EarlySense brings hospital care to the wireless era. Finally!

There are not many things more daunting than the sight of someone in a hospital bed attached to endless wires used to monitor their vital signs.

By HILLEL FULD
EarlySense Technology (photo credit: Courtesy)
EarlySense Technology
(photo credit: Courtesy)
There are not many things more daunting than the sight of someone in a hospital bed attached to endless wires used to monitor their vital signs.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, “Is this really the best we can do in 2020?” I mean, think about it, the world has gone wireless, from our communications to our battery charging to pretty much everything else, and yet, hospitals are still using wires like we were in 1980.
Today, an estimated 75% of hospital patients and more than 90% of post-acute care patients are “spot-checked.” This means that healthcare staff are manually checking patients who are attached to all of those wires and monitors once every four to eight hours for key vitals and patient-specific issues.
Spot-checking can be dangerous for patients because it creates a “data desert,” where clinicians and health staff are not being given the latest patient data, impacting their decision-making process. In the US alone, it is estimated that 1,000 patients die in hospitals every day from preventable adverse events, a number which we should do everything in our power to reduce.
There has to be a better way to care for patients, right
Enter EarlySense.
The company was co-founded in 2004 by Avner Halperin – a physicist, entrepreneur, inventor and holder of 25 US patents, and the father of a daughter with asthma – who had the initial idea to develop a solution that would empower parents to proactively care for their kids when dealing with asthma at home, to help prevent hospitalizations and risk of death. As they say, the rest is history.
Flash forward to today, and EarlySense provides contact-free continuous monitoring (CFCM) solutions for healthcare settings, primarily hospitals and nursing homes. Instead of being hooked up to wires, patients are monitored via a sensor placed under their bed mattress. Think “smart” hospital beds of the future. The CFCM sensors continuously track patient vitals, keeping health staff fully informed with accurate heart rate, respiratory rate and movement data, all without ever touching the patient.
By continuously tracking multiple data points every second (more than 100 data points per minute), health staff are provided with actionable health insights that can improve clinical outcomes. Nurses are notified of any changes in patient vital signs, receiving real-time alerts, to enable earlier identification and prevention of potentially harmful events. CFCM is clinically proven to help clinical staff prevent adverse events including cardiac or respiratory-related code-blue events, preventable ICU transfers, patient falls, pressure ulcers and hospital readmissions.
With technologies like CFCM, nursing homes and post-acute care facilities, which are facing rising numbers of clinically complex patients, are now empowered to enhance resident safety and simultaneously take on more medically complex patients. This technology helps them add a “safety net” to prevent adverse events and reduce costly patient hospitalizations and readmissions.
ANOTHER INTERESTING application is using continuous monitoring for patients being treated with opioid pain therapy, who may be at an increased risk of developing respiratory depression.
EarlySense has raised $150 million and is known as one of Israel’s top med-tech success stories.
It is a classic case of “Show me who your investors are and I will tell you who you are.” The company’s latest $39 million financing round included some truly incredible investors. The majority of the funding came from Hillrom (NYSE: HRC), a global provider of medical technologies and a leading hospital bed manufacturer, as well as Wells Fargo Strategic Capital. Other investors include BlueRed Capital, Israel Innovation Fund, Argos Capital and Hotung Capital, Pitango Venture Capital and JK&B Venture Capital. That is a remarkable list.
EarlySense’s technology is FDA-cleared and CE-approved, and is currently used in more than 200 global facilities. The company is headquartered in Ramat Gan, Israel and Woburn, Massachusetts and has over 120 employees.
In 2018, EarlySense monitored its millionth patient, helped health teams save over 180,000 patient hospital days, helped save over 3,000 lives, and helped health providers save over $100 million. EarlySense is projected to help global medical institutions save more than $3 billion over the next four years. These savings are realized due to EarlySense assisting health clinicians shorten hospital lengths-of-stay, reducing code-blue cardiac arrests by 86%, reducing ICU patient days by 45% and reducing hospital readmissions from post-acute care by 19%.
In December 2018, EarlySense’s technology was integrated into Hillrom’s “smart” Centrella hospital bed. As one of the nation’s leading hospital bed suppliers, the Hillrom partnership is bringing EarlySense’s monitoring technology to even more patients across America.
In addition to growing market adoption, EarlySense has been awarded several industry Awards. The company was recognized as a Deloitte Technology Fast50 company in both 2016 and 2017 and was named by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2017. Other awards include the MedTech Breakthrough Award for 2018 and 2019, and the prestigious Prix Galien MedTech Innovation Award this past year.
In April 2019, EarlySense appointed a new CEO, Matt Johnson, to continue the company’s work toward becoming the standard of care for patient-monitoring in hospitals, nursing homes and in the home. Halperin still serves on the EarlySense board.
EarlySense has clearly established itself as a global leader in contact-free continuous monitoring and is poised to impact thousands of more patients, as well as improve safety while reducing costs in healthcare facilities around the world.
I don’t know about you, but the thought of never seeing a loved one attached to wires in a hospital bed has me excited about this company and its potential global impact.