Lutra Health is a software product connecting optometrists with eye surgeons and patients, allowing more patients to get access to the eye care they need in the community without having to visit a hospital. We met co-founder Charles Solanki to hear his story.
Charles Solanki graduated from Kings College London with a BA in History. He was keen to get experience working in the world of startups, and a chance meeting led him to his first role at Switchee, where he stayed for the next seven years.
“I joined this startup as the fourth employee and helped grow it to a team of almost 100 as well as helping to raise significant investment. During Covid I moved home and reconnected with my friend John, who is a junior doctor and a software engineer, and he was sharing his ideas for healthtech that could change the current landscape for medical professionals.”
Coming from a family of doctors, the ideas began to pique Charles’ interest and he and John began working on an initial idea aimed at primary care. In the meantime, they were introduced to Roger Killen, co-founder and investment partner at QantX – a serial entrepreneur in the healthcare sector.
“I attended a couple of SETsquared lunches, and at one of these events Roger pulled me aside to let me know he had an interesting proposition for us,” says Charles. “This was summer 2022 – he told us about two eye surgeons who were working on a similar concept, but in a different area of healthcare.
“He introduced us to Sam Evans and Connor Ramsden who had been working on Lutra Health for about a year. As consultants they were extremely knowledgeable in their field, but they didn’t have the experience of starting a business and they were busy in theatre carrying out eye surgery.”
Within four months the new team of four had secured £25k through the Blavatnik Prize from QantX, enabling them to set up their first NHS pilot in summer 2023. The pilot was successful and meant the team were able to raise £400k in their pre-seed funding, also led by QantX.
How Lutra Health is disrupting eyecare
Lutra Health is part of a growing trend to bring more access to healthcare into the community and out of hospitals.
“Eyecare poses one of the best opportunities to do this”, explains Charles. “The community infrastructure already exists – most patients default to visiting their high street optician for their eyecare needs. The issue is that we have optometry in the community and ophthalmology in the hospital and they are unable to communicate very well with each other.”
That’s where Lutra Health come in – they are working on enabling better data transfer from the community into secondary care, through software installed in high street opticians.
The software will allow optometrists in the community to carry out routine appointments for people with eye diseases such as glaucoma or cataracts, for example, while data is transferred to eye surgeons who can then make the right suggestions for future care or surgery.
“Currently cataracts patients are referred from an optician to the hospital for a pre-op appointment. This is expensive, it means the patient must travel out of the community, and it takes up precious time with a consultant who could be focusing on surgery. Eliminating the need for hospital visits, outside surgery, makes it cheaper, more accessible and takes the pressure off the hospital,” says Charles.
Bringing the product to market
The team used a basic MVP for the NHS trial, but they knew a more scalable solution was needed. After receiving pre-seed funding, they were able to hire two software engineers and a product lead, who have been building version one of their product which is due to be launched this month.
“We know there’s an appetite for this product, we’re privileged to have people such David O’Sullivan on our Board of Advisors – he’s the chief optometrist advisor to Welsh government and has unlocked a lot of senior conversations – but we know we need a really stable version in order to sell it.”
Version one of their product is now being rolled out in partnership with a private practice in Exeter, and has been whitelisted by the likes of Specsavers and Bayfield’s in the north of England.
“We wouldn’t be where we are without QantX”, says Charles. “They’ve been integral to the foundations of our business. The contracts are straightforward and fair, and they give us space to get on with the business.
“But beyond that they take the time to open the right doors and support with business development. We don’t take that for granted – they really want to support their portfolio businesses.”
Find out more about Lutra Health