Ultromics raised the financing in a Series C funding round, led by Lightrock, L&G, and Allegis Capital, for the expansion of its AI-powered diagnostic echocardiogram technology, which was developed in partnership with the UK NHS and Mayo Clinic.
Oxford University healthtech spinoff Ultromics has raised $55m (€47.6m) in a Series C funding round led by investment platform Lightrock, financial services group L&G, and early-stage venture capital firm Allegis Capital. The fundraising will be used to scale its business and heart disease detection technology across the US and other target markets.
Ultromics’ EchoGo AI-powered platform was developed in partnership with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and US non-profit medical group and research institution Mayo Clinic, to enhance echocardiographic diagnosis and enable earlier diagnosis of two of the most elusive forms of heart failure – heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), and cardiac amyloidosis.
Existing investors Oxford Science Enterprises, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Blue Venture Fund, and Oxford University, also participated in this latest fundraising round alongside US medical care providers University of Chicago Medicine and UPMC Enterprises, the innovation, commercialisation and investment arm of UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center).
The firm hopes the technology, which it said has been built on years of clinical study and analysis of hundreds of thousands of echo scans, will improve the effectiveness of medical interventions and bring down costs in the healthcare sector, by reducing unnecessary tests, streamlining workflows, and enabling earlier initiation of treatment.
Ross Upton, CEO and co-founder of Ultromics, told Impact Investor that he wants to see EchoGo become part of the standard cardiac assessment in both public and private sector healthcare settings.
“As our system integrates with existing echocardiogram units, the rollout is already relatively cost-effective so this backing means we can greatly increase our reach,” he said.
“With the backing of leading investors from the healthcare, academic, and purpose-driven investment sectors, who have extensive experience in supporting innovative health and med techs, we aim to greatly expand the reach of EchoGo and its impact.”
Market expansion
The company said it will use the investment to expand its EchoGo platform across the US, where it has received FDA-clearance and is fully Medicare-reimbursed, and other key markets.
Upton said the EchoGo technology also holds CE mark approval, the marking required for goods sold in the European Economic Area and the UK, which meant the platform is available and can be deployed across European hospitals today.
The aim is to bring the technology to those hospitals and echo labs that see the highest volumes of at-risk patients and to make AI-enhanced diagnostics a default step in cardiac examinations.
“The current Series C funding round is primarily focused on scaling commercialisation in the U.S., given the momentum around Medicare reimbursement and adoption by leading U.S. health systems,” said Upton.
“That said, Ultromics is in active discussions with European partners and health systems, and the CE mark gives us the regulatory pathway to expand rapidly when we activate that strategy,” he added.
Ultromics, which was launched in 2017 and has raised a total of $120m in previous fundraisings, said it was also expanding its product pipeline to include additional cardiac conditions, new distribution channels, and deeper partnerships with health systems and clinical leaders.
Diagnostic blind spot
According to research published in the European Heart Journal, the cost of cardiovascular disease to the EU economy alone was €282bn in 2021.
“Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of ill health and premature deaths among adults worldwide,” Upton said.
“The financial impact is not only felt in healthcare costs but also in social care costs, informal care costs, and lost productivity due to absenteeism and early retirement.”
According to Ultromics, conventional solutions, which often rely on subjective interpretation of echocardiograms, were leading to missed or delayed diagnoses, with up to 64% of HFpEF cases going undiagnosed, and cardiac amyloidosis frequently mistaken for more common forms of heart disease. The company said this left patients untreated until symptoms worsened or cardiac arrest occurred.
The EchGo platform is designed to address the diagnostic blind spot in early heart failure detection by using AI to extract hidden disease signals from standard echocardiograms, to enable earlier, more accurate detection of complex heart conditions, without requiring new hardware or disrupting clinical workflows. It also generates real-time probability scores to help cardiologists identify high-risk patients earlier than traditional methods.
The company says it has analysed more than 430,000 echocardiograms to date and clinical studies have shown that its platform improves the detection of HFpEF by 73.6% when compared with standard clinical risk scores. In addition, its latest diagnostic model for cardiac amyloidosis, validated in a global study of 18 institutions and published in the European Heart Journal, outperforms current clinical risk scores while distinguishing the disease from similar conditions.
“Earlier diagnosis enables patients to benefit from recent advances in cardiac care and new treatment pathways, supporting improved outcomes for patients and their families,” said Upton.
