Over the next few weeks we’ll be showcasing the winners of our Elevator Pitch LIVE 2016 competition.
This week, we’re shining the light on our HealthTech Startup of the Year: Echo.
Over 200 companies applied for the competition, a number that was then whittled down to 25 finalists across the following categories: Cybersecurity, FinTech, HealthTech, PropTech and AdTech/MarTech.
On a live pitching day, a panel of five judges cast their votes to decide on one winner in each category.
Watch the short video to find our more about Echo, where the idea come from, what traction it has gained to date and what it has planned for the future.
Q: Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a bit about Echo?
Echo is basically an app to manage your repeat prescriptions on your smartphone. It’s super simple to use – you download the app, you find the medications that you take, we get in touch with your NHS GP to make sure you’re authorised to take those medications and once the prescription comes back, we pick-and-pack the medications and send them out to the user. The really cool bit is the app tells the user when to take their medications and also when they’re about to run out.
Q: So where did the idea come from?
I have a co-founder running the business, Steven, and we met a couple of years back, and we started talking about condition management because both Steven and myself take repeat prescriptions, and we wanted to find a way to better manage our conditions in the longer-term and what that basically means is having a better way to order your prescriptions and to get reminded when to take your medications as well. We set up Echo to fix those two problems effectively.
Q: What kind of traction has Echo gained so far?
We’ve had two fundraisers: at the last one we raised £1.8m from three leading European investors, LocalGlobe, Global Founders Capital and Rocket Internet, and they’ve been supporting us throughout the journey in growing the business. We’ve now got a few thousand users on the platform, most of whom are extremely happy with the service and if you look at our Twitter feed you’ll see some of the feedback that we’ve been receiving on what we’ve been doing.
Q: What are your plans for the rest of 2017?
For the rest of 2017 we’ve got an Android app coming out very soon. We’ve got a new product coming out in the next few weeks as well and that’s going to have functionality to change the time of when your notifications fire and also some improved medication adherence functionality as well. Then we’ve got a new version of the app coming out later on this year, but that’s going to be a bit more of a surprise, so you’ll have to wait and see what comes out.