A UK healthtech startup which has built AI-powered tech that it says reduces the test time for a lung disease that impacts nearly two million people in the UK from an hour to five minutes has raised $19m in a funding round.
Called TidalSense, the startup is looking to transform respiratory diagnosis, starting with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).
COPD is a chronic lung disease affecting nearly two million people in the UK. The disease, which causes breathing difficulties, is the UK’s third biggest cause of death, killing around 30,000 people a year and costing the NHS £1.9 billion annually.
The funding round in the startup includes investment from new investor Cross-Border Impact Ventures, the Canadian healthtech impact fund, and returning investors BGF, Airstream Capital and Foresight Group. In total, TidalSense, founded in 2013, has raised $40m, including $11m of grant funding.
It says it will use the funding to speed up the rollout of the test across the NHS, where it launched last year, and across Europe, as well as look to enter the US market.
The test, called N-Tidal Diagnose, requires patients to breathe normally into a handheld device for 75 seconds, capturing a CO₂ waveform — a capnogram — of the kind traditionally used in critical care, which a set of AI models then analyses to detect COPD.
TidalSense says its AI models have been trained on more than 2.5m patient breaths. The Cambridge-based startup says any healthcare professional can be trained to use the device in 10 minutes, with no specialist qualifications required.
Tests, it says, can be carried out on average in under five minutes. It claims that by using its device, clinicians can see four to six patients an hour, compared to roughly one an hour with traditional spirometry, the most common breathing test.
The startup is led by doctor Ameera Patel, CEO, whose own struggles and long wait to obtain an asthma diagnosis drove her to build the tech.
Patel, CEO of TidalSense, said: “We’re still diagnosing in the 21st century with a test invented in the 1800s, and one that needs specialist equipment and training most of the world doesn’t have access to. Lower-income and minority communities pay the price for that first. That’s the gap we want to close at TidalSense, and the NHS is the first place we’re doing it.”
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