Pioneering home care firm failed due to funding crisis, says McArthur

NEIL McArthur, the entrepreneur behind telecoms group Talk Talk, has hit out at the funding system for home care after the failure of one of his technology companies.

Last month administrators from Leonard Curtis were appointed to Geonovo which specialised in a hi-tech approach to assisted living.

The idea was to replace existing technology, which is generally limited to an analogue panic button, with censors and other digital gadgets that could monitor patients in real time who are being cared for at home. A censor in the kitchen, for example, could alert a family member if an elderly relative had not made a cup of tea by 11am.

But Mr McArthur, who founded Opal Telecommunications which became Talk Talk following a £108m buyout by Carphone Warehouse, said there was no appetite for such technology because local authorities are short of cash, and the Government is not willing to divert NHS funds.

“The reason the company has failed is not that its technology doesn’t work, the reason is the funding for assisted living is always delivered through local authorities and they’ve had their budgets squeezed,” he said.

“The Government hasn’t joined the dots up between assisted living and health budgets. If you give local authorities money to keep people out of hospital they could apply a lot more modern technology. With modern instruments you could an awful lot more.”

Mr McArthur said investors put £2.5m into the business and added, “We stuck with this company for a long time and what it was doing will happen one day but there’s no mood for it to happen now. There are quite a few companies in the e-health space and they’re all struggling to get new technology accepted because local authorities are in such a state.”

Geonovo’s managing director Peter Lusty said: “What we were promoting is a modern digital capability. A lot of home health care is analogue and uses a different system which means the type of technology is limited. What we found, having built up quite an innovative product and mobile capability, was that local authorities haven’t got the money to spend on that kind of thing. It wasn’t that we ran out of money but patience and time.

“Everyone gets the benefits of having integrated digital products in the home for the elderly and vulnerable but they don’t know where to start because they haven’t got the funding.”

Geonovo was backed by Mr McArthur and other Manchester investors but had its main office in Slough.