Entering sleep medicine is a global problem, with about 80% of patients with sleep apnea still undiagnosed. Several startups are using AI to try to solve the problem – one of them announced on Wednesday that it had raised $20 million to advance its sleep technology.
The Series B Funding Tour of Ensodata in Madison, Wisconsin is led by Questa Capital. CEO Justin Mortara said the company's total funding so far has reached $50 million.
Founded in 2015, Ensodata analyzed sleep research data from multi-muscle research or home sleep apnea test using AI. The platform studies patients' sleep phases and respiratory events to quickly detect events such as apnea, inflammation, and wake up.
Mortara explains that this technology that will be integrated into the provider's existing workflow can help clinicians diagnose sleep disorders faster and more consistently.
“Ensodata's technology saves clinicians time and enables private sleep labs and healthcare systems to provide patients with fast and accurate diagnosis, treatment and outcomes, while also generating more revenue by reducing clinicians' time to analyze data nearly 70% of the time.”
Traditionally, sleep technicians manually review sleep studies, each study can take several hours and scorers may vary. Ensodata's AI platform can automate this process and generate sleep reports in minutes, allowing clinicians to spend less time scoring and more time explaining results and caring for patients.
Running in SaaS business model, Mortara said Ensodata charges on a per-patient basis, rather than testing bases like most device manufacturers in sleep medicine.
He said his company has a wide variety of competitors in the sleep apnea diagnostic space—all mainly hardware developers rather than software solutions, including companies like Zoll and SleepImage.
He noted that Ensodata distinguishes itself by selling software as a medical device (SAMD).
“The FDA clearance solution is compatible with all leading devices, which means interoperability is a clear difference,” Motra said.
He added that Ensodata's SaaS model is also more scalable as the company charges less than per patient.
Of all its solutions, Ensodata serves over 125 customers and supports over 75,000 patients per month. Mortara said its target customers are providers of the field of sleep medicine, especially sleep centers in health systems, private sleep clinics, sleep management organizations and independent diagnostic testing facilities.
The company has completed case studies through the health system, including Commonspirit Health, Northwell Health, Rush University Health System and Sanford Health.
Photo: Franckreporter, Getty Images
