StartX, the investment fund affiliated with Stanford University, has participated in a $5.5m series A round for US-based wearables producer Spry Health.
Venture capital firm Grove Ventures led the round, while Ovo Fund and Think+ also took part.
Spry Health has developed a clinical-grade wristband wearable called Loop that is able to continuously collect cardiovascular and respiratory data.
Loop generates electromagnetic waves that penetrate the skin and then detects the concentration of specific molecules in the blood. That data is uploaded to an analytics platform that provides an insight into the wearer’s health and identifies early warning signs.
The device is particularly aimed at critically and chronically ill patients. The company is aiming to achieve regulatory approval in the US early next year.
Guy Resheff, partner at Grove Ventures, has joined Spry Health’s board of directors.
Elad Ferber, co-founder of Spry Health, said: “This round of funding will allow us to reach thousands of more patients with our technology. Our past and current deployments with hundreds of patients allowed us to create an invaluable second by second dataset of health.
“In the last three years, we developed an extensive set of machine learning and expert systems algorithms that helps contextualise real-time, continuous physiological data and pinpoints signs of deterioration.
“As we reach more patients, we will continue to strengthen our advantage by providing broader monitoring capabilities across more conditions.”
– This article was amended on July 30 to reflect that StartX did not co-lead the round but participated in it. Additionally, the fellow investor was Think+ not Think. We apologise for these mistakes.
