Australian telehealth software leader Coviu

Australia's leading telehealth solution, Coviu, today announced that it has concluded a A$6 million investment round which sees venture capital firms Equity Venture Partners and Giant Leap Fund join Main Sequence Ventures and medical investment group Medical Angels investing in Coviu’s vision for the future of healthcare.

The Company has seen a period of unprecedented growth over the last 12 months and was pleased to receive backing from new investors Giant Leap Fund, as part of its impact investment strategy, and Equity Venture Partners (EVP), who adds additional expertise in helping Coviu further its growth ambitions with EVP’s pedigree in scaling global SaaS businesses.

The global pandemic has served as a catalyst for the adoption of telehealth technology as healthcare practices around the world adjusted to lockdowns and social distancing measures. By adopting the latest in telehealth innovation and digital tools, Australia’s medical industry was able to quickly adapt and keep providing services to those in need.

Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, CEO and Director of Coviu said the lasting impact that 2020 has had on the medical profession in Australia and across the world cannot be understated. 

“The last 12 months have been incredibly tough for everyone, but through our efforts in telehealth, we helped meet the challenges the pandemic brought to Australia. We now have the opportunity to make a real lasting difference for our healthcare industry,” she said.

“We experienced the type of adoption in weeks that would have taken years in normal times. We were built from the ground for the medical profession and for scalability. Telehealth is here to stay, what’s at stake is how much of an impact it will make and how quickly. We’ve only seen the beginning of what digital technology can do for improving the convenient and universal access to healthcare. The future of healthcare will be centred around patient needs with healthtech at their fingertips.”

Coviu is fuelling this digital transformation of healthcare, one that is pivotal to the future provision of healthcare both in Australia and across the developed world. With a pandemic at hand, aging populations and increasing chronic illnesses, there is a pressing need to make healthcare more efficient, accessible and affordable. Telehealth is the only logical answer to the global trend of this demand on healthcare providers.

Dr Mian Bi, Lead Investor, Australian Medical Angels said: “This is a pivotal moment for our industry. Telehealth is a vital part of how we as a profession will meet the challenges of an aging population and potential future pandemics. As doctors we have a simple choice: get involved with telehealth leaders like Coviu and help shape them to our needs, or put up with years of iteration as tech specialists try to guess what those needs will be. Coviu is one of the few available telehealth platforms that puts primary care and privacy front and centre. We’re confident it will be the platform of choice for doctors as they begin to integrate digital healthcare tools into everything they do.” 

Coviu’s international growth will begin with a planned expansion into the US market by the close of 2020, with Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) scheduled for 2021. As a built-for-purpose platform, Coviu has a number of advantages over standard business and consumer communication tools such as Zoom and Google Meet. Coviu enables integration of digital tools such as PhysioROM and ResApp which use machine learning to help accurately diagnose and treat issues when paired with specialist knowledge and these tools can only be conveniently utilised in a digital environment.

Equity Venture Partners Investment Director Daniel Szekely has joined Coviu’s board as a non-executive director.

Commenting on the announcement, Daniel Szekely at EVP said: “The call-to-market is obvious in the case of Coviu. It is neither practical nor effective to provide healthcare over Facetime. If healthcare is to be delivered efficiently, telehealth needs to be available and if health practitioners are going to operate in a digital environment, they need the tools to be able to do so effectively. Patients and practitioners have now seen the benefits of remote health and Coviu has created a secure and functional environment to allow this to continue to proliferate.”

Charlie Macdonald, Associate at Giant Leap Fund said: “Coviu makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to receive high quality healthcare, which is a game-changer for improving the wellbeing of critically under-served rural and remote communities. More broadly, they are pioneering the shift to a more efficient, digitally-enabled healthcare model that's been crucial to delivering care in a socially distant world and will continue to improve population health long after the COVID-19 pandemic. Silvia and Nathan are visionary inventors driven by a mission to enable universal healthcare access and we look forward to working with them to make it a reality.”

Phil Morle, Partner at Main Sequence Ventures said: "Coviu has been preparing for this moment for 5 years and brilliantly enabled a transition of Australian healthcare 'overnight' into a powerful, easy to use telehealth platform. We believe that Coviu will continue to expand its position as a vital piece of healthcare infrastructure.”

Coviu recently made the #2 on Deloitte’s list of 50 fastest growing companies of 2020, with 11,553% growth this year.