Date: 2014-08-20
Type of information: Grant
Company: SimPrints (UK)
Investors: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (USA) ARM Ltd (UK)
Amount: £ 0.5 million (€0.62 million)
Funding type: grant
Planned used: The funding will be used to develop a fingerprint scanner being hailed as a ‘game-changer’ in global healthcare. SimPrints biometric fingerprint scanner is designed to transform access to health records – solving a long-standing problem in the delivery of mobile services in healthcare in developing regions. Community health workers are often unable to carry out the four antenatal visits recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) due to challenges in patient identification, access to health records and visit verification. SimPrints’ device will accurately connect people to their digital records via a simple fingerprint scan. The light-weight, durable and cost-effective portable biometric scanner and software integrates with any mobile health (mHealth) application to allow for real-time identification and access to patient records via fingerprint identification. The scanner will tackle current problems like misidentification caused by common community names or unknown dates-of-birth and the limitations of paper-based health records - prone to loss or damage and often difficult to access. The SimPrints team participated in Accelerate Cambridge, an early stage support programme for new ventures run by the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. The company will now, in partnership with the Johns Hopkins University Global mHealth Initiative and with BRAC, the world\'s largest NGO, use the seed funding to optimise their system and conduct a pilot study in Bangladesh.
Others: * On August 20, 2014, Cambridge tech start-up SimPrints has announced that it has secured £500,000 in funding to develop a fingerprint scanner being hailed as a ‘game-changer’ in global healthcare. A £250,000 grant to SimPrints from the Saving Lives at Birth Grand Challenge, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will be fully matched by Cambridge’s ARM Ltd., whose technology is used in over 95% of the world\'s mobile phones. In the Saving Lives challenge, funding awards go to the most promising innovations to combat maternal and neonatal mortality in the developing world.
Therapeutic area: Technology - Services
