EarlySense, the market leader in contact-free sensing solutions, has completed a $39 million financing round, with the majority of the funding coming from Hill-Rom, a global provider of medical technologies and the world’s leading hospital bed manufacturer, and Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, the venture capital and growth equity investment arm of Wells Fargo & Company.
Other new investors include BlueRed Capital, Israel Innovation Fund, Argos Capital and Hotung Capital. Existing investors, including Pitango Venture Capital and JK&B Venture Capital, participated as well.
“Millions of beds worldwide require our continuous sensing and predictive analytics. As we continue our exciting journey to make our solution the standard of care, we are looking for the best strategic and financial partners to bring our solution to every bed,” said Avner Halperin, CEO of EarlySense. “We are honored to have Hill-Rom and Wells Fargo as our partners – each a unique leader and a globally revered brand in its field. Their commitment to enhancing patient care and safety empowers us to help healthcare professionals treat hundreds of thousands of patients. In 2018 alone, our technology helped providers save over $100 million, and played the pivotal role in preventing 3,000 deaths, 5,000 patient falls and 4,000 cardiac arrests …and this is only the beginning.”
Hill-Rom’s investment comes on the heels of the hospital bed manufacturer’s launch of the Centrella® Smart+ Bed, the world’s first hospital bed with integrated continuous contact-free heart rate and respiratory rate sensing and analytics technology.
“Hill-Rom is committed to enhancing patient safety through cutting-edge technologies. Our Centrella bed is transforming inpatient care with integrated advanced sensing and analytics, offering a complete patient safety platform to assist clinicians in providing the highest level of care,” said John Groetelaars, president and CEO of Hill-Rom. “Our decision to change the standard of care by integrating EarlySense into our Centrella platform, and now our move to deepen our exclusive relationship with EarlySense through a significant equity investment, are key steps in that direction.”
EarlySense’s FDA-cleared and CE-approved solutions are used by healthcare facilities around the world. EarlySense technology leverages Big Data and advanced machine learning algorithms to generate highly accurate health information, empowering clinicians to achieve early detection of adverse events and improved patient outcomes. The combination of accurate identification and prediction enables proactive intervention by health teams and enhanced patient safety. The company’s contact-free, under-the-mattress sensing platform improves the patient experience, and provides 24/7 (100 times per minute) monitoring for patients who were previously monitored manually only every few hours.
“As a global financial leader, Wells Fargo helps enable companies to become market leaders in their respective areas of focus. Wells Fargo Strategic Capital seeks to invest in companies that deliver a positive impact on patients and those who treat them,” said John Ryan, Managing Director of Wells Fargo Strategic Capital. “We look forward to working with EarlySense’s management and valuable partners such as Hill-Rom to improve how care is provided globally.”
“These are exciting times for EarlySense. The company has transitioned to a SaaS-like business model, and has since more than tripled its installed base in hospitals and nursing homes within the last year alone. The partnership with Hill-Rom is a natural fit to fuel the company’s vision of ‘an EarlySense sensor in every bed,’” said Ittai Harel, Managing Partner of Pitango Venture Capital and Chairman of EarlySense’s Board of Directors. “With the growth financing completed, we expect accelerating sales growth in the U.S. and globally, the adding of new AI-based analytics, and further expanding the company’s patient and health monitoring solutions offering, from hospitals to nursing homes and to the home.”
