Business Wire09.30.20
Bodyport, the digital health company focused on the detection and management of heart disease, has closed an $11.2 million Series A investment round. Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF) led the round and was joined by existing investors Playground Global and Initialized Capital, among others. The investment brings Bodyport’s total funding to $15.8 million and will help the company deepen key health partnerships and support the launch of a virtual cardiac clinic that brings intelligent interventions to its remote monitoring technology.
Co-founders and biomedical engineers Corey Centen and Sarah Smith founded Bodyport to develop a novel biomarker platform that could detect early signs of cardiovascular disease, incorporating proprietary sensor technology into a bathroom scale form factor. Rather than relying on wearables, the Bodyport Scale is designed to detect cardiac signals and biomarkers through a user's feet, powering algorithms that have the potential to predict risk and enable optimized, early interventions.
“Despite the fact that cardiovascular disease is largely preventable, it remains the leading global cause of death,” said Centen. “We’re focused on changing the way patients and care teams manage heart disease. By shifting the technology patients can access from a clinical setting to their own home, we are aiming to predict changes in health status before a hospital visit becomes necessary. Ultimately, this early detection could help push care delivery away from its reactive model, reducing costs and drastically improving the quality of life for patients dealing with chronic disease.”
The company is initially focused on improving the management of heart failure. Heart failure is a leading cause of hospitalizations—approximately 1 million per year—and associated healthcare spending of nearly $35 billion per year. By transforming cardiac monitoring into a simple daily step, Bodyport is aiming to augment the current standard of heart failure care by enabling more frequent monitoring, enhanced patient assessment, and earlier interventions by care teams.
Debbie Lin, investor and executive director at Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF), said: “We are very excited to work with the Bodyport team and to support an innovative technology that can develop new biomarkers in the cardiovascular space. Learning how the Bodyport technology could potentially complement pharmaceutical therapies for patients with various cardiovascular diseases is a tremendous opportunity.”
Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund’s Dr. Debbie Lin, Playground Global’s Bruce Leak, and Initialized Capital’s Garry Tan will join the board of directors.
Leak, a partner at Playground Global, said: “We have a strong conviction in Bodyport’s ability to advance virtual care for those with heart disease. Bodyport’s out-of-the-box solution is the first of its kind, treating remote heart health monitoring as a critical care service. The combination of the cardiac scale and analytics platform could allow patients with heart disease to stay healthy and in their own homes while giving health care providers the tools they need to make material improvements in the health of their patients.”
Tan, an investor and managing partner at Initialized Capital, added: “Hospitals and physicians need a way to safely monitor vulnerable patients' conditions without requiring in-person visits. Bodyport makes it easy to keep track of cardiac health remotely, which could help keep patients safe from both heart disease and this respiratory pandemic. We're proud to back this seasoned team, which has focused their careers on cardiovascular health.”
Bodyport also announced a collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital focused on furthering technology to prevent avoidable hospitalizations and to help discover and develop novel diagnostic biomarkers for the early detection of cardiovascular disease.
“The focus on the scale form factor captures some of the most valuable real estate available in biometric collection and biological assay development,” said Dr. Calum MacRae, vice chair for Scientific Innovation, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We look forward to our collaboration with Bodyport, and to advancing research in this area.”
Co-founders and biomedical engineers Corey Centen and Sarah Smith founded Bodyport to develop a novel biomarker platform that could detect early signs of cardiovascular disease, incorporating proprietary sensor technology into a bathroom scale form factor. Rather than relying on wearables, the Bodyport Scale is designed to detect cardiac signals and biomarkers through a user's feet, powering algorithms that have the potential to predict risk and enable optimized, early interventions.
“Despite the fact that cardiovascular disease is largely preventable, it remains the leading global cause of death,” said Centen. “We’re focused on changing the way patients and care teams manage heart disease. By shifting the technology patients can access from a clinical setting to their own home, we are aiming to predict changes in health status before a hospital visit becomes necessary. Ultimately, this early detection could help push care delivery away from its reactive model, reducing costs and drastically improving the quality of life for patients dealing with chronic disease.”
The company is initially focused on improving the management of heart failure. Heart failure is a leading cause of hospitalizations—approximately 1 million per year—and associated healthcare spending of nearly $35 billion per year. By transforming cardiac monitoring into a simple daily step, Bodyport is aiming to augment the current standard of heart failure care by enabling more frequent monitoring, enhanced patient assessment, and earlier interventions by care teams.
Debbie Lin, investor and executive director at Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF), said: “We are very excited to work with the Bodyport team and to support an innovative technology that can develop new biomarkers in the cardiovascular space. Learning how the Bodyport technology could potentially complement pharmaceutical therapies for patients with various cardiovascular diseases is a tremendous opportunity.”
Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund’s Dr. Debbie Lin, Playground Global’s Bruce Leak, and Initialized Capital’s Garry Tan will join the board of directors.
Leak, a partner at Playground Global, said: “We have a strong conviction in Bodyport’s ability to advance virtual care for those with heart disease. Bodyport’s out-of-the-box solution is the first of its kind, treating remote heart health monitoring as a critical care service. The combination of the cardiac scale and analytics platform could allow patients with heart disease to stay healthy and in their own homes while giving health care providers the tools they need to make material improvements in the health of their patients.”
Tan, an investor and managing partner at Initialized Capital, added: “Hospitals and physicians need a way to safely monitor vulnerable patients' conditions without requiring in-person visits. Bodyport makes it easy to keep track of cardiac health remotely, which could help keep patients safe from both heart disease and this respiratory pandemic. We're proud to back this seasoned team, which has focused their careers on cardiovascular health.”
Bodyport also announced a collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital focused on furthering technology to prevent avoidable hospitalizations and to help discover and develop novel diagnostic biomarkers for the early detection of cardiovascular disease.
“The focus on the scale form factor captures some of the most valuable real estate available in biometric collection and biological assay development,” said Dr. Calum MacRae, vice chair for Scientific Innovation, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We look forward to our collaboration with Bodyport, and to advancing research in this area.”
