Global Health player, Bupa joins forces with start-up Vigil

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Global Healthcare player, Bupa joins forces with start-up Vigil

Leading healthcare provider Bupa has joined forces with mHealth start-up Vigil Monitoring and Spark Ventures to develop innovative solutions that will help address the growing challenges of age care and health care.

Bupa is an acknowledged global health care leader. Spark Ventures, the incubator and accelerator arm of Spark New Zealand, offers significant technology capability and market reach. Vigil Monitoring is developing services to improve health outcomes and reduce health-care costs through digital technologies.

Vigil Chairman Keith Oliver says that the addition of Bupa will help Vigil better respond to the growing challenge affordable healthcare delivery as populations change across the world.

“We need new health delivery models using digital technologies to address worsening macro health-trends and help reduce health-care costs. Technology is the key to unlocking new models of care. The potential benefits to New Zealanders are enormous.”

The numbers don’t lie. Statistics New Zealand projects the population aged 65 and over to grow to over 1,000,000 by 2031. By 2051, around 1.18 million people are expected to be aged 65 and over in New Zealand. The consequential pressure on health services will be profound unless we change the way we deliver care.

”There’s no denying the fact that the cost of healthcare and especially age care services is rapidly becoming unaffordable in the developed world. We need to drive cost out of delivery and improve efficiency, all the while focussing on the needs of people who are living longer.”

Sir Ray Avery, Vigil Founder and board member says “ Vigil mHealth is a great example of applied innovative Kiwi technology in the global healthcare arena. It heralds a new era in the care of our aging population allowing them to live independently in the community with Vigil mHealth watching over their wellbeing”.

Bupa plans to partner with Vigil and invest $5 million in exchange for a 25 per cent stake in the business.

MD of Bupa Care Services NZ Grainne Moss says Bupa “was attracted to Vigil because of its ability to think innovatively and challenge many of the assumptions on how to best serve the changing face of health care.”

Bupa wasn't “only providing investment for the start-up, but will use Vigil’s lean canvas and customer validation models to develop innovative offerings for our customers across NZ, Australia and globally”.

Spark Ventures CEO Rod Snodgrass agrees that this opportunity was too good to pass up.

“The demand for smarter digital health solutions will only grow as the population ages. Vigil offers medical monitoring solutions using digital technologies with many applications and with global potential. The addition of the global muscle and capability of Bupa will help realise that.”

ENDS

ABOUT VIGIL MONITORING

Vigil Monitoring is using technology to change the way we care for people. Established in 2012 to address the increased burden on healthcare systems, Vigil design, develop, integrate and distribute health, wellness and environmental monitoring solutions that support people living well.

Winners of the Callaghan Innovation Hi-Tech Pre-Commercialisation Company of the Year 2014, Vigil was founded in 2012 by scientist, inventor and social entrepreneur, Sir Ray Avery and a group of technology entrepreneurs led by Alan Brannigan.

St John, seeing the potential of Vigil’s offering became a channel partner in 2013 to explore the potential within their medical alarm business.

Vigil received a development grant from Callaghan Innovation in 2013 to continue its initial development and later that year Spark New Zealand backed the company with a $5M investment.

Vigil has developed a consumer centric process to rapidly identify, develop and implement solutions that solve health problems. This is based on a number of methodologies including those from the “lean start up” and traditional healthcare project management.

Its board, consisting of Keith Oliver (Chair), Sir Ray Avery, Rod Snodgrass (Spark) and CEO Alan Brannigan was further strengthened earlier this year with the appointment of the ex CEO of Summerset Retirement Villages and past president of the NZ Retirement Village Association, Norah Barlow and American based global expert and thought leader on Digital Health, Chris Wasden, as an advisor.

ABOUT BUPA

Bupa’s purpose is longer, healthier, happier lives. A leading healthcare group, Bupa New Zealand have three aged care businesses; rest homes and hospitals; retirement villages and personal medical alarms plus a brain rehabilitation business, looking after more than 16,000 New Zealanders.

Across Australia we provide health insurance and aged care services, as well as complementary healthcare services through Bupa Health Dialog, Bupa Wellness, Bupa Optical, Bupa Medical Visa Services and Dental Corporation. Bupa focuses on providing sustainable healthcare solutions that represent real value, and on leading the industry in the promotion of preventive health and wellness.

Bupa’s Australian and New Zealand businesses are part of the international Bupa Group, which cares for more than 22 million people in over 190 countries.

ABOUT SPARK VENTURES

Spark Ventures is a dedicated growth business headed up by Rod Snodgrass, previously the Chief Product Officer at Telecom.

Its ambition is to deliver new and connected digital experiences that customers love. The unit will seek to build new businesses around new and connected digital experiences, generating new revenue streams and commercial returns from them.

From a market perspective it focuses principally on mass-market opportunities, ideally with the ability to leverage Spark New Zealand’s existing assets and infrastructure to competitive advantage.

It has established a growth agenda comprising of a portfolio of growth initiatives. It has five main portfolio areas of current focus;

• Connectivity (mobile, broadband, Wi-Fi)

• Commerce (m-Wallet, m-Payments, m-Advertising)

• Data & Applications (Smart Data, Applications enablement)

• Verticals (Health, Education, Rural for example)

• Content (Digital Media, Cloud, CDNs)

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