Uphill Health today announced their €7M Series A round led by Explorer Investments and Redstone, alongside Brighteye, Mustard Seed Maze and including Caixa and Luz Saude.
When we started speaking with Uphill’s founders Eduardo and Duarte in 2020, we were excited by their unique combination of skills as both developers and physicians and their vision for marrying learning and productivity in healthcare. At the time Uphill was primarily an information and simulation platform for doctors, working with the largest hospitals in Portugal to map the best standard of care for common ailments. Their simulation tool then created dummy patients and allowed doctors to interact with these patients in a mock-up of an electronic health record (EHR) system --run tests, recommend treatment, follow up--just as they would in the ordinary course of work, and benchmark their actions against best practices.
The Seed round that Brighteye led alongside Mustard Seed Maze in 2021 gave Uphill sufficient capital to evolve from a simulation tool to a care orchestration platform. By integrating directly with hospitals’ EHR systems, Uphill can now suggest best practices in the flow of work as doctors record symptoms, It also automate some of the follow up, for example by calling patients post-discharge, asking them for relevant information and sharing it with doctors, alongside recommended next steps. New modules also give patients themselves greater transparency into best care practices and allow them to participate more actively in their own recovery. When Uphill launched the orchestration product 18 months ago they found strong product/market fit because they were able to demonstrate real savings alongside improved patient outcomes. Uphill’s hospital revenue climbed dramatically and they began to land customers in Spain and Switzerland as the benefits of the product were proven out.
Uphill is a clear incarnation of Brighteye’s thesis that just-in-time learning which marries training and productivity can generate outsize growth by boosting knowledge retention (health practitioners are more likely to remember guidance if they are able to use it right away) and clearly demonstrated ROI (quicker recovery times, better outcomes, less physician admin time) making it easier for organizations to justify the cost. We are delighted to continue accompanying them in their next phase of growth as they look to expand beyond Iberia and bring the benefits of Uphill to other parts of Europe.
