Ufonia

Ufonia builds Dora, a clinical AI agent that conducts telephone conversations with patients to help healthcare teams handle routine care. For cataract practices, Dora gathers patient histories before appointments, explains lens options, provides preparation instructions and checks recovery after surgery. It is designed to escalate ambiguous symptoms and complex questions for human oversight, helping clinicians focus attention on patients who need review.

Founded in 2017 within Oxford University Innovation’s Start-up Incubator, Ufonia is led by founder and CEO Dr Nick de Pennington, who trained as a neurosurgeon. Dora combines large language models with deterministic controls. Ufonia’s research addresses how to evaluate complete clinical conversations: ASTRID assesses whether answers use relevant clinical context, remain faithful to sources and refuse inappropriate questions; MATRIX uses simulated patients and automated auditing to test responses to hazardous clinical scenarios.

In April 2026, the company reported more than 165,000 patient interactions across more than 22 NHS organisations, with over 110,000 satisfaction responses informing ongoing evaluation. Its US expansion began with Dora’s first US trial call at Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin, in late 2025. Ufonia subsequently opened an ophthalmology partner waitlist while gathering clinical trial evidence.