A UK healthcare startup is planning to raise $120m (£84m) in what would be one of the largest early-stage funding rounds for a British company.

Medopad creates a mobile app that lets doctors remotely monitor and connect to patients and give them health data. The company's app can be modified to a number of medical conditions, from cancer to heart disease, sending real time data to smartphones or be set to work with wearables like the Apple Watch.

Founded in 2011, Medopad has secured the first part of its funding round, with $28m led by major participation from Chinese infrastructure group NWS Holdings. It expects to raise the rest in the coming months.

If it secures the full $120m, the deal would make Medopad one of the UK's most valuable startups, although the company would not comment on a valuation. It would also be one of the biggest Series A investments, an early funding stage, of any British company.

Medopad has been prominently backed by Prime Minister Theresa May during her trade trip to China. During the trip, Medopad announced it had secured £100m worth of trade deals with 15 partners, including Chinese tech giant Tencent, which owns the messaging service WeChat, and hardware maker Lenovo.

Medopad's app has been applied to the Apple Watch

The Tencent deal could see the companies developing artificial intelligence technologies to support doctors' decision-making.

Medopad chief executive Dan Vahdat accompanied Mrs May on her visit to China, where the Prime Minister met with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Mr Vahdat said: "The trip has been an amazing success for us. There's been a big push from Theresa May's visit, which has given us an accelerated number of deals and partnerships."

China's ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming wrote in the Telegraph this week the visit "offers the opportunity to shift the China-UK 'Golden Era' into a higher gear and upgrade bilateral relations".

Medopad is set to expand globally following its new Chinese backing. The company said it would create 500 new jobs in the UK by 2020 as a result of the funding round. UBS acted as financial adviser on the deal.