Australian company Cogniss makes Cambridge its global HQ

Australian digital health company Cogniss is re-domiciling to the UK and setting up a new global headquarters at the Barclays’ Eagle Labs incubator in Cambridge.

Cambridgeshire’s dynamic scale-up accelerator Growth Works has been instrumental in bringing Cogniss into the burgeoning Cambridge DeepTech cluster.

It is one of many game-changing ‘wins’ secured by Growth Works, which has proved a huge success for the Cambridgeshire economy. Persuading Cogniss to set up in Cambridge is a major coup as the Sydney-founded company has won a string of international awards.

Cogniss is a no-code ecosystem for digital health that makes it quick, easy and affordable for researchers, clinical entrepreneurs and healthcare workers to build sophisticated patient-facing apps without needing to rely on developers or agencies. 

It changes the paradigm of digital health development, putting the power of app creation in the hands of the healthcare experts rather than technologists, and empowering innovation from the frontline.

Its vision is that this will allow health experts to build solutions to support underserved communities, leading to the democratisation of digital health. Cogniss has proved hugely successful internationally, providing solutions for sectors such as government agencies, universities, corporates and not-for-profit organisations under the watchful eye of CEO Leon Young.

The company has already based its managing director in the UK and will be ramping headcount following an imminent capital raise.

Young says that Cogniss has long identified Cambridge as the ideal location for its global headquarters and a springboard for international growth. The company participated in two trade missions to the UK in May 2022.

The company was introduced to Growth Works by the Investment NSW team in London who, like Growth Works, have played an integral role in the company’s successes over the last 12 months.

Before leaving the UK following the initial trade mission, Cogniss had a couple of fruitful ‘discovery’ meetings with the Growth Works team which took time to understand the business, its plans and target customer objectives.

Young says: “This meant that when we arrived in the UK for our first visit we had a number of meetings lined up in the Cambridgeshire area with strategic potential customers, investors and ecosystem partners.

“These strategic connections continued throughout the year on future trips to the UK and Cambridgeshire. We place high value on these introductions as it would have taken us a lot longer to build the high calibre network that we now have thanks to this on-strategy and senior-level concierge service that we received from Growth Works.”

Business wins resulting from those introductions include a strong partnership with the Eastern AHSN which has recommended a number of digital health customers to Cogniss. Relationships have also been forged with medtech accelerator Start Codon as well as within Anglia Ruskin University.

“We even picked up our first US customer, the University of Colorado, due to the connections we made in Cambridge thanks to Growth Works,” Young adds.

Growth Works has also been instrumental in providing practical support and advice for the company’s recently completed redomiciliation. 

Cogniss sees the UK – and specifically Cambridge – as the world leader in MedTech innovation and the gateway to the ‘Golden Triangle’, which is home to the headquarters of many of the world's leading life sciences companies.
 
Young adds: “University researchers have been cornerstone customers during Cogniss’s growth so moving the company’s global headquarters ‘next door’ to some of the world’s most groundbreaking research hubs makes perfect sense for us.”

Since it has been in the UK, Cogniss has recruited digital health expert Dr Lloyd Humphreys as Managing Director. Dr Humphreys previously helped grow Cambridge-based success story Patients Know Best.

Cogniss has also secured a high-value partnership with ORCHA – the world-leader in digital health evaluation and distribution. And Cognioss is powering the work of a number of digital health innovators and researchers across the UK, including Onebright, Haemnet and Lumino in addition to a number of universities including Surrey, Edinburgh, Southampton, Plymouth and LSBU.

Cogniss currently employs 15 full time staff across the UK and Australia but plans to onboard 35 new roles in the UK over the next three years as it grows its global operations.