Vital Connect, a Silicon Valley-based remote patient monitoring company, has raised $10.6 million according to an SEC filing. The funding, from undisclosed investors, continues a round begun way back in April 2013, and brings the total funding for the round to $18 million out of a planned $20 million. A spokesperson for the company told MobiHealthNews that an official funding announcement is forthcoming, but declined to comment further at this time.
Vital Connect makes FDA-cleared disposable peel-and-stick health sensors that can measure single lead ECG, heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, skin temperature, posture including fall detection and severity, and steps and send that data to a connected app or hub via Bluetooth. From there, data is sent to a secure server where it can be accessed by the user's care providers. Vital Connect doesn't sell devices directly to patients, but instead sells to healthcare providers and other health companies.
In April, for instance, the John Muir Medical Center in Concord, California, launched a cardiac remote patient monitoring study using technology from Vital Connect and from digital health startup BePatient. The combined effort is called BeVital. The study is slated to last six months and will enroll 100 patients to start.
At HIMSS in March, Vital Connect announced the VitalPatch, a smaller lighter version of the company’s original HealthPatch MD peel-and-stick health sensor. VitalPatch measures the same vital signs as HealthPatch, but, unlike its predecessor, the whole device is single-use and fully disposable, which streamlines the workflow for inpatient and outpatient use cases.
At the same time, Vital Connect also announced that it had integrated its FDA-cleared biosensor patch with PhysIQ’s FDA-cleared personalized physiology analytics system. The integration is being piloted in clinical studies with heart failure patients across four VHA hospitals within the US Veterans Administration.
"I would say there is a lot of evolution in the space right now," Vital Connect VP for Product Management and Marketing Valeska Schroeder told MobiHealthNews in an interview at HIMSS. "If you have these conversations, close to 100 percent of providers think in five to 10 years, you’re going to have a lot more people wearing devices. You'll have a lot more patient monitoring, blurring the lines of what happens in the home versus what happens in the hospital, and you'll really raise the bar of staying connected to patients. The difference, I would say, is who thinks it’s possible now and how has that changed in the last couple of years. I think we’re continuing to see an increase in the number of providers who can really picture themselves and are excited about taking on the technology and having their future happening now."
