• Little Journey

  Participated · Series A · Nov 2024

  Little Journey offers a personalised platform that prepares and supports children and their families through medical journeys, combining evidence-based practices with clinician and young-people input. The app is used in over 100 hospitals across 11 countries, has localised content in 20 languages, and has supported thousands of young patients. The platform covers support for 12 procedures (including MRI, mental health and neurodevelopment assessment, and blood tests), reports a 25% adoption rate within the NHS, and a 97% family satisfaction rate. Little Journey partners with global pharmaceutical companies and CROs to improve paediatric clinical trial recruitment, adherence, and completion. Future plans include scaling globally with a focus on the US, enhancing scalable content, interoperability, and data-collection capabilities, and improving app accessibility for children with disabilities. The company aims to mature its systems and product security to support broader global adoption. Little Journey provides an app designed to help children reduce hospital anxiety through engaging, interactive, age-appropriate content. The app aims to psychologically prepare and support families throughout healthcare interactions. The company also offers a web portal for healthcare staff to configure app content, build virtual patient pathways, and edit key information in near real time. Little Journey intends to use the €2.8m funding to expand internationally and further develop the product. The round was led by Octopus Ventures. The company was founded by Dr Chris Evans and Sophie Copley and is based in London, UK. Little Journey builds a mobile app to help children prepare for surgery by providing virtual tours of hospitals, interactive animations explaining each stage, games, relaxation guides and resources for parents. The platform has been shown to reduce anxiety by 30% in high-risk patients such as those with autism or ADHD, cut same-day operation cancellations by 42%, and improve recovery times by 30%. It is currently used in over 50 hospitals worldwide and recently won a contract with a large clinical research organisation to support participants in an international paediatric trial. The Leeds-based company was launched by Dr Chris Evans, an anaesthetist, together with product designer Sophie Copley; Dr Evans serves as CEO. The new funding will be used to create 12 new jobs, further develop the technology (including more personalised solutions) and drive uptake in the UK and overseas. As part of the investment the company appointed Dr Nicolaus Henke as Chair.

• Kokoro Kids

  Led · Equity · Apr 2024

  Kokoro Kids is a personalized educational app integrated into the Apolo Kids solution, offering more than 260 games designed to remove access barriers and support neurodivergent children (including those with ASD and ADHD) as well as all learners. The product is part of a broader suite that includes Kokoro Schools, which helps educators personalize learning sessions, and Apolo Academy, a bite-sized digital content platform. The company emphasizes motivation, autonomy and inclusive play-based learning. In 2023 Kokoro Kids received over €550,000 in an earlier phase of the LEGO Foundation program. The latest financing is a €2.25M grant from the LEGO Foundation under its Play for All Accelerator, and the award also establishes Kokoro Kids as a Foundation partner. With the funding Kokoro Kids plans to improve app functionality, develop new games, products and learning environments, and pursue international expansion and knowledge exchange with the Foundation. Kokoro Kids is a mobile application for children aged 2–6 that offers more than 150 activities and games designed by experts to develop cognitive and emotional skills through short, safe, ad-free play sessions. The product is built on a proprietary scientific methodology and an algorithm that applies artificial intelligence and adaptive learning to personalize activities in real time based on performance metrics (accuracy, level, response time). The app includes a parental dashboard so caregivers can track progress and identify areas needing reinforcement. The methodology was developed with a committee of psychologists and neuroscientists and is informed by academic research on early brain development. The company recently closed a €550,000 capital increase to support product and commercial plans. Kokoro Kids intends to use the funding to improve its learning methodology and real-time personalization, accelerate growth, and drive international commercialization of the platform. The app is available on Android and Apple app stores.

No current team members are available.