Pontiro, a healthtech
company focused on enabling the safe and compliant use of medical imaging data
for research and AI, has raised £357,500 in a funding round led by SFC Capital,
with participation from Plug and Play Ventures and the British Business Bank.
Founded by Evan Jenkins, Adam Shannon, and Lewis Bowen, Pontiro was created to address a key
bottleneck in healthcare AI: preparing medical imaging data for research and
development had long been slow, manual, and resource-intensive.
As AI adoption
accelerates across healthcare, expectations are shifting. Safe data access
alone is no longer sufficient, and healthcare leaders increasingly require
evidence that AI deployments deliver measurable operational value.
Pontiro’s platform
has processed more than 2 million medical images across NHS Wales, supporting
secure anonymisation, AI validation case studies, and teaching workflows across
multiple health boards. By replacing fragmented manual processes with automated
tools integrated into hospital systems, the company has reduced turnaround
times while lowering compliance risk.
Pontiro was
built inside the NHS, alongside the teams who use it every day. That matters.
With this investment, we’re taking infrastructure that already works at scale
in Wales and making it available to trusts across the UK who are navigating the
same challenges.
said Lewis Bowen,
Co-founder of Portiro.
The new investment
marks an important step in Pontiro’s development, reflecting its progression
from addressing operational challenges within NHS Wales to building
infrastructure that helps healthcare organisations measure the real-world
impact of AI. Co-founder Evan Jenkins said the funding validates both the
problem the company is addressing and its approach.
The funding will
support expansion beyond Wales into NHS England trusts, with early discussions
already underway with organisations exploring AI evaluation frameworks. The
company is also working toward inclusion on national procurement frameworks to
help streamline adoption across the public sector.