AI healthcare firm Cera forecast to save NHS £1bn per year by 2026

Artificial intelligence (AI) driven home healthcare firm Cera is set to save the NHS up to £1bn per year via preventative care technology.

Cera, founded in 2016 by London based doctor Ben Maruthappu, uses AI technology to reduce unnecessary hospitalisations and ease the burden on the buckling NHS. The company’s model is already preventing an estimated 233 emergency admissions a month by measures such as predicting falls, tracking symptoms and mobilising frontline nurses to respond to high-risk alerts.

The company’s app allows healthcare providers to collect, monitor and react to a range of vital health signs in real-time.

Such preventative measures are already saving the NHS around £1m per day, and this is forecast to increase to £2m per day by the summer of 2025, and upwards to £3m per day by autumn 2026, equivalent to £1bn in annualised savings.

A&E departments have been coming under mounting pressure in recent years as the NHS crisis deepens. In 2023, Royal College of Emergency Medicine data showed that long waiting times were linked to over 250 deaths a week.

An ageing population has put increasing stress on the health service as hospitalisations grow in line with waiting times for appointments and procedures. 85 per cent of Cera’s patients are over the age of 65 as the firm looks to free up hospital beds and cut waiting times with preventative home care.

Cera has recently pushed back US expansion plans as it looks to profitability this year. Annualised revenue at the company grew from £178m in 2022 to £275m in 2023.

Ben Maruthappu, founder and CEO, said the forecast “reinforces the important role technology has in transforming our health and care system, at a time when the need to change couldn’t be greater.”