About

Luca Health helps schools, sports academies and clubs manage concussion safely, confidently and in line with best practice. Our digital platform combines education, testing and clinical oversight to close the gap between pitch-side incidents and expert medical care. We train coaches, staff and students to recognise concussion, respond appropriately and understand return-to-play guidelines. Before injuries occur, athletes complete baseline neurocognitive assessments via our app. When a head impact is suspected, coaches can quickly log the incident on mobile or web, trigger immediate checks and notify key contacts. Our clinical team then steps in, reviewing cases, arranging professional assessment and guiding a structured, stepwise return-to-play or return-to-learn. Throughout recovery, users can retake assessments, track symptoms and see clear status updates. Parents, coaches, teachers and safeguarding leads receive timely, automated communication, so everyone knows the latest medical advice and the athlete’s current clearance status. By unifying education, objective testing and specialist follow-up, Luca Health gives organisations a robust, easy-to-implement concussion pathway that protects athletes, reduces risk and builds a culture of safety around head injury.

Solution & Product

Luca Health is a digital concussion management solution built for schools, academies and sports clubs. Our platform turns complex head-injury protocols into a simple, guided pathway from pitch-side incident to safe return-to-play. We combine education, testing and clinical oversight in one place. Coaches, staff, students and parents receive concussion education aligned with current best practice, while athletes complete baseline neurocognitive assessments via our app before the season starts. When a head impact is suspected, coaches can log the incident in seconds on mobile or web, capturing key details, symptoms and red flags and triggering the right next steps. From there, our medical team provides clinical follow-up, reviewing each case, advising on management and giving professional clearance for return-to-play or return-to-learn. Athletes can track symptoms, retake assessments and follow a structured, stepwise recovery plan with clear status updates. Throughout the process, Luca Health keeps everyone informed. Automated notifications share restrictions, progress and clearance with parents, coaches, teachers and safeguarding leads, giving organisations a single, easy-to-use concussion pathway that improves safety, reduces risk and builds confidence in every head-injury decision.

Innovation & Scalability

Luca Health is built as a scalable, cloud-based platform that digitises every step of concussion management, from baseline testing and pitch-side logging to remote clinical review and automated communication. This replaces fragmented paper protocols with a standardised pathway that can be rolled out consistently across hundreds of sites. Our commercial model is a recurring B2B per-user subscription for schools, clubs and universities, complemented by an education and certification stream in a space where no equivalent UK course currently exists. The same technology stack can be extended to a B2C offer for individual athletes and into other high-risk sectors such as the military and construction. We focus initially on contact sports, targeting an addressable market of around 11 million athletes in North America and EMEA and a multi-billion-pound opportunity even at low penetration. By delivering insurer-grade concussion protocols at low marginal cost per user—and in a context of rapidly rising premiums and litigation risk—Luca Health is positioned to scale quickly while improving safety and compliance across organisations.

Traction & achievements

Luca Health has progressed from concept to live deployment, with pilots across schools and sports clubs, supporting over 5000 student-athletes in contact and collision sports. Early use has validated our full pathway: baseline testing, pitch-side logging, clinical follow-up and structured return-to-play. Coaches and safeguarding leads report clearer decision-making around head injuries, faster escalation to clinicians and greater confidence in keeping players safe. Athletes and parents value having a simple, app-based way to understand progress and see when it is genuinely safe to return to sport and school. On the clinical side, our protocols have been developed and reviewed with specialist medical input, ensuring Luca Health aligns with current concussion guidelines and insurer expectations. This combination of real-world pilots, multi-stakeholder engagement and clinician-led design underpins our traction and positions us to scale across the education and sport sectors.

Team & Why Us

Luca was founded by former professional rugby player and Oxford MBA Nick Greenhalgh (CEO) and serial healthtech entrepreneur Vas Nikolaou (CTO) – a sports-mad Brit and a tech-obsessed Greek who share a belief that sport’s benefits must be protected by better head-injury care. Nick brings lived experience of injury-ended elite sport together with six years in startups and formal business training, giving Luca a founder who understands both the realities on the pitch and the demands of scaling a company. Vas leads our Athens-based engineering team, having held board-level roles in multiple healthtech startups and specialised in AI-driven clinical systems. Clinical leadership comes from Prof Bill Ribbans, an orthopaedic surgeon and Professor of Sports Medicine with decades in elite sport and more than 150 scientific publications in areas including injury prevention in sport. He is supported by Dr Raj Amarnani, a sport and exercise medicine doctor working across the NHS and elite organisations such as England Cricket, Premier League academies and the Royal Ballet School, and active in European research taskforces. Our broader team blends science, sport and technology: Fred Newbold, an Oxford-trained biologist and international hockey player; full-stack engineer Odysseas Papadimas; and data engineer Georgios Theodoropoulos, a graduate of Imperial College London and NTUA. They are complemented by expert advisors including concussion campaigner and author Sam Peters and former Li

Funding Needs

Luca Health is raising £350k on a £3.5m pre-money valuation to fund approximately 24 months of growth. The capital will be used primarily for engineering and product development (~39%), alongside sales (~20%), marketing (~20%), operations (~16%), and legal & compliance (~5%). This round will enable us to deliver our product roadmap, strengthen clinical and technical capabilities, and scale commercial traction across UK schools and sports organisations, while preparing for European expansion. The raise is structured to qualify for UK EIS tax relief, offering eligible investors up to 45% loss relief.