San Francisco and London-based Big Health, a digital health company, has raised $12 million in funding. Octopus Ventures led the round with participation from other investors that included Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Index Ventures and JamJar Investments.
PRESS RELEASE
SAN FRANCISCO and LONDON – JULY 27, 2016 – Digital health company Big Health today announces a new round of £9.15 million ($12 million) led by Octopus Ventures with Kaiser Permanente Ventures, returning investor Index Ventures, as well as Sean Duffy (CEO, Omada Health) and JamJar Investments, the UK-based investment fund of the innocent drinks founders. They join existing investors Esther Dyson and Peter Read.
Co-founded by Peter Hames (an NHS Innovation Fellow) and Professor Colin Espie (University of Oxford) Big Health is a pioneer in “digital medicine.” By automating evidence-based, non-drug solutions like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Big Health is making them as scalable and accessible as pharmaceuticals. Gold-standard clinical trials demonstrate that Big Health’s programs are extremely effective, leading to a majority of sufferers achieving good mental health.
Big Health’s first product, Sleepio, is a digital sleep improvement program which helps users overcome poor sleep, and in the process improve their mental health and wellbeing. In the world’s first placebo-group randomized controlled trial (RCT) for a digital sleep program, Sleepio was shown to be comparable in effect to in-person CBT, with 76 percent of insomnia sufferers achieving healthy sleep (Espie, 2012), and in a separate study shown to be effective in helping anxiety sufferers reduce their symptoms (Pillai, 2015). Most recently Sleepio was shown to be effective in the workplace, with a RCT at a Fortune 500 company demonstrating significant improvements in sleep and productivity for Sleepio users (Bostock, 2016). To date, Big Health has 14 published peer-reviewed papers – the leading evidence base of any digital therapeutic addressing mental health.
Big Health has offices in both San Francisco and London, and works with some of the world’s leading employers to improve the sleep and mental health of their employees. After its first year in the US market, Big Health’s Sleepio is already deployed to over 750,000 employees at companies including Comcast, LinkedIn, Boston Medical Center and Henry Ford Health System amongst others. The National Business Group on Health (NBGH), the industry body representing employers of over 55 million American workers, recently selected Big Health to present to employer members of its Health Innovations Forum.
Peter Hames, co-founder and CEO of Big Health, said: “Over 750,000 employees now have access to our Sleepio program after our first full year in the U.S. market. This new investment allows us to push on towards our goal of helping millions back to good mental health, by growing the number of companies we work with and evolving our products to help address an ever-wider range of mental health issues. But we’ll only achieve this goal – and firmly establish a new “digital medicine” industry – by remaining committed to evidence-based solutions that deliver real outcomes for users.”
Professor Colin Espie, co-founder and chief medical officer of Big Health, said: “Big Health wants to build a better type of healthcare, and this requires a firm commitment to trailblazing research. Everything we do is rooted in scientific evaluation, robustly scrutinized, and published in leading clinical academic journals. So far we have 14 published papers plus a considerable research pipeline, and we openly encourage independent investigators to evaluate our products and publish their findings. We believe an ethical approach to creating health solutions should be a critical value, not an inconvenience.”
Alliott Cole of Octopus Ventures said: “We’re dedicated at Octopus to backing unusually talented teams. In providing funding to Big Health, this will assist the company with its aim to help more people than ever before and also move its product further into the mental health space. We’re delighted to support the growth of the Big Health team.”
Liz Rockett, Director of Kaiser Permanente Ventures, said: “At Kaiser Permanente Ventures, we invest in companies that tackle the biggest challenges in healthcare. Big Health is doing just that, pairing a commitment to peer-reviewed clinical evidence with exceptional user experience. We expect our investment to help the company pursue its mission to develop digital therapies to improve health.”
Jon Wright, co-founder of JamJar Investments and innocent drinks, says: “We are excited by the opportunity to allow consumers to improve their mental health without face to face interaction. Insomnia is well suited to in app therapy and both anxiety and depression are huge frontiers that digital medicine can help us cross.”
About Big Health
Big Health was co-founded in 2010 by Peter Hames and world renowned sleep expert Professor Colin Espie, after Hames used Prof Espie’s self-help book to cure his own insomnia. As the world’s first digital medicine company, Big Health automates behavioral medicine programs, thereby making them scalable, accessible and consistent. Big Health’s first product, Sleepio, is a digital sleep improvement program featuring Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques, clinically proven to help overcome even long term poor sleep without pills. The company has offices in San Francisco and London, and is partnered with University of Oxford. For more information on Big Health and Sleepio please visit www.bighealth.com.
About Index Ventures
Index Ventures is an international venture capital firm that backs the best and most ambitious entrepreneurs in Europe, the US and Israel, across all company stages, from seed to venture to growth. These leaders are building truly transformative companies that are reshaping the world around us, including Adyen, BlaBlaCar, Criteo, Dropbox, Deliveroo, King, Squarespace, Sonos, SoundCloud and Supercell – among many others.
About Octopus Ventures
Octopus Ventures is a London and New York based venture capital firm focused on backing unusually talented entrepreneurs. They have been fortunate enough to work with the founding teams of over 60 companies, including Conversocial, graze.com, LoveFiLM, Property Partner, Secret Escapes, Sofar Sounds, SwiftKey, Swoon Editions, Uniplaces, tails.com, Zoopla Property Group and Zynstra.
They invest from £250,000 to £25 million in a first round of funding and will look to follow in subsequent rounds, and are proud to be known as one of the most entrepreneur friendly investors in Europe. A significant part of their portfolio consists of referrals from teams we have already invested in or serial entrepreneurs who we have previously backed.
Octopus Ventures is part of the Octopus group, one of the UK’s fastest growing investment management companies with more than £5.5 billion of assets under management.
About Kaiser Permanente Ventures
Kaiser Permanente Ventures, the strategic venture fund of Kaiser Permanente, invests in healthcare information technology, services, medical devices and diagnostics. The fund selects companies that simultaneously advance the quality and affordability of healthcare to improve health outcomes. Since inception in 1997, Kaiser Permanente Ventures has invested in more than 60 companies that are shaping health and care in the US, including Omada Health, HealthCatalyst, and iRhythm. For more information, please visit kpventures.com.
About JamJar Investments
JamJar Investments is the innocent drinks founders’ private investment fund. They invest in and advise high growth consumer brand businesses. innocent is sold in over 15 countries, and excited to CocaCola for $500m+ in 2013, the founders ran the company until exit. Entrepreneurs first and investors second, their expertise runs across commercial, branding, operations, culture and internationalisation. Previous investments include Deliveroo, Graze.com and Chronext.
Additional research information available at https://www.sleepio.com/research/
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