SERG Technologies

Revolutionising the entire ecosystem of care for neurodegenerative movement disorders (NDMDs), starting with Parkinson's

Summary

Parkinson’s is a heterogenous disease. Currently there is no effective way to monitor the totality of its symptoms which leads to ineffective management & treatment of a disease that is incurable, impacting 10Mn people globally. SERG’s connected platform enables remote, on-demand assessment of all Parkinsonian symptoms, delivering actionable insights that enable treatment optimisation & adherence, promoting lifestyle changes, improving clinical & financial outcomes, and increasing patient mobility & independence.

SERG’s mission is to revolutionise the entire Parkinson's disease care ecosystem by driving the digital transition to remote monitoring and management solutions. SERG Technologies want to create a world where people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases and movement disorders use their technology in their everyday lives to beat the disease and regain independence.

Seeking to raise £1,000,000 for an 18-month runway, of which £500,000 is committed, including £250k from Imperial.

Investment Interview

Explain what your venture does.

Parkinson’s is a heterogenous disease. Currently there is no effective way to monitor the totality of its symptoms which leads to ineffective management & treatment of a disease that is incurable impacting 10Mn people globally. SERG’s connected platform enables remote, on-demand assessment of all Parkinsonian symptoms, delivering actionable insights that enable treatment optimisation & adherence, promoting lifestyle changes, improving clinical & financial outcomes, and increasing patient mobility & independence.

What stage is your business?

We have a product-prototype that has been tested with more than 70 Parkinson’s patients in-clinic and at-home (daily at-home tests over a period of 2 weeks, excluding weekends). The next phase of trials will commence in June 2021 and will include clinical trials with 80 patients and beta tests with 100 users.

Describe your advisers.

Dr Yen Tai. Yen is Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London and a consultant neurologist at Charing Cross Hospital, where he runs a specialist movement disorders and Parkinson’s disease clinic. He has more than 20 years’ experience in neurological disorders and he is the author of more than 50 publications in the field. Yen advises on people and patient involvement, on clinical and patient testing of the diagnostic system, and on its medical adaptation.

Dr Fahd Baig. Fahd is a visiting Movement Disorder Research Clinical Fellow at St George’s University London. He hold a Dphil from the University of Oxford (thesis on Clinical and Biochemical Features of Parkinson’s Disease) and he is (Co)-author of more than 19 scientific publications in peer-reviewed Journals focusing on Parkinson’s disease.

Professor Dario Farina. Dario is Full Professor and Chair in Neurorehabilitation Engineering at the Department of Bioengineering of Imperial College London, and a world-leader in neurorehabilitation technology and neural control of movement. He has been the recipient of the 2010 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Early Career Achievement Award, as well as served as the President of the International Society of Electrophysiology and Kinesiology, and a board member of CTRL-labs.

Ms Maria Arvanitidou. Scientist turned health economist, product, strategy & growth leader in the corporate and start-up world. Maria is a seasoned executive in all aspects of health systems and has a strong network within the global healthcare innovation space. She has built and led multidisciplinary teams to craft organic and inorganic growth strategies, create and bring data and tech-enabled solutions to market at UnitedHealth Group, Optum, and Monitor Deloitte. Maria is a PharmD and holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science and from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Give an overview of your startup's financing history.

Pre-seed round: £450,000 against 25% equity, led by Velocity.Partners VC (Greece) and business angels from the UK and Japan. Grants: £75k from MedTech SuperConnector, £75k from Innovate UK and £1Mn from NiHR (no dilution).

Explain the ownership structure of your company.

A detailed cap-table is included in the dataroom. 54.5% of the Company is owned by its funders: Dr Ravi Vaidyanathan, Dr Samuel Wilson, Mr Alex Lewis and Dr Christos Kapatos. 6.5% of the Company is owned by Imperial College Innovations. 25% of the Company is owned by: Velocity.Partners VC & business angels from the UK and Japan. 15% SOP.

How many employees do you have?

SERG Technologies has 4 full time and 2 part time employees:

Full time: Dr Christos Kapatos-CEO, Dr Samuel Wilson-CTIO, Dr Thomas Watts- Diagnostics Engineer, Mr Kostas Dalakas-Hardware Engineer.

Part time: Mr Panipat Wattanasiri-Bionics engineer, Ms Agnes Motsi-Specialist NHS nurse.

Post investment we will expand the Team adding 1 C-level management member, 4 full time engineers, and 1 patient trials RA. A full personnel plan is included in the budget document which can be found in our dataroom.

Please provide the name of a lawyer, who will represent you for the upcoming investment round.

KeyStone Law.

How much money are you seeking to raise in the current round?

£1,000,000.

Do you have any existing commitments to the current round?

ICIF: £250,000 Existing investors: £250,000.

Explain why you are raising finance.

We are raising £1Mn for an 18-month runway to translate in-patient studies of our first-of-its-kind Parkinsonian symptoms monitoring & management connected platform, run beta tests with more than 100 users, file for MHRA & UKCA regulatory approval in the UK and expand our Team, before raising funding to get to the market.

Key activities:

• Trials
  • Clinical trial for continuous monitoring and disease management optimisation (80 patients),
  • Beta test with 100 users
• Product
  • Gen 3 of our connected platform
• Market
  • In-depth competitors’ analysis, including testing of competitors’ devices,
  • Technology integration & Market entry plan,
  • Economic impact analysis to get started on evidence portfolio for market access
• Business
  • Hire a business executive at C-level,
  • Engage with strategic partners (Pharma, healthcare, digital platform providers)
• Costs’ allocation: Team: £888,561, COGS: £124,000, OPEX : £115,800, BD: £28,800, R&D: £266,000
• Detailed milestones and budget can be found in our dataroom.

Please explain the history of your venture.

SERG technologies is an Imperial College spin-out company. The pioneering, hybrid MMG-MARG technology that SERG Technologies uses today was invented by Dr Ravi Vaidyanathan and developed by Dr Samuel Wilson at the Biomechatronics Lab of Imperial College London. The Company closed its previous financial round in December 2019, securing £450k in investment against equity.

Within the last 16 months we have achieved the following:

• June 2020: SERG awarded the Innovate UK Business-Led response to COVID-19 £75k award.
• June 2020: SERG collaborates with Charing Cross Hospital London and St. George’s Hospitals, London – two of the largest NDMD hospitals in the UK.
• July 2020: The business files a new patent application for a focused HD monitoring system, that significantly enhances the capabilities of our monitoring technology.
• July 2020: The company strengthens their scientific team with Professor Dario Farina, Chair in Neurorehabilitation Engineering at the Department of Bioengineering, ICL, and ex board member of CTRL-labs, who will lead SERG’s digital therapeutics solution.
• September 2020: SERG deploys four working telemedicine prototypes and gets ready to test 20 patients across Europe (in the UK and Greece).
• October 2020: SERG’s NuRO platform is launched – this is the first sensor-connected digital health platform that provides closed- loop, early diagnosis, continuous and passive monitoring and treatment of motor symptoms, completely revolutionising the entire NDMD care ecosystem, starting with Parkinson’s.
• November 2020: SERG starts the first phase of its patient trials with a series of 2-week long at-home tests aiming to test 20 people with Parkinson’s by March 2021.
• December 2020: The business files a new patent application for a revolutionary surface micro-stimulation system, taking our technology beyond diagnostics and into supportive treatment.
• December 2020: SERG wins a £1m i4i product development award from the NiHR for the company’s revolutionary, non-pharma, non-invasive treatment solution.
• January 2021: 10 fully functional remote monitoring prototype systems are assembled and 35 people with Parkinson's are added in the trials’ pipeline, to be tested by June 2021.
• March 2021: The Company signs a contract with the Secretary of healthcare and social care for the £1Mn NiHR i4i PDA.

In these 16 months we have also expanded our Team to 6 strong, and talked with patents, clinicians and stakeholders in the field about their needs and wants, and put together a robust moving-forward/business development plan.

Please explain the longer term, future vision for the Company

Our mission is to revolutionise the entire Parkinson's disease care ecosystem by driving the digital transition to remote monitoring and management solutions. We want to create a world where people suffering from neurodegenerative diseases and movement disorders use our technology in their everyday lives to beat the disease and regain independence.

Explain the core technologies and/or service propositions of your venture.

SERG’s PD-Track is a step-change in the industry. It is the only remote assessment solution for Parkinson’s that monitors all cardinal symptoms (including muscle rigidity) and even their most minute fluctuations at the point of origin, capturing the complete patient phenotype, on- demand, continuously, and in real-time. Our connected platform providing patients, clinicians and health systems with the necessary data and insights to close the loop between monitoring, management and treatment of the disease, allowing for remote, data-driven, patient-specific care planning, optimising treatment without a hospital visit. Remote monitoring of Parkinsonian symptoms can help clinicians make better and faster decisions about a patient's medication or care plan that can further reduce symptoms, complications and need for urgent care, social care and hospitalisations, allowing patients living with Parkinson's to have a better quality of life and making the system that cares for them more efficient. SERG’s NuRO significantly reduces healthcare costs and radically improve the quality of life and care pathway experience for millions of people worldwide, as well as it opens up opportunities for novel, more personalised drug delivery systems and treatments by supplying innovators with the necessary data to develop them.

Does your commercial strategy rely on intellectual property assets?

We have an exclusive IP license agreement with Imperial Innovations which covers patent- family: US103,350,80, UK2010270.3 (issued), WO15063520, EP3065628A1, (pending).

Within 2020 we have also filed 2 new patents, and we are working with Imperial Innovations in order to license this IP too.

New IP generated within 2020:

• 3D Variable Focusing MMG/MARG/Force Sensor Technology; UK2010270.3
• MMG/ES Closed-loop Brain Plasticity Stimulation PD Symptoms Treatment System; UK2019867.7.

What commercial progress have you made?

SERG has active partnerships with:

• Imperial College London and St George's University London,
• Charing Cross Hospital & St George's Hospital in London (testing PD patients and working with clinicians), and
• Parkinson's UK & The National Tremor Foundation (NTF).

We are seeking new strategic partnerships with: Pharma companies (with primary targets being the CPP Consortium Pharma Companies), the Michael J Fox Foundation, Parkinson's organisations and patient groups, in order to run clinical trials, fast-track our regulatory pathway and establish a distribution network.

In March we participated in SONY’s bootcamp, exploring possible partnerships with SONY’s digital health platform mSafety.