12 Years, £12 Million and a CE Mark: Building Lifelight's Medical Device

Laurence spent 12 years turning a classic piece of medical kit, the blood pressure cuff, into software that works through a smartphone camera. His company, Lifelight, picks up a tiny colour change in the face with every heartbeat and uses it to estimate blood pressure with no hardware at all, a discovery that traces back to a science he saw demonstrated at MIT and a long-held idea about better ways to help people monitor their own health. In this episode, Laurence talks about the 12 year journey from that idea to a CE marked Class 2a medical device, including why he chose the much harder regulated medical route over a simpler wellbeing app, what it took to train the technology on thousands of real patients. He's raised around £11-12 million along the way, roughly half of it in grant funding, and shares honestly what that process involves and why finding the right niche matters more than chasing every grant going. He also talks candidly about where Lifelight is finding traction now, why private insurers in mainland Europe have moved faster than the NHS, and a new project monitoring premature babies at the Royal London Hospital that grew out of an unplanned partnership. It's a conversation about staying true to an idea through a genuinely gruelling regulatory and funding process, and about what happens once the hard science finally becomes a real, sellable product. Venturefest South's Festival of Innovation returns on 18 November 2026 at the Utilita Bowl. Book your tickets now. 0:00 Welcome to The Growth Conversations 0:45 Meet the founder of Lifelight 1:22 Why blood pressure matters 3:52 One solution, thousands of use cases 5:01 The seed of the idea 6:33 From emotion recognition to prevention 8:59 Why smartphones 9:40 The MIT light bulb moment 11:53 The idea that wouldn't die on the plane 14:31 Raising £11 to 12 million 14:55 Wellbeing app or medical device 16:35 Winning grant funding 19:25 Training the algorithm on 8,500 patients 21:34 Testing across skin tones 22:23 Independent validation in the US 23:26 Getting the CE mark 24:25 What it really cost 25:18 What happens next 26:01 From science company to sales focus 26:52 Why the NHS is hard to sell to 28:05 Why insurers are buying first 29:19 The business model 30:23 White coat syndrome 31:28 Partnerships and the B2B model 33:37 New uses: GLP-1 weight-loss platforms 35:17 Advice: trust your gut 36:38 Staying focused as you grow 37:48 The neonatal project at the Royal London 38:58 The value of partnership 39:18 Wrap-up