UpHill

UpHill is a Portuguese health-tech company that provides a care orchestration platform designed to automate and standardize clinical pathways for hospitals and other healthcare institutions. The firm was founded in 2015 by medical doctors Eduardo Freire Rodrigues, Duarte Sequeira, and Luís Patrão, who were motivated to address the variability and fragmentation in clinical practice.

CEO Eduardo Freire Rodrigues is a public health specialist with a medical degree from NOVA Medical School and clinical research training from Harvard Medical School. COO Duarte Sequeira's master's thesis in Health Informatics and Management formed the basis for the first pilot version of an UpHill product. The founders' direct experience in the medical field provided them with firsthand insight into the challenges of inconsistent care delivery and its impact on patient outcomes.

The company's core offering is a software platform that functions as a care orchestration and automation tool. It integrates with existing hospital information systems, such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs), to provide healthcare professionals with a unified view of a patient's journey. Key features include remote patient monitoring, task automation for clinicians, patient stratification to prioritize care, and the automatic generation of clinical record proposals. By mapping and automating best-practice clinical workflows, the platform aims to increase hospital capacity, improve adherence to medical best practices, and enhance patient outcomes, such as reducing hospital readmissions by up to 65% in some cases. UpHill's software is certified as a medical device.

UpHill operates on a B2B SaaS business model, charging hospitals a licensing fee based on the number of users, typically on an annual or multi-year basis. Its clients are primarily large hospital units and healthcare providers in the Iberian Peninsula, including ULS Sta Maria, Luz Saúde, and the Institut Guttmann in Spain. The company's technology is reported to cover approximately 25% of the Portuguese population. In late 2023, UpHill launched Liber, a direct-to-consumer digital health service and mobile app that provides 24/7 access to doctors for acute issues and health promotion programs.

The company has raised a total of €12 million over several funding rounds. A significant Series A round in March 2024 brought in €7 million, led by Explorer and a social impact fund from Redstone and EnjoyVenture, with participation from existing investors. This funding is aimed at international expansion into markets like the UK and Spain, along with doubling its team size.

Keywords: care orchestration, clinical pathways, health-tech, hospital efficiency, digital health, patient journey, clinical decision support, task automation, remote patient monitoring, B2B SaaS, healthcare software, medical device software, EHR integration, hospital readmission reduction, chronic disease management, clinical workflow automation, evidence-based practice, healthcare automation, provider solutions, Portugal