The market for medical wearable startups is experiencing significant growth as these innovative companies develop wearable devices that monitor and track various health metrics. With the increasing demand for remote patient monitoring and personalised healthcare, these startups are poised to revolutionise the healthcare industry by providing convenient and accurate health monitoring solutions.
Now, Boston-based STAT Health announced that it has emerged from stealth to introduce a 24/7 in-ear wearable that measures blood flow to the head to better understand symptoms such as dizziness, brain fog, headaches, fainting, and fatigue that occur upon standing.
Additionally, the company announced that it has secured $5.1M in a seed round of funding from J2 Ventures, BonAngels Venture Partners, and a diverse group of prominent angel investors.
The company has also received grant funding from the U.S. Air Force.
World’s smallest wearable
STAT claims to be the world’s smallest wearable and features advanced optical sensors, including an accelerometer, a pressure sensor, temperature sensors, AI edge computing, multi-day battery life, and a micro solar panel.
As per the company’s claims, STAT can be worn in-ear 24/7 and it co-exists with more than 90% of devices that go in/around the user’s ear.
It can charge using solar while in-ear, some may never have to take it out to charge.
The STAT earpiece auto-detects a user’s every stand to track how Heart Rate, Blood Pressure Trend, and Blood Flow to the Head change in response.
STAT distills that into an Up Score to track time spent upright, and a Flow Score to help users pace their recovery by watching for blood flow abnormalities.
STAT then learns about each user’s unique body over time to provide personalised coaching to promote healthy lifestyle choices, such as informed hydration/salt intake, and paced rehab.
To fit into a wearable form factor, STAT uses an optical sensor instead of ultrasound and taps into a shallow ear artery to measure a proxy to ultrasound-derived Cerebral Blood Flow.
Clinically tested at Johns Hopkins and peer-reviewed in the March 2023 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), the device has been shown to predict fainting minutes before it happens.
“It’s well understood that the ear is a biometric gold mine because of its proximity to the brain and major arteries. This allows for new biometrics such as Blood Flow to Head and Blood Pressure Trends to be possible,” said Daniel Lee, co-founder, and CEO of STAT Health.
“In addition, the ear is largely isolated from data corruption caused by arm motion – a problem that plagues current wearables and prevents them from monitoring heart metrics during many daily tasks. The ear is really the ideal window into the brain and heart.”
To improve life for people with cardiovascular disease
Founded in 2020 by Daniel Lee and Paul Jin (who previously ran Bose’s Health Product Innovation Group, and Lee was the inventor of Bose sleepbuds) STAT Health is a digital health company that aims to improve the quality of life for people living with cardiovascular disease, starting with orthostatic syndromes.
STAT does this through its hardware platform — its in-ear wearable — and targeted software programs built atop STAT’s 24/7 cardiac data.
