At first glance, the founding story of Lottie is a familiar one in healthcare. Chris and Will Donnelly were awakened to a challenge via a frustrating personal experience - searching for the right care home on behalf of their grandmother - and set about to address it.
Their vision for Lottie, though, is anything but commonplace. Lottie not only instills transparency and support into the elder care sector with its first products, but also has a concrete, long-term roadmap to improve care for millions of seniors and their families.
The first step is solving the broken care seeker experience. A survey by Lottie found that 44% of families regret their choice of a home for their loved one. Recognising that families deserve more transparency and support, Lottie’s marketplace displays quality scores, fees, and reviews for every care home, and provides digestible content to support decision-making ranging from basic types of care to sophisticated financing options.
The second step is empowering the care homes themselves to improve the experience for all parties. Today, 55% of care homes still deal with pen & paper, and the remainder are often forced to use legacy software. Nearly 30% of the 1.5 million care workers in the UK churn annually and 40% of ER admissions are avoidable . Lottie’s technology addresses key pain points for care homes that recognise the opportunity to boost operational performance, frontline job satisfaction and clinical compliance through digital tools.
The third step is to broaden the scope of social care and actively engage in prevention. By 2025, the share of people over 65 will be close to a quarter of the population and the number of people aged over 80 will have doubled. Whilst policymakers have started reforming the adult social care sector to deal with the pressure of a rapidly aging population, Lottie’s product portfolio and partnerships are creating an ecosystem that can span the entire elder care journey, from retirement to palliative care.
Lottie’s mission to ‘elevate elder care’ aligns with General Catalyst’s Health Assurance thesis to drive more digitally enabled, decentralized, preventative, and equitable healthcare. Today, senior care is characterized by a broken care seeker experience, constrained supply of high quality, affordable homes and an increasingly challenging operating environment. As an early investor we are energized to partner with Chris, Will, and the whole Lottie team to help build a better future for seniors. We congratulate the team on their £6M fund raise.
