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Seroba Kernel is a venture capital firm based in Dublin, Ireland, with representatives in the United Kingdom. The firm has approximately €100M AUM and focuses solely on the life sciences. The firm has 2 funds and plans to raise a third fund in the near future. The firm typically allocates between €5-7M of equity over the life of the investment. The firm primarily invests in companies that are based in Ireland and Europe. Exceptional opportunities in North America will also be considered. The firm is actively seeking new investment opportunities.

Sofia Angel Group is a group of angel investors based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The group solely focuses on investing in women-led businesses where women are the founders, or women are on the senior management team. Sofia Angel Group does not have a specific timeframe to make an investment, however would make an allocation by the end of 2013 if a compelling opportunity is identified. The group typically invests around $100,000 per company, however has the ability to invest up to $3 million through co-investments from the group’s members.

Syncona Partners, founded in 2012, is an evergreen investment firm based in London, UK. The firm is an independent subsidiary of the Wellcome Trust who invested the initial £200m capitalization. The firm is mandated to invest in companies with the potential to make major breakthroughs in healthcare. The investment size will usually range from £1M – £20M per company. The firm seeks to create sustainable, profitable businesses, to support them with capital over the long term, for the benefit of patients, and to hold an ownership position to create value for the Wellcome Trust. The firm is actively screening new investment opportunities.

TEXO Ventures is a healthcare venture capital firm that was founded in 29 and is based in Austin Texas. The firm operates as a hybrid of angel and venture capital. The recent fund closed at $15.4 million in 212. The firm focuses on making equity investments in the Medical Technology and Healthcare IT spaces at near commercialization or early commercialization stage. The firm typically invests ranging from $3 million to $5 million into a company. The firm plans to make 2-3 investments over the next 6-9 month. TEXO Ventures is open to consider companies across the US. The firm primarily focuses on healthcare which includes Health IT Technology  enabled Health Services Chronic Disease Management Managed Care and Benefit Design. Although medical devices and functional diagnostics are considered for investment purposes Texo Ventures must see a clear regulatory pathway and obvious synergies with healthcare reform within a company. The firm's current investment portfolio includes companies in the area of medical technology. Within this field they are in areas such as diagnostic and therapeutic radiation devices electro mechanical medical devices re-usable instruments biomaterials and non-active implantable.

Torrey Pines Investment (TPI) was founded in 22 and is based in San Diego CA. The firm has raised two funds and also invests in drug development via a partnership with BioMotiv. TPI makes venture-stage minority equity investments and prefers act as a co-investor but also leads rounds on occasion. The firm invests internationally.

Tutela Industries is a Health IT startup developing patient-centric mHealth solutions to reduce readmissions and significantly enhance patient engagement. Tutela has developed a proprietary and breakthrough low cost, secure framework, TutelaConnect™, for hospital-based clinicians to communicate (voice, video, and data) securely to remote caregivers, both outside and inside the hospital environment. Even though a majority of hospitals have implemented electronic health records for identifiable patient data exchange within the hospital, the secure HIPAA compliant capture and exchange of unstructured patient information outside the hospital remains a challenge, impacting decision making, care coordination and informed consent.

In a recent benchmark data security report, over 90% report that their number one security risk is the unsecure exchange of patient information (phone, text. email) initiated from inside the hospital. 88% of hospitals attribute data breaches to employee negligence and the lack of mobile device security. The cost of these breaches exceeds $5.6 Billion per year, averaging $1M per year per hospital. Most hospitals are still struggling to create a unified communication strategy that meets stringent security, HIPAA compliance requirements while meeting clinical workflow and ease of use demands. Ubiquitous solutions are not cloud-based which makes the use case for patient engagement costly, complicated and difficult to scale. Ultimately, restricting the use to the few and not the many. The worldwide available market for interactive patient engagement solutions exceeds $2.3B and the initial target market, the high-risk Neonatal Intensive Care is estimated at $160 Million. The TutelaConnect™ Platform, can enter the market within current reimbursement and regulatory environments, and is ready to launch H2 2015 through sales to the first  pilot hospitals.

The competitive landscape includes large players in adjacent markets; Cisco/PolyCom for enterprise video solutions; Phillips, medical device manufacturer for remote monitoring, and electronic health record companies, Cerner and EPIC. Small niche players, Mommy’s Ear, Angels Eye and NICView offer limited pieces of a unified patient engagement communication tool.  None to date provide a cloud-based, platform agnostic, secure and HIPAA compliant method that eliminates costly licenses, expensive hardware and ongoing endpoint configuration and IT support requirements.

A strong competive position, highly differentiated use cases, a clear Freedom to Operate and patent potential, as well as, a highly experienced management team, early traction and favourable regulatory trends provide a great opportunity for success.