Pontiro secures £357,500 to expand healthcare AI infrastructure
Pontiro has raised £357,500 in a round led by SFC Capital, with participation from Plug and Play Ventures and the British Business Bank. The funding supports a clear goal: make medical imaging data easier, safer, and faster to use for research, validation, and AI in clinical settings.
Founded by Evan Jenkins, Adam Shannon, and Lewis Bowen, Pontiro was built to solve a familiar problem across radiology and research teams-preparing imaging data had been slow, manual, and resource-heavy. As AI pilots turn into service lines, boards and clinical leaders need more than secure access; they need evidence of operational impact.
What Pontiro does
The platform has processed more than 2 million medical images across NHS Wales, enabling secure anonymisation, AI validation case studies, and teaching workflows across multiple health boards. By replacing fragmented manual steps with automated tools wired into hospital systems, Pontiro shortens turnaround times and reduces compliance exposure.
Pontiro was built inside the NHS, alongside the teams using it day to day. "This investment helps us take infrastructure that already works at scale in Wales and make it available to trusts across the UK facing the same hurdles," said Lewis Bowen, Co-founder of Pontiro.
Why this funding matters for healthcare leaders
- Shift from pilots to proof: Tools must demonstrate measurable throughput gains, reduced backlog, or faster model evaluation-not just safe data access.
- Operational fit: Automated anonymisation and study curation need to sit inside existing PACS/VNA and research workflows to avoid creating shadow processes.
- Governance by design: Standardised pipelines lower risk, improve auditability, and speed up approvals for AI validation and education use cases.
- System-wide learning: Teaching and evaluation workflows built on the same rails create consistent datasets and reproducible results across sites.
- Procurement readiness: Inclusion on national frameworks can cut adoption time and reduce legal lift for trusts.
What's next for Pontiro
The company plans to expand beyond Wales into NHS England trusts, with early discussions underway on AI evaluation frameworks and evidence generation. Work is also in progress to join national procurement frameworks to streamline public sector adoption.
Co-founder Evan Jenkins noted the raise validates both the scale of the problem and the company's approach-moving from isolated fixes to infrastructure that measures real-world outcomes for AI in care pathways.
Practical takeaways for NHS teams
- Define the "proof" you need before deployment: time to dataset, model evaluation throughput, reporting accuracy, or reduced admin minutes per study.
- Treat anonymisation and curation as a service line, not a project. Automate handoffs and logging across PACS, VNA, RIS, and research environments.
- Stand up an AI evaluation workflow with clear gates: data readiness, clinical validation, safety review, and operational impact tracking.
- Use shared infrastructure for teaching and research to avoid duplicating work and to standardise dataset quality.
Related learning: AI for Healthcare
Investor context: learn more about the UK's state-backed support for innovative businesses via the British Business Bank.
Your membership also unlocks:
