Lutra Health

The platform cutting down the >500,000 eye patient backlog in secondary care

Author

Quick Pitch
January 09, 2025

Welcome to quick pitch! Our mission is to provide exposure to early stage startups and connect investors with the best in class founders.

Today’s feature is an early-stage start up is revolutionaries the workflow of eye care to help over 250 million eye patients globally.

Categorised as EIS/SEIS eligible

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The Market

  • Due to ageing populations eyecare is facing an increasing burden, currently there are 28 million chronic eye patients in Europe and 250 million globally and it’s set to rise 50% by 2035.

This week's business solves two major problems: 

  • Provides a two-way interaction between optometrists (e.g. Specsavers) and Ophthalmologists (doctors) helping to reduce the >500,000 patient backlog in secondary care (ophthalmology).

  • Private healthcare companies collect different data and solutions due to regulatory mandates. The platform collects all universal data sets making for more efficient care and innovation in eye care.

One Liner

Lutra Health is reimagining eyecare pathways by improving efficiency of communication between patient, surgeon and optometrist.

  • Significantly reducing NHS (secondary care) backlog by increasing the work of community care.

  • Enhancing the efficiency of data collection in private healthcare.

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Quickfire

  • Headquarters: London, UK

  • Employee count: 4

  • Investors:

  • Funding amount: Raising £750,000 Pre-Seed, £450,000 committed

  • Business model: B2B

  • Traction metrics: 

    • Revenue generating

    • >50 optometry practices registered

    • Successful NHS trial (91% reduction in cataract outpatient visits, 56% reduction in surgical wait times)

    • Whitelisted by Specsavers globally ( >1,000 patients processed )

Due Diligence

APPEALS

  • Huge growth in practises: MoM growth is exponentially increasing with more practises using Lutra’s service growing ARR quickly.

  • Government agenda fit: With the government just announcing that they are permitting the independent sector to take other patients, the timing of Lutra’s tech solution is perfect.

  • AI use case: With significant volumes of eyecare data being collected, Lutra are well positioned to provide AI screening & diagnostics.

POTENTIAL RISKS

  • Speed of deployment in healthcare: Innovation in healthtech is a notorious for being a slow. Building new systems comes with challenges like speed of adoption that could hinder growth.

  • Data security: Significant data collection offers risks associated with inappropriate data management and/ or mistakes handling such sensitive data.

  • Incumbent systems: Building such important tech and systems for the UK population is a lot pressure.

Competition

  • EyeV, Cinapsis, Medisight and OpenEyes

    • Focus only on referrals and/or hospital patient records. Neither involve the patient (payments, patient consent and diagnosis).

Founders

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Written by Luke & Seb