Reperio Health, the maker of an app-connected home wellness assessment kit marketed to employers, has raised $6 million is seed funding. The round was co-led by Caduceus Capital Partners and Rogue Venture Partners, and saw participation from Liquid 2 Ventures and G Ventures.

WHAT IT DOES

To enable at-home screenings, the Portland, Oregon-based company ships a kit directly to employees or individuals' homes that includes various biometric sensors measuring cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, resting heart rate and other health indicators.

A companion app guides users through each step of self-testing with voiceovers, animation and video, according to the company. Afterward, the app explains the users' results, provides customized suggestions and goals for lifestyle improvement, and offers the option to connect to a doctor for further consultation, according to Reperio's website.

Travis Rush, Reperio's CEO and cofounder (and previously the CEO of online contact lens subscription service Sightbox, which sold to Johnson & Johnson in 2017, but was shut down in late 2019), said that his company's offering is a more convenient approach to traditional wellness screening programs offered by many larger employers.

“Employers understand the opportunity in helping employees proactively manage their health," he said in a statement. "It’s been the catalyst for companies investing in a multitude of workplace wellness programs in recent years. We’ve seen the shift over the last decade to a higher adoption of virtual care and telehealth, and realized that we could give people easier access to their data and ultimately more control over their own health.”

WHAT IT'S FOR

Reperio said that the new funds would help accelerate its growth and support their initial employer-market launch. Down the road, the company said it also is looking to extend availability of its kits and services to health plans, retirement facilities, fitness and nutrition practitioners, and consumers themselves.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

The at-home health testing and monitoring space has grown steadily over the years, with a few of the market's better known players enjoying a boost in business thanks to COVID-19.

Chief among these would be Everlywell, which raised a $175 million Series D round in December for the mail-order health and wellness testing kit it markets to consumers and enterprises.

Also in the mail-order test space are:

•  LetsGetChecked, which raised $71 million in May.
• Thriva, which closed a $7.3 million Series A in 2019.
• Wellness-focused subscription service Base, which brought in $3.4 million last month alongside its launch.
• myLab BOX.

Meanwhile, other home diagnostics startups rely on the smartphone's camera to read test results, thus avoiding the need to mail back the testing kit. Names in this space include urinalysis and wound-care startup Healthy.io, which purchased competitor Inui Health last summer, and Scanwell Health.

Beyond the diagnostics space, Reperio's approach of combining biometrics sensors with virtual care services also calls to mind TytoCare's telehealth platform. The Israeli startup (which raised $50 million last year) uses a smart stethoscope and other connected sensors to better inform its telehealth providers, and sells the at-home kit both through its website and via retail partners.