Oxford Medical Simulation Raises £5M for Growth
▼ Summary
– Oxford Medical Simulation (OMS) has raised £5 million in growth financing from Salica Investments to expand its US presence and accelerate AI product development.
– The company provides a virtual reality platform for healthcare professionals to safely practice clinical scenarios and difficult conversations, which runs on both VR headsets and standard screens.
– OMS addresses critical healthcare workforce challenges, citing that 91% of graduating nurses feel unprepared, and its platform reduces staffing and equipment costs by 74% compared to traditional methods.
– The platform integrates AI for features like voice-controlled simulations and supports multiplayer scenarios, allowing remote clinical teams to train together.
– This investment is OMS’s largest disclosed raise since its £10 million Series A in January 2024, reflecting its focus on scaling within the US healthcare and academic markets.
A London-based health technology firm specializing in virtual reality clinical training has secured a significant £5 million investment to fuel its expansion. Oxford Medical Simulation will use this growth financing from Salica Investments to deepen its presence within U.S. healthcare and academic systems while accelerating the development of its AI-powered platform. The company provides an immersive software solution that allows medical professionals to safely practice complex procedures, emergency responses, and challenging patient conversations without any risk to real people.
The platform delivers realistic clinical scenarios that can be accessed using VR headsets or standard computer screens. Each simulation is paired with detailed, evidence-based feedback and performance analytics, enabling institutions to monitor and track the readiness of their entire clinical workforce effectively. Founded by clinicians in 2017, the company now serves hospitals, health systems, and universities internationally, currently facilitating over 35,000 training sessions every month. The company reports that its technology can reduce staffing and equipment costs associated with traditional physical simulation methods by an impressive 74%.
CEO Michael Wallace stated that the new capital will allow the company to confidently invest in its next phase of growth. He emphasized that their partners are focused on achieving better outcomes, safer clinical practice, and more efficient training delivery. This funding will enable faster expansion of their content library, deeper analytics capabilities, and broader support for institutions aiming to modernize their educational approaches. The need for such innovative solutions has become increasingly urgent due to widespread healthcare workforce shortages, high staff turnover, and the growing complexity of clinical training, particularly for new nurses entering the field.
A striking company statistic, often cited in prior funding discussions, indicates that 91% of graduating nurses feel unprepared for actual clinical practice, highlighting a critical gap in traditional education. To address this, OMS has been integrating advanced artificial intelligence more deeply into its product suite. Its recently launched ‘Hands & Voice’ feature replaces menu-driven interactions with fully voice-controlled simulations. This system uses large language models to generate natural patient dialogue and an emotion engine to create realistic patient responses, significantly enhancing the training realism.
The platform also supports multiplayer, interprofessional scenarios. This functionality allows, for example, a doctor and a nurse in different physical locations to collaboratively manage the same virtual patient, a feature with direct applications for remote and distributed clinical teams. The investment comes from Salica Investments’ growth debt offering. Salica, which rebranded from Hambro Perks in 2024, provides senior secured loans to high-growth software companies in the UK. Partner Usman Ali commented that OMS represents the exact type of business they aim to support, praising the team for building a differentiated and scalable platform that meets a critical need in healthcare education.
This £5 million round is the company’s largest disclosed raise since a £10 million Series A funding round in January 2024. Prior to that, the company had raised £2.1 million in 2022. Total recorded funding to date now stands at approximately $19.7 million. Reflecting the strategic focus of this latest investment, OMS has established a U.S. entity in Somerville, Massachusetts, to better serve its growing American customer base, which is now the primary target for expansion.
(Source: The Next Web)
