Sensible Medical Innovations Ltd., which has developed a a non-invasive thoracic fluid status monitor, has closed a financing round led by Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX). Sources inform ''Globes'' that the company raised $20 million. The company declined to confirm the amount. The company will use the proceeds to obtain additional clinical data and commercialize the product globally.
Boston Scientific is preparing to launch Sensible Medical's product, subject to obtaining certification in the US, Europe, and Japan, which the company expects to obtain within six months. Boston Scientific will not have marketing exclusivity, but it has already established the teams that will carry out the work.
Other investors in the round were Shanghai LongTec Medical Technology Co., Ltd. and current investors SCP Vitalife Partners and Genesis Partners. Previous investors include TriVentures and Israel-United States Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD-F), and private investors Yitzhak Forer, Dov Moran, and Shlomo Tirosh.
Sensible Medical was founded in 2007 by five entrepreneurs, mostly veterans of the IDF Intelligence Corps technology units who met at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology's School of Electrical Engineering. The company minimized military radar systems to measure fluids in the body, with an initial focus on fluid in the lungs in order to warn of heart attacks, of which fluid in the lungs are a symptom.
There is no home non-invasive monitor of fluid in the lungs, and doctors usually ask patients to weigh themselves and rush to hospital if there is a sudden rise in weight. In other cases, patients arrive at hospital with severe shortness of breath. In both cases, a heart attack is caught too late, and is harder to recover from it. Early warning of heart attacks can halt it before its develops, preventing hospitalization, complications, and further deterioration of the disease.
Patients in serious condition often have hemodynamic monitors implanted. Boston Scientific develops such devices, but has acquired an Israeli company in the field, Remon Medical Technologies for $80 million plus royalties, although its product is not on the market, so far as is known.
The global heart failure diagnosis and immediate treatment market is estimated at $5 billion a year.
Sensible Medical's product is also suitable for patients taking diuretic medication, recovering from a coronary artery disease related event or living with end stage renal disease
Sensible Medical CEO Amir Ronen told "Globes" that the product uses "see through walls" radio frequency technology that is accurate enough through clothing, so the device does not have to be attached directly to the torso. "Another advantage is that we accurately measure the amount of fluid in the lungs, while some other companies in the field develop devices that only measure a significant change in the amount of fluid," he says.
"Globes": Rafael Development Corporation portfolio company Kyma Medical Technologies is developing a similar product. What's the main difference between them?
Ronen: "We are two years ahead of them, we cracked the business model for marketing products through distribution channels of corporations, even though they have invasive products and are marketing slightly different non-invasive products."
Sensible Medical has raised $17 million prior to the current round, and has carried out clinical trials of its device on several dozen patients. The company will use part of the proceeds from the current round for additional trials.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 11, 2013
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