Siilo, the secure collaboration app for healthcare workers, has announced a raise of €9.5 milliion in Series A funding. 

European digital health VC Heal Capital is at the forefront of the investment, backed by Germany’s private health insurers. Also participating in the round are Philips Health Technology Venture Fund and current investor EQT Ventures. 

WHAT IT DOES 

Founded in 2016 by former surgery resident Joost Bruggeman, who recently contributed a blog, and Arvind Rao, Siilo provides a free messenger app for individuals and teams to coordinate patient care, expand their professional network, and reduce time making decisions by exchanging best practices.

It also offers Siilo Connect – a subscription service for hospitals, care organisations, and medical associations which allows administrators to facilitate staff-wide collaboration on patient cases, discuss internal policies, and consult with external specialists, while maintaining organisational compliance. Users include East Lancashire Hospitals NHS trust, Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam and Berlin-based Charité.

The Dutch startup also recently launched a free COVID-19 crisis management offering and saw 50% growth in active members of its messaging app during the pandemic.

WHAT IT’S FOR 

With the investment, Siilo says it will continue to expand its product offering to better support case-based collaboration and knowledge-sharing on its platform, as well as increase network growth across Europe, specifically across the UK and Ireland as well as, DACH, BENELUX. The company will also be hiring talent in areas such as product development and customer success. 

MARKET SNAPSHOT 

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a surge in demand for clinical communication tools, as healthcare professionals turn to technology to improve collaboration. Microsoft recently announced a handful of new capabilities to improve communications among care teams on its Microsoft 365 platform, which aim to reduce the use of insecure chat apps or SMS for delivering sensitive health information. 

ON THE RECORD 

Bruggeman said: “We believe there is a massive opportunity for healthcare to operate as a collaborative network. We started by connecting professionals treating individual patients, but during the acute phase of the pandemic, we've also been able to play a critical role in connecting different levels of healthcare to facilitate faster decision-making and information-sharing.”

Dr Christian Weiss, general partner at Heal Capital, said: “Siilo has a strong vision in making healthcare professionals fall in love with their intuitive solution to promote it in a bottom-up approach.”

Ashley Lundström from EQT Ventures, said: "Siilo's making serious progress cracking one of the hardest nuts in healthcare: getting great tech into the hands of healthcare professionals.”

Rich Wilmot, head of Philips Health Technology Ventures, said: “Digital technologies like Siilo can pave the way for secure, convenient exchanges of knowledge, and help drive the digital transformation in healthcare.”