Oxford’s Rockley Photonics emerges from bankruptcy protection

Oxford-headquartered Rockley Photonics has completed a comprehensive financial restructuring and emerged from Chapter 11 after filing for bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

All of Rockley’s material customer relationships remain in place, the company has said and it remains on schedule with all programmes including its development of remote patient monitoring technology.

Rockley, which also has offices in Pasadena, USA, says it continues to see promising results relating to a number of biomarkers, including glucose, and anticipates releasing those results in the second half of this year.

The company has received approximately $35 million of additional funding from its stakeholders.

Dr Andrew Rickman, chief executive officer, said: “Rockley’s ability to emerge from Chapter 11 in just 46 days was a significant achievement and marks the beginning of a new era for the company. Our stakeholders ongoing belief in Rockley has provided us with a greatly strengthened balance sheet and the funds to continue to develop disruptive technology for the med tech market.

“We greatly appreciate the continued support not only of our stakeholders but also of our suppliers, partners and employees. I look forward to the opportunity to continue to develop Rockley’s products and bring them to market.”

Dr. Richard Kuntz, former senior vice president and chief medical and scientific officer at Medtronic, said: “Rockley has developed breakthrough technology for non-invasive biomarker monitoring based on their unique photonics chip platform. Rockley’s progress towards wearable devices could have a profound impact on early diagnosis and disease management.”

Dr. Tess Skyrme, Technology Analyst at research firm IDTechEx, said: “Medical conditions such as diabetes and hypertension are affecting a growing proportion of the global adult population. The market for wrist-worn remote monitoring technology, which helps people manage these conditions, is a sub-set
of the growing wearable technology market – forecast to surpass $161 billion by 2033. Within this field, cuff-less blood pressure monitoring emerges as a particularly promising growth engine.”

Rockley Photonics is developing a comprehensive range of photonic integrated circuits and sensors.

The company believes that photonics will eventually become as pervasive as micro-electronics and has developed a platform with the power and flexibility needed to address the med tech market and a wide variety of vertical applications.