Patients Know Best secures £6m to scale personal health record

Patients Know Best (PKB) has secured £6 million in funding to scale its personal health record (PHR) platform in the UK and expand internationally.

The platform is reported to be the largest of its kind in the world, integrating data feeds from all of England’s GPs and 25% of UK hospitals.

Designed to organise data around the individual, the PHR provides patients with a unified record to access and use their health information. It is integrated with the NHS App and has more than 4.7 million registered patients and releases more than 20 million test results every month.

Following the UK government’s announcement to digitise all NHS patient records over the next decade, PKB will use the funds to further scale its offering in the UK and abroad.

Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, chief executive and founder at Patients Know Best, said: “We recognised the suboptimal care that patients everywhere receive due to fractured patient information and so we developed a single, integrated PHR.

“While our software has already empowered patients across the nation, this funding will enable us to bolster our proposition even further, in support of the UK government’s plan for NHS digitalisation, and to bring this to more countries more quickly – ultimately, delivering on our core mission of ensuring better care for all.”

The £6m loan has come from Growth Lending, a specialist provider of capital for innovative, fast-growing SMEs.

Kimberly Martin, managing director at Growth Lending, said: “We are absolutely delighted to be supporting Mohammad, Ian and the whole team at Patients Know Best through the next stage of their exciting growth journey.

“The recent news around the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS and the focus on digitalisation of patient records, not only to provide better levels of care for patients but drive efficiency within health organisations, means this is a crucial time for Patients Know Best.

“We are also grateful to Fuse Capital Group for its role in this transaction – our strong and established relationship enables a thorough understanding of the Growth Lending proposition and how we can best support exceptional businesses such as Patients Know Best.”

The government’s 10 year health plan is expected to be published in spring 2025 and will be underlined by three big shifts in healthcare – hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.

An online engagement platform was launched for members of the public, NHS staff and experts in October 2024 to share their ideas to shape the forthcoming plan.

It was announced that Ming Tang, chief data and analytics officer for NHS England, and Dr Tim Ferris, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, will lead the data and technology enabling working group for its 10 year health plan.

Dr Charlotte Refsum, director of health policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), will also be part of the group.