Wound care management startup Swift Medical has raised $43.9 million CAD ($35 million USD) as it looks to increase its customer base in North America.
The all-equity round was led by California-based Virgo Investment Group through one of its managed investment funds. DCVC (Data Collective), which led Swift’s Series A round, also participated in the latest round, alongside BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Venture Fund. Other participating investors include Claritas Capital, Chrysalis Ventures, Pender Ventures, and Export Development Canada.
“Wound care is a space that has been void of innovation for so long.”
Swift plans to use the capital to expand its customer base as it addresses what the startup sees as a massive wound care market that is ripe for technology disruption.
Swift has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered remote wound care monitoring solution providing wound care visualization and touchless 3D measurement through its Swift Skin and Wound software. Swift touts its offering as a way to help organizations improve and streamline clinical and economic outcomes. It helps with image capture, automatic risk scoring, scheduling, and claims submission.
The startup was founded in 2015 by CEO Carlo Perez and Sheila Wang, who serves as Swift’s chief medical officer. Earlier this year, Wang won a Governor General’s Innovation Award for her part in creating Swift’s technology.
Swift claims that, to date, its technology has been adopted by over 4,000 healthcare organizations across all 50 states. The company also claims to have 300 percent year-over-year growth “in every new market it has entered over the past three years.”
Reports show wound care is an expensive part of healthcare systems, with some calling it a silent epidemic. According to Swift, over 30 percent of healthcare beds in the United States are occupied by patients with wounds, costing Medicare nearly $100 billion annually.
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“Wound care is a space that has been void of innovation for so long,” said Pooja Goel, managing director at Virgo. “A comprehensive approach to identification and treatment is needed to combat this silent epidemic.”
“Wound care is a massive clinical and financial challenge at every bedside, which has been largely ignored by the technology industry,” said Perez. “Through COVID-19, health systems have been waking up to the need to equip their clinicians with empathic technology that gives them the knowledge and confidence to provide world-class wound care for even their most complex, bedridden patients.”
In response to COVID-19, Swift led the creation of a mobile app to capture and share high-precision wound images from home. The startup received $2.5 million from the Digital Technology Supercluster for the project. It was stated at the time that the project would help 1,000 wound patients in Ontario and Québec by the summer.
