Siren Care Raises $11.8M in Series B Funding to Advance Smart Socks for Diabetic Foot Monitoring

VCBeat has learned that Siren Care, a developer of smart medical supplies, recently completed an $11.8 million Series B financing round. The round was led by Anathem Ventures, with participation from Khosla Ventures, DCM, and Founders Fund. Since its founding in 2015, the company has raised a total of $22 million across three funding rounds. The proceeds from this round will be used to commercially promote its remote patient monitoring solutions.

Siren Care is a technology company founded in 2015 by Ran Ma, Henk Jan Scholten, and Jie Fu. The wearable health technology developed by Siren seamlessly integrates into users' daily lives while providing real-time feedback to patients and their physicians. Siren Care won the TechCrunch CES 2017 competition, and its innovative wearable device was awarded the "Best of Innovation" award at CES 2018.

With a vision to prevent complications from chronic diseases and aging, Siren Care has developed an innovative wearable health product—the Smart Socks—to address the issue of diabetic complications.

Among patients with diabetes, approximately 60% to 70% suffer from some form of neuropathy. Diabetic peripheral neuropathy is one such condition, typically manifesting first in the feet and toes. It is caused by multiple factors, including the duration of diabetes, metabolic factors, mechanical nerve injury, and lifestyle. Sores or minor wounds on the feet of diabetic patients can rapidly progress into more serious complications. In fact, over 50% of diabetic foot ulcers become infected; since these wounds often fail to heal, amputation is frequently required to prevent the spread of infection to other parts of the body.

With these smart socks, healthcare professionals can utilize temperature sensors to monitor for inflammation in the feet of diabetic patients, thereby facilitating disease management. It is reported that Siren Care equips each sock with a built-in battery offering a battery life of up to six months. The socks remain in deep sleep mode during storage and only activate when worn by the patient. Additionally, the socks are machine-washable. Physicians can assess whether inflammation is present in the patient’s feet by analyzing changes in foot temperature.

Startup teams in the U.S. health tech sector are typically composed of “academia-focused professors and executives with years of business experience,” and Siren Care is no exception.

Co-founder and CEO Ran Ma holds a Master’s degree in Biology from Northwestern University in the United States and a Master’s degree from Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. She has extensive experience in medical device prototyping, project management, business development, and marketing. As a biomedical engineer and entrepreneur, she is dedicated to the interdisciplinary fields of bio-business and medicine, focusing on healthcare consulting, marketing and strategic development, biomedical device design, biotechnology, and biotech entrepreneurship.

She was the first to propose the concept of Siren Care—“a seamless, wearable technology.” Ran Ma believes that data feedback from wearable technology is key to disease prevention, particularly in the fields of chronic diseases and aging.

At the 7th International Diabetes Workshop in 2015, Ran Ma, Jie Fu, and Henk Jan Scholten co-founded Siren Care in San Francisco.

Co-founder and CTO Jeff has over 10 years of experience in hardware manufacturing. He has designed and manufactured a variety of hardware products and integrated them into the team’s offerings, with the aim of developing life-saving innovative products.

Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Henk Jan Scholten has many years of experience in the apparel manufacturing industry, having worked at companies such as H&M, Inditex, and ASOS.

Chief Business Officer David Castiglioni has driven the commercialization of numerous novel medical device platforms. With over 20 years of experience in medical device sales and marketing, he brings extensive commercial expertise to the Siren Care leadership team.

Castiglioni will be responsible for the commercialization of Siren Care’s first product, with duties including leading and driving sales, go-to-market strategies, strategic partnerships, and clinical trials.

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) is a healthcare approach that leverages the latest information technology to collect patient data beyond the scope of traditional healthcare settings. In conventional workflows, remote patient monitoring involves taking existing medical monitoring devices home, with data either manually entered by patients or transmitted wirelessly to a central hub.

This poses numerous operational and experiential challenges for patients, and its clinical efficacy remains questionable. Extensive research has demonstrated that on-site measurements performed once or twice daily yield limited clinical benefits and are associated with poor patient adherence.

Siren Care will significantly increase the volume of clinical data obtained by shifting to remote patient monitoring via wearable devices. RPM enables clinicians to track patients’ health status on a daily basis, rather than relying on routine scheduled check-ups or telemedicine consultations.

Siren Care offers a state-of-the-art remote patient monitoring solution that continuously tracks patients’ foot temperatures. Compared to visual inspections by healthcare professionals, remote temperature monitoring improves the detection of ulcer-related outcomes by 87%.

Meanwhile, Siren Care has pioneered the use of Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) in patients with diabetes and neuropathy. It is the first device to integrate wireless continuous temperature monitoring into a wearable product. Siren Care’s smart socks help detect potentially unnoticed wounds by monitoring temperatures across six areas of the wearer’s feet. To the wearer, these socks are indistinguishable from ordinary socks.

When used with a mobile application, the wearer can monitor temperature variations between one foot and the other in real time. If the temperature in a specific area is significantly higher than that of the surrounding tissue, it may indicate persistent inflammation due to injury.

Smart socks can wirelessly connect to a patient’s smartphone, relaying health information to physicians for remote monitoring of foot conditions. These socks accurately and continuously collect temperature data from the wearer’s feet, consistent with clinical observations made by physicians.

Currently, podiatrists largely rely on clinic visits to manually monitor temperature changes, as elevated temperature is a precursor to diabetic foot ulcers. Ulcers can form within hours or days and deteriorate rapidly between appointments.

Siren Care’s first commercial product is temperature-monitoring socks that connect wirelessly to a software application, enabling physicians to automatically assess patients’ risk of developing diabetic foot ulcers. If left unmonitored, diabetic foot ulcers can lead to serious complications, such as amputation.

Siren Care’s technology enables real-time detection and early intervention, which can prevent severe complications. These complications lead to nearly 100,000 lower-limb amputations among patients in the United States each year, imposing losses of over $40 billion on the U.S. healthcare system.

Siren Care’s remote monitoring solution proved particularly valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it enabled healthcare providers to monitor patients remotely and reserve in-person clinic visits for those with urgent needs. Meanwhile, the recent expansion of Medicare telehealth reimbursement by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has allowed physicians to offer more patient monitoring services. Ran Ma stated, “During the pandemic, by integrating patients and healthcare workers into virtual monitoring systems, the company was able to remain profitable, prevent job losses, and make it more convenient for patients to continue receiving care.”

It is well known that COVID-19 can cause severe, even fatal, damage to the human immune system. Remote patient monitoring and telemedicine can help these patients avoid exposure risks during the pandemic. Telemedicine can provide routine care for chronic disease patients at high risk, while remote patient monitoring can proactively alert patients or physicians to potential health issues.

Remote Patient Monitoring models allow patients to receive shorter hospital treatments and continue their recovery at home after discharge, while ensuring effective rehabilitation outcomes. Without remote patient monitoring, the transition phase can be challenging for many individuals. Once discharged, patients often have little or no medical support and may be uncertain about when to seek further care. Connected devices alleviate this burden by continuously transmitting critical data to healthcare providers, enabling them to promptly identify and address any emerging issues.

In Siren Care’s business model, doctors and patients can maintain continuous contact, allowing treatment to proceed even when patients are unable to access healthcare facilities. This provides patients with a sense of security, knowing that their physicians are still monitoring and caring for them. For patients with high-risk neurological conditions, there is often a lack of ability and awareness for self-monitoring; without close surveillance and regular check-ups, their condition may go unnoticed, potentially becoming life-threatening. With the solution provided by Siren Care, continuous patient monitoring is ensured, effectively preventing severe foot complications associated with diabetes.

In terms of its prospects, hospital readmission within 30 days after discharge for diabetic patients is closely associated with high annual medical costs. In addition to burdening the healthcare system, it imposes financial and emotional stress on patients and their families, and often leads to poor treatment outcomes. Both government agencies and healthcare institutions have prioritized reducing readmission rates, and remote patient monitoring programs can serve as an effective intervention.

Furthermore, the populations most in need of effective alternative medical services are often those in remote areas with scarce healthcare resources. In these remote regions, poor dietary habits and insufficient dissemination of health knowledge can lead toThe surge in the number of diabetes patients has alsoRemote Patient Monitoring Offers Application Scenarios. With the widespread adoption of 4G and the rollout of 5G, connectivity between patients in remote areas and physicians is no longer a barrier, making remote patient monitoring a beneficial approach.