Automated digital health compliance platform Naq has raised £2.6 million to aid healthcare and medical compliance across the UK and the EU.
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Compliance
The oversubscribed funding round gained investment from No Such Ventures plus additional support from existing investors.
The London-based start-up was founded by Nadia Kadhim, GDPR Lawyer and Forbes 30 under 30 winner, and Chris Clinton, ex-NATO, and BAE Systems Cyber Security expert. The announcement of the new round of funding comes at a time when start-ups, particularly those led by female entrepreneurs, find it increasingly challenging to secure investment, with less than 2% of European Venture Capital Funding going to female founders.
Over 400,000 companies in highly regulated sectors like healthcare face challenges in bringing innovative solutions to market due to stringent compliance and regulatory requirements. A fundamental problem these companies face is that in their sectors, the only compliance solutions have been consultants who are costly and add complexity to an already demanding process.
Naq's automated compliance platform is revolutionising this process, enabling innovators to comply with the healthcare frameworks essential for their growth, streamlining their compliance, ensuring healthcare data is secured, saving them time and accelerating the introduction of solutions to market.
As well as streamlining compliance, Naq's platform enables NHS trusts, government departments and enterprise organisations to verify the compliance status of their suppliers.
In addition to growing by 300% over the last 12 months, Naq's platform allows health and medtech innovators to meet the compliance requirements needed to work with the healthcare sector across the UK and EU. This innovative approach has gained substantial recognition, as evidenced by the award of a prestigious £460,000 Smart Grant from Innovate UK, set to enhance Naq's capabilities, specifically in using AI to streamline compliance for NHS suppliers.
Nadia Kadhim, CEO and co-founder of Naq said: "Nearly 50% of healthcare solutions fail to make it to market due to the complex regulatory and compliance challenges they face. Those who choose to take on this complexity face overwhelming amounts of manual work and huge sums spent on consultants. That's why we built Naq: to empower innovators in the UK and Europe to bring their solutions to market by simplifying their compliance with the frameworks required to operate in the healthcare sector.
"We want to thank the team at No Such Ventures and our existing investors for their continued support and belief in Naq. This latest funding round will help us accelerate our growth across the UK and Europe and further the development of our category-defining automated compliance platform."
Sophie Heijenberg, investor at No Such Ventures, added: “Nadia and Chris’ expertise within the compliance market stood out for us. Their product is intuitive and gets amazing customer feedback. We are excited to join Naq on its stellar growth trajectory.”
