North west healthtech company secures pre-seed round led by Angel Academe, with backing from SyndicateRoom, QUBIS, The Amp Syndicate and international angels, alongside new non-dilutive funding to progress aflo® towards regulatory clearance and commercialisation.
aflo® provides the objective data layer currently missing from asthma care, assessing how patients actually use and deliver their inhaled medication to help clinicians better understand why asthma remains uncontrolled.
The round was led by Angel Academe EIS Fund I, with significant new investment from SyndicateRoom and QUBIS, alongside angel investors from the UK, US and Europe.
The £1.2M in new funding combines substantial new equity investment with additional non-dilutive grant funding, providing Respiratory Analytics with the resources to deliver its next stage of growth. The funding will support FDA clearance, further clinical studies, team expansion, health-economic evidence generation and entry into its first commercial asthma markets.
Respiratory Analytics, led by CEO and co-founder Dr Susan Kelly, is developing aflo® to address a persistent problem in asthma care: clinicians often have no objective way of knowing whether patients are using their inhaled medicines correctly or how effectively the medication is being delivered. aflo® objectively measures inhaler technique and adherence, providing information that can help clinicians understand why a patient's asthma remains uncontrolled and support more personalised management.
The fundraising follows a series of major clinical and development milestones for the company.
Respiratory Analytics previously completed a UK randomised controlled trial involving adults and children with uncontrolled asthma, which demonstrated improvements in inhaler technique, asthma control and quality of life, together with reductions in reliever medication and healthcare use.
In July, the company also completed its first US paediatric study, working with Boston Children's Hospital and a team led by Professor Wanda Phipatanakul in children and young people with severe asthma.
Dr Susan Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Respiratory Analytics, said:
“Closing this investment round is an important milestone for Respiratory Analytics and gives us the resources to turn the clinical and technical progress we have made into the next stage of the company's growth.
Our focus has always been on solving a very practical problem in respiratory medicine — giving patients and clinicians objective evidence of how inhaled medicines are actually being used. We now have strong UK clinical evidence behind aflo®, growing evidence from the US and an exceptional group of investors supporting us. The next phase is about growing our team, regulatory clearances, further clinical validation and taking the technology into its first markets.
Dr Kelly added:
“We're particularly pleased to have brought together strong institutional funding and investors from Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Europe and the US. Their backing reflects the progress the team has made and the scale of the opportunity to improve respiratory care internationally.”
