ROCHESTER, N.Y., Jan. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Casana, a healthcare technology firm that is reinventing in-home health monitoring, announced today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding, bringing the total capital raised to $46 million. This round of financing was led by Morningside with participation from Matrix Partners, a large vertically integrated healthcare provider, as well as Series A investors General Catalyst and Outsiders Fund.
Casana will use its Series B financing to accelerate the development and commercialization of the firm’s first product, The Heart Seat™. Casana is currently pursuing FDA clearance for The Heart Seat. The Heart Seat’s first commercial offering is expected to be a cuffless blood pressure monitor built into the toilet seat, which is designed to support in-home health management, specifically to help people manage and control high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Casana is also investing in several studies to investigate the potential value of The Heart Seat for health systems and risk-bearing organizations.
Casana CEO Austin McChord said, “In a world overrun with push notifications, nudges, and reminders, our product needs none of that. The Heart Seat is different from virtually every other vitals monitoring product, in that it takes no time out of your day and works best when you forget it’s even there.”
In-home health monitoring, better known as remote patient monitoring (RPM), has grown in relevance due to the advent of COVID-19, as well as the subsequent need for continuous monitoring solutions outside of the clinical setting. The global RPM market surged in value during 2020, reaching $23.2 billion and is expected to grow five times larger by 2025. The remote patient monitoring market in North America alone is expected to surpass $72.8 billion by 2025, according to a report released by MarketsandMarkets. The biggest challenge for most home health monitoring devices is poor patient compliance. Casana’s Heart Seat aims to help mitigate this problem, and provides effortless daily monitoring and reporting of multiple health parameters for patients.
“As healthcare moves from the doctor’s office into the home, convenient home monitoring is becoming increasingly important for patient care. Casana’s Heart Seat holds the unique promise of reliably and conveniently measuring multiple health parameters including Blood Pressure, Heart Rate and Oxygen Saturation, all in the privacy of the patient’s home,” said Dr Jeffrey M Leiden, Chairman of the Board of Casana, and former CEO and Chairman of Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Casana differentiates itself from other companies trying to develop RPM solutions by creating an effortless experience for patients and a seamless experience for physicians. The Heart Seat is designed to enable patients to receive monitoring at home without the need for behavior changes—addressing the adherence issues that plague many other devices—while providing physicians and other caregivers with reliable and actionable trend data from the home.
“Casana’s Heart Seat has the potential to fundamentally change the way cardiovascular disease is monitored, by changing the venue of care from the clinic to the home and providing insights to the clinician,” said Gerald Chan, Co-founder of Morningside. “We invest in bold ideas backed by solid science, and are proud to partner with Casana in this endeavor.”
This series B funding will allow Casana to accelerate FDA submission of the Heart Seat with the goal to obtain FDA approval and bring this important new device to patients in 2023.
About Casana
Casana is unlocking a new category in healthcare technologies that enable effortless, integrated, and consistent in-home health monitoring. Casana’s first product, The Heart Seat™ is an IoT health monitoring toilet seat that captures clinically relevant measurements, including heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygenation. Casana’s mission is to assist medical teams in their care management of patients with chronic conditions beyond the four walls of the hospital, starting with hypertension. Casana was founded in 2018 by Dr. Nicholas Conn, whose vision was to use passive, connected sensors to solve the challenges of managing health at home. He developed The Heart Seat during his Ph.D. work at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
For more information about Casana, please visit www.casanacare.com and follow us on our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Casana is actively hiring: casanacare.com/about/#careers
About Morningside
Morningside was founded in 1986 by the Chan family to make venture capital and private equity investments. The group is characterized by its long-term outlook in company-building and by its unwavering commitment to acting ethically. Solid and creative science is what drives Morningside’s investments.
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