The heart attack that inspired a proactive care revolution for health systems
t was a heart attack in his 40s that changed Martin Ratz’s world overnight. He’d spent his career building companies in healthcare – but until that moment he had not personally experienced up-close, and for an extended time, the reality of UK hospitals and how care was delivered to patients when they were discharged.
What he found was that on-site, the care was consistent, with monitoring offered 24/7. But as soon as you left the hospital, the continuous care vanished – or at best became fragmented – while the need for monitoring did not disappear just because someone had left a hospital bed. During this stressful time, he also learnt how spending time in hospitals impacted patients: with some people actually getting worse, leading to worse patient outcomes. It was clear to him that the model of patient care needed to extend beyond the hospital walls. And we already had the technology to do this.
“Giant was the first investor to really believe in us when they led our seed round. They saw the vision and have been relentless supporters since. We wouldn't be where we are today without Giant.”
He also discovered it wasn’t just a patient care issue either: it was a capacity and budget issue for hospitals too. By not having the ability to monitor patients outside of the hospital setting, people had to be in hospital to receive care. With a capacity and staff burnout crisis - with each bed costing additional staff and overhead costs - this system wasn’t working for hospitals either. Martin wanted to create the world’s largest ‘virtual ward’ - monitoring patients where they were most comfortable and where was most appropriate for their care. Together with Dag Larsson - Doccla’s co-founder - he set out to do it.
For every £1 spent on the service, the NHS saves £3
Since Doccla’s inception, their remote ward technology has been rolled out globally - with millions of monitored patient days across 11 European countries. They are Europe's leading Virtual Care provider.
With Doccla, patients are given technology to allow them to be monitored at home: equipment to record their observations, such as blood pressure, which can then be sent back to a health professional. Doccla is also used alongside community teams who can go out to patients' homes if a "red flag" is raised on the system.
The medical director of the Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust in the UK, who have been working with Doccla to provide hospital level care in patients' own homes, told the BBC that Doccla had both prevented hospital admissions and enabled earlier discharge. "Patients do better at home", she said, as people want to be in their own homes where they're surrounded by their own things, eat their own food and sleep in their own beds.
Doccla's impact
Doccla is live in over 60% of the NHS regions
New patients onboarded each month
Saved per patient per year
Patients are from the most deprived 10%
Net promoter score
Remote clinical assessments
