Cambridge: PneumaCare completes new financing round

Cambridge Enterprise portfolio company PneumaCare Limited has completed a successful investment round of £2 million, led by new investor Sud Investments, together with a group of existing investors including Cambridge Enterprise, Cambridge Capital Group and members of the Cambridge Angels group.

“This funding, and the recent CE mark approval for our PneumaScan product, puts PneumaCare in a strong position to address the needs of the spirometry and respiratory illness market,” said Ward Hills, CEO of PneumaCare. “It will enable us to accelerate the commercial development of the PneumaScan product family, for the benefit of the growing numbers of patients.”

PneumaCare has worked closely with another of its investors, Plextek Ltd, to use 3D motion capture technology, originally developed for the computer game and film industries, in its lead product.

PneumaScan™ uses light to measure and monitor how deeply and how quickly a patient is breathing, and what muscle groups are being used. It achieves the same results as the traditional spirometer but has several advantages, the crucial one being that no physical contact is necessary. With the patient lying, sitting or standing, a small video projector casts a checkerboard pattern onto their chest and abdomen. As the patient breathes in and out, their chest rises and falls and the projected pattern changes shape. Cameras record the changing images and feed them to a computer, where they combine to give a 3D reconstruction of the chest. PneumaScan’s algorithms analyse the visual reference points of the checkerboard pattern, and show changes in the volume of the patient’s chest.

“This non-invasive technology, which has been validated against clinical spirometry, has great potential for a range of specialties, including critical care, anaesthetics and the emergency department,” explains Dr Richard Iles, Founder and Chief Medical Officer of PneumaCare. “But it will be particularly valuable in the clinic for patients under the age of six with problems like cystic fibrosis and asthma, and other patients who cannot use a spirometer. In addition, many adult lung conditions like COPD may begin in early childhood, so if PneumaScan makes it possible for us to identify them earlier, we will be able to start treatment earlier.”

Clinical and commercial use of PneumaScan has begun at Papworth and Addenbrooke’s Hospitals in Cambridge, the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, and Sheffield Children’s Hospital. Dr Bill Mason, Chairman of PneumaCare, said “We are delighted to have achieved this significant financing for the company which will enable us to move forward in commercialisation of our PneumaScan product in Europe, and to achieve regulatory approval in the USA and elsewhere in the world. The revolutionary and disruptive technology offered by PneumaCare will enable clinicians worldwide to assess a much wider group of patients with breathing difficulties, and also explore potential applications in critical care and home monitoring. We are especially pleased to welcome the lead investor on this round, Sud Investments.”