The critical care data analytics technology developer was founded in 2017 and has its system in testing on 200 hospital beds in the Michigan Medicine centre.

Fifth Eye, a US-based critical care data analytics spinout from University of Michigan, has raised $2.4m in seed capital from 35 investors led by state government-backed agency Invest Michigan.

Founded in 2017, Fifth Eye has designed an analytics platform that records the state of a patient’s vital signs while in emergency or critical care by interpreting electrocardiogram (ECG) waves using machine learning rather than relying on checking the signs manually.

Fifth Eye’s platform works with existing ECG systems deployed in clinical settings and is designed to update clinicians on the patient every two minutes.

The technology is based on three systems, an Advanced Analytics Platform, the Analytic for Hemodynamic Instability (AHI) and Barreleye. AHI predicts whether a deterioration in vital signs is likely, while Barreleye monitors traumatic brain injuries and forecasts potential knock-on effects.

Fifth Eye’s technology builds on research from the University of Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care (MCIRCC). It is already harvesting data from 200 hospital beds in the university’s academic health system, Michigan Medicine.

The spinout was co-founded by Michigan alumnus and entrepreneur Jen Baird, who now acts as chief executive. Three co-founders from MCIRCC will join Fifth Eye full-time following the seed round – Mark Salamango as chief technology officer, Ashwin Belle as director of analytics and Bryce Benson as data scientist.

Kevin Ward, executive director of MCIRCC, is a co-inventor of Fifth Eye’s underlying technology, as are Kayvan Najarian, associate professor of computational medicine, emergency medicine and bioinformatics, and Harm Derksen, professor of mathematics.

Kelly Sexton, associate vice-president for research, technology transfer and innovation partnerships at the office for tech transfer, said: “The MCIRCC team knew that they had created a technology with the potential to impact patient care and outcomes at hospitals around the world.

“It is wonderful when we have the opportunity to connect this type of transformative technology with an experienced entrepreneur so that this vision can become reality.”