Mendota Heights, MN-based Healthsense has raised a $7 million Series D round to finance customer support, sales, engineering and account management.
The company is also planning a series of pilot studies to test how their eNeighbor system can be introduced in the home and individual residences. The round included Merck Global Health, Fallon Community Health Plan, Ziegler, Radius Ventures and the West Health Investment Fund.
Healthsense offers one of the most comprehensive home care solutions on the market. It includes an impressive passive sensor solution, multiple emergency alert systems, and a complete SaaS monitoring platform.
eNeighbor uses sensors placed throughout an individual’s home to track their Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and establish a baseline for what would be a normal “routine”. This baseline “routine” is then used to passively determine when the resident may need assistance without the resident needing to push a button or actively alert anyone. The system is also capable of sensing significant and unpredictable events such as sudden falls.
According to the company website, earlier identification of changing health conditions reduces hospitalizations and ER visits, lowers the cost of interventions and slows the progression through the continuum of care. I think the key value proposition of the eNeighbor system is that it helps identify emerging conditions near the onset, which keeps a minor issue from becoming an acute incident that could threaten an older individual’s health and independence.
The eNeighbor solution also includes a wearable personal emergency response system which they call PERs+. The PERs+ device, besides acting as a wearable call pendant with a button the user can push to indicate an emergency situation, is also one of the ADL sensors in the eNeighbor system.
Another feature of the eNeighbor platform is what the company calls eNeighbor Vitals which enables daily vital signs measurement and data aggregation using a cloud-based software-as-a-service SaaS solution called HealthsenseAdvantage. Readings are tracked daily against pre-determined thresholds, and if a user’s daily reading falls outside of preset threshold an alert is sent to caregivers.
In addition to the wearable PERs+ device, the company also makes a wall-mounted alert system called eCall meant for use in assisted living facilities. The eCall system works over a scalable enterprise-grade WiFi network and instantly transmits data to providers on wireless devices about the resident and location of the alert.
I think the Healthsense solution is very powerful, particularly their passive system for determining Activities of Daily Learning (ADLs) and identifying unusual deviation from daily routines. Its clearly better suited for an assisted living environment in its current form, but if the company can successfully scale it to be utilized in a true home setting their investors should be very please with their rate of return.
