Ultramed and ATI success story

Product Development and Funding Support
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Ultramed is a fast growing, Cornish Health-Tech business that is rapidly shaking things up in the healthcare sector. Led by Dr Paul Upton, former NHS anaesthetist and Medical Director at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, Ultramed places innovation and a first-class patient experience at the forefront of its business.
Through creating their pioneering app, MyPreOp, Ultramed are enabling patients to complete their preoperative assessment online using their smartphone, computer or other compatible device. MyPreOp puts the control of the patient’s data back into the palms of the individual themselves, reducing the time nurses have to spend asking the questions we already have the answers to and allowing them to concentrate on clinical decision making.
Over 10million procedures are carried out each year in the UK alone and Ultramed’s revolutionary solution has the potential to save the NHS £65 million per year. What’s more, there’s additional benefits for the end user too. With 24/7 access via the cloud-hosted app, from anywhere with an internet connection, patients could potentially complete their preoperative assessment from the comfort of their own homes, whilst at work or even on holiday – reducing the need to visit the hospital at all.
When the business was first established in 2014, Ultramed was a small start-up with big aspirations of breaking into the Health-Tech Market. Since then, Ultramed has received national recognition after being one of just five companies chosen to represent the South West on the prestigious Digital Health Accelerator programme, which provided 12 months of support and fast tracked the implementation of their new technology into the NHS.
In the beginning, Ultramed was funded by its co-founders, Dr Paul Upton and Alan Sanders, followed by angel investors and a highly successful Crowdcube fundraiser back in 2017. This early funding helped with establishing the legal structure of the company including obtaining trademarks and design registrations to protect the Intellectual Property of the program and development work.
“As a new business, we’ve secured a range of funding, including a successful Crowdcube campaign to cover our operational costs. The ATI Innovation Fund came at the right time for us and fitted perfectly with what we needed to achieve to move forward with the development of the programs,” said Elise Worrall, Operations Manager at Ultramed .
More recently, Ultramed have received business support and grants from the University of Plymouth led projects: Acceleration Through Innovation (ATI) and EPIC. In addition to a number of hours of business innovation advice and mentoring from the ATI team, Ultramed was awarded an ATI grant which has contributed towards the innovative development of the software carried out by Buzz Interactive.

Ultramed has benefited from significant support from organisations supporting Cornwall eHealth innovation. This has underpinned our growth from three employees to 12 over the last year (2018–2019) further supported by Innovate UK investment. Networking and collaboration are essential in gaining knowledge and I look forward to sharing my experiences in co-founding Ultramed and our journey over the last six years.

Dr Paul Upton, Founder and CEO at Ultramed.
As a result of this collaborative approach to supporting, funding and growing innovative businesses, Ultramed are placed much more competitively in the market and are further ahead than any of their known competitors, with a lot of interest across the UK and internationally.
Their MyPreOp app has received multiple awards since they first engaged with ATI, including being awarded ‘Software of the Year 2018’ at the South West Digital Awards and Buzz Interactive, their developers, took home the title.
Other notable awards and achievements, include: the 2018 Medilink South West Healthcare Business Award for outstanding achievement (their third Medilink award over the last few years), the 2018 Federation of Small Businesses Award for ‘Micro Business of the Year’ and the 2016 Cornwall Business Award for ‘Business Innovation of the Year’.
In 2019, Ultramed accepted the Association of Anaesthetist of GB and Ireland’s 2019 award for Innovation in Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pain for their MyPreOp program.
“It is a direct result of all the various bits of support we’ve had, ATI being the largest by some margin.” says Dr Paul Upton, CEO and Co-founder at Ultramed.
After four years of development and testing, January (2019) saw the first full implementation of MyPreOp go live at Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and they celebrated an important milestone as the 10,000th patient used their app.
In 2021 the MyPreOp app was supported for national scaling by the NHS Innovation Accelerator 2020 and the company was named in the ‘First 100 UK Digital Health Companies’ playbook, as listed by the Department of International Trade.
Today (2023), Ultramed employs 14 people from its registered address at the Tremough Innovation Centre and was royally bestowed with a prestigious King’s Award for Enterprise in recognition of its excellence in medical innovation.

I am immensely proud of what the team at Ultramed has achieved. We have benefited from multiple sources of advice, guidance and grant funding to support our innovative developments. The ATI programme supported our early development without which I have no doubt we would not have been so successful.

Dr Paul Upton, Co-Founder and CEO at Ultramed.