partner at Meridian Health Ventures added: “As founders ourselves, we’ve launched this Fund to ensure that the next generation of health tech breakthroughs can be scaled in the UK, not just invented here. We’re proud to partner with this group of leading health systems and healthcare investors on both sides of the Atlantic, and of course to work with the driven and talented founding teams in the Fund’s portfolio.”
Professor Ian Abbs, Chief Executive Officer at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust said: “The NHS is facing one of the biggest challenges in its history – how to continue to deliver high-quality care against a backdrop of rising demand, increased patient acuity and pressures on workforce and finance. The NHS is not alone – most developed health systems are grappling with the same fundamental questions.
“This imperative to innovate is why we decided to become a founding institution of KHP Ventures and an anchor Partner in Meridian Health Ventures’ Fund. As a leading NHS organisation, we are committed to harnessing accelerations in new digital and biomedical advances, such as the innovative start-ups that this Fund invests in, to deliver better, faster and fairer healthcare for all.”
James D. Laur, JD, Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Cedars-Sinai and Managing Director of Cedars-Sinai Health Ventures said: “Our mission at Cedars-Sinai is to provide patients around the world with the best care possible, and we believe that partnering with talented innovators across the globe will help us continue to achieve this. We have worked with the Meridian Health Ventures team in the UK for years and see their mission as deeply aligned with ours. We have been impressed by the quality and depth of the health tech founders in their portfolio, and are excited to build on our collaboration as Partners in the Fund.”
Alex Trewby, CEO and Co-Founder of Apian, a Meridian Health Ventures portfolio company said: “Apian’s story started in the NHS, and we’ve been fortunate to grow alongside partners like Meridian Health Ventures and Trusts like Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. What began through the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme has grown into a mission with global reach – from our work with Zipline and Wing to delivering care to patients faster. Meridian’s new transatlantic fund creates a win-win for patients, clinicians and health tech founders like us.”
Since founding KHP Ventures in 2021, the team behind the newly re-branded Meridian Health Ventures draws on their experience as entrepreneurs, investors, operators, regulators, industry leaders, academics, and clinicians. The Fund’s current portfolio includes leading health tech companies such as Doccla, deepc, Patchwork, Tympa Health, Apian, iFAST Diagnostics, PocDoc, Phare Health, 52 Northand MediShout. The Fund has invested in promising MedTech spin-outs from Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial, King’s and Southampton, counting 12 NHS clinical entrepreneurs amongst its company founders.
The healthtech fund’s portfolio companies have deployed solutions in over 100 NHS Trusts across the UK, with the majority of the portfolio expanding globally, including numerous companies working with US health system partners such as Cedars-Sinai.
