TurnUp, the Ghent-based AI platform helping dental and medical practices reduce no-shows and last-minute cancellations, has raised €2M in a seed round led by Newion, with participation from RDY Ventures.
The company will use the funding to scale its commercial activities, expand its technical team, and grow its presence in the UK.
Addressing The Market Opportunity
Missed appointments represent a significant and largely unaddressed cost across healthcare. Globally, no-shows are estimated to cost the sector €350 billion a year. For every 100 scheduled patients, around 7 cancel at the last minute and 4 fail to appear at all. For practices, a single empty chair per day can translate into thousands in lost revenue each month.
Front-desk staff typically try to manage this manually, working through phone lists and leaving voicemails, but the problem persists at scale. Koen Lepez, CEO of TurnUp, has seen the pattern repeatedly across client practices, where staff calling through a list of twenty patients often reach only a handful who can actually confirm. He noted that a group practice with 18 dentists lost up to €250,000 in potential profit in a single year due to no-shows and late cancellations, a gap that stands in contrast to long waiting lists of patients seeking care.
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How The Technology Works
TurnUp’s platform connects to a practice’s existing management software, reads the schedule, and predicts the likelihood of a no-show for each patient up to two weeks in advance. These predictions draw on historical patient behavior, location, age group, and external factors such as weather, which the company says can influence attendance by as much as 30 percent. As forecasts shift over the two-week window, the system continuously updates its predictions per patient.
Patients flagged as high-risk for no-shows receive a sequence of automated reminders across email, SMS, and phone calls. If a cancellation does occur, the freed slot is immediately offered to patients on a waiting list, with TurnUp reporting that 90 percent of these slots are filled quickly.
The platform also includes Elissa, an AI receptionist that handles confirmation calls in multiple languages, including evenings and weekends. Elissa manages confirmations, cancellations, and rescheduling requests, giving front-desk staff a clearer view of the day’s schedule while reducing the volume of repetitive manual outreach.
Growth And Market Traction
TurnUp was founded in 2022 by Nicolas De Bruyne, who serves as CRO, and Jona Decubber, CTO. Koen Lepez joined initially as an investor before becoming CEO in September 2024, having previously founded cloud company Direct, which was acquired by IT provider Easi in 2021.
The company now serves more than 250 practices across Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, covering over 2,500 dentists, with clients including UZ Gent, MOND Dental Practices, and Dentius. TurnUp says its platform has prevented more than half a million no-shows, saved practice staff over 65,000 hours of manual work, and helped close to 70,000 patients receive care they might otherwise have missed.
Expansion Plans
The €2M seed round will support TurnUp’s expansion of commercial operations and client services, along with growth of its technical team. The company is currently running a pilot with a group of 400 practices in the UK as part of its push into that market.
Looking Ahead
Koen Lepez, CEO of TurnUp, framed the company’s broader ambitions around occupancy: “We always start from the same question: how do we make sure every chair in a practice is filled? No-shows are the biggest obstacle to occupancy. In Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK, we’ve shown we can solve that problem. Now we want to do the same for every care practice in Europe and then the US. The scale is there.”
About TurnUp
TurnUp is an AI platform that predicts and resolves no-shows and last-minute cancellations at dental and medical practices. The system connects to existing practice management software, analyzes patient history and external factors such as weather, and automates reminders, waiting list management, and confirmation calls through its AI receptionist, Elissa. Founded in 2022 and based in Ghent, TurnUp serves more than 250 practices across Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, covering over 2,500 dentists.
