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Last updated on October 30, 2025
Dr Ben Maruthappu left a stable career as a doctor to revolutionise healthcare. Since launching in 2016, his AI-powered company Cera has saved the NHS over £1 billion – and transformed the lives of vulnerable and older people across the UK.
As a doctor, Ben Maruthappu spent years treating patients through the NHS. But the system’s inefficiency became personal when his mother fractured her back in 2016.
“We were met with a revolving door of carers,” Ben explains. “My family had no idea who would be caring for my mum on any given day, at what time, or how their visits had gone.”
The contrast was stark. “In a world where I know the name and number plate of my Uber driver, I had no visibility and influence over the far more important issue of my mum’s care,” Ben says.
That experience, combined with years witnessing preventable hospitalisations, sparked the creation of Cera. It’s now Europe’s largest HealthTech by revenue – delivering 30 million visits annually through 10,000 frontline carers and nurses – equivalent in capacity to all NHS A&E departments nationwide. In nine years, Cera has scaled rapidly across the UK, now delivering care on behalf of more than 100 Local Governments and two-thirds of all NHS Integrated Care Systems.
From NHS Doctor to HealthTech Founder
Both of Ben’s parents worked as doctors, influencing his own path in medicine and as Innovation Advisor to NHS England, where he co-founded the NHS Innovation Accelerator.
But he saw patterns that troubled him. “We’d see older patients come in regularly with urine infections,” Ben says. “Usually we treated them successfully, but occasionally patients were brought in too late – you never forget these moments as a doctor.”
Looking at the national picture, he realised that using technology to deliver more healthcare services at home could address some of the NHS’s biggest challenges.
His lack of business experience was countered by deep medical insight into the problem he was solving. So the learning curve began.
Building AI-Powered Preventative Care
Cera started as an online marketplace, using technology to improve the booking experience for families arranging care. But Ben quickly realised the company needed to double up as a service provider to have real impact.
By delivering care directly to patients’ homes, Cera could gather real-time data from every patient visit. They’ve since built Europe’s largest home healthcare dataset and used it to develop predictive AI tools.
The company created a Falls Prevention AI and a Hospitalisation Predict-Prevent AI tool that alert frontline staff to health risks before they escalate, enabling preventative interventions in ageing communities.
The results are striking. 20% reduction in falls among high-risk older patients, up to 70% cut in hospitalisations, and the model is 10 times more affordable than hospital care.
The system allows carers to spend up to 25% more time directly with patients than industry averages, showing how scaling healthtech innovation doesn’t sacrifice empathy in patient care.
Crisis as Catalyst
COVID created a dramatic surge in demand for home care and Ben saw an opportunity to make a difference.
Cera launched an initiative to recruit and train people who’d lost their jobs as carers, bringing them into healthcare when they were needed most. The programme created around 10,000 jobs.
The UK Government even licensed Cera’s technology for use across 2,000 other care businesses, demonstrating how digital health solutions can rapidly scale to solve systemic problems.
Building on this success, Ben launched Cera’s Back to Work initiative in 2024 to tackle economic inactivity. The programme creates thousands of jobs for the unemployed and economically inactive, providing practical and emotional support to make coming back to work easier – from discounted driving lessons to mental health support.
In two years, Cera has attracted 1 million applicants to the care sector – more than any other European healthcare firm. The company has pioneered Career Pathways that train newcomers to progress from entry-level roles to leadership positions, complete with apprenticeships and clinical training opportunities along the way.
“28% of our carer recruits over the past year have joined us from unemployment,” Ben explains. “More than double the industry average are living with a disability.”
Impact Beyond Healthcare
The environmental benefits of prevention often get overlooked. “Healthcare is a significant contributor to global emissions,” Ben explains, “and its impact will only rise as the population ages and demand for care increases.”
A third-party analysis earlier this year found Cera’s model is around 15 times more carbon-friendly than hospital care, saving 3,335 tonnes of carbon per year. That’s equivalent to keeping roughly 120,000 average cars off UK roads for a week.
The financial impact is staggering. Cera saves the NHS and Government more than £46.5m each month – exceeding £1.5m daily. Total cumulative savings now exceed £1 billion.
“That could fund the salaries of more than 25,000 nurses for a year, pay for 40 million more GP appointments, or build multiple hospitals,” Ben notes. “The further rollout of AI-backed home care could save many more billions, making a tangible difference for the public purse.”
This January, Cera began piloting care robots in patients’ homes to help with simple tasks like medication and food reminders, as well as keeping patients connected to care teams and loved ones. Cera’s AI Care Robots could boost its care capacity by 20% once fully scaled – expanding access to care as demand continues to outstrip supply.
What’s Next for Home Healthcare Technology
Cera has scaled 100-fold in five years, going from $5m to $500m in revenue. This rapid scale-up is testament to the growing demand for AI-backed preventative healthcare models and innovative healthtechs.
Before the end of 2025, Cera will deliver its 100 millionth patient home visit. Each marking “another step towards a more sustainable, preventative future for our healthcare.” Going forward, the company is pioneering new technologies like robotics in care to lead the sector into the future.
“Cera can help reverse the NHS crisis,” Ben says, “especially if our technology were scaled across the rest of the care sector.”
Cera has repeatedly been ranked the UK’s number one HealthTech, and is both the UK’s most valuable company led by a doctor, and the largest UK company run by an under-40-year-old. It is also the first company in 15 years to rank in the Top 10 of the Deloitte Fast 50 three years running.
Ben meanwhile is the only entrepreneur to have won both EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2024) & Great British Entrepreneur of the Year (2023), and the youngest doctor to receive a UK honour, aged 31.
As Britain grapples with NHS pressures, an ageing population, and economic challenges, Ben’s story offers a blueprint: embrace technology, think boldly, and back entrepreneurship.
“It’s been an incredible journey,” Ben says. “It hasn’t been without its challenges – but it’s hugely rewarding to see the impact we’ve had.”
