VivaLNK Files for IPO, Pioneering Medical-Grade Wearables with Google, Stanford, and Reckitt Partnerships

In recent years, medical devices have been moving into the home, with healthcare scenarios extending to domestic settings. Smart health wearables serve as the vanguard of this expansion, meeting consumers’ health management needs through intelligent and miniaturized designs. By integrating with big data, AI, and other technologies, these devices are beginning to play a pivotal role in health risk assessment, intelligent early warning, and personalized health management, thereby becoming a key entry point to the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem.

Market research firm Ahadome predicts that the application of smart wearable devices in healthcare will become mainstream, accounting for more than 50%. The year 2012 was also known as “Year One of Wearable Devices,” yet many products ended up as mere “toys.”

To gain greater influence in the healthcare sector, wearable devices must penetrate the core of medical practice and achieve higher irreplaceability.

Many companies are striving to break through barriers and enter the healthcare center market. Apple launched an ECG monitoring feature on the Apple Watch that has received FDA clearance, and iRhythm, which went public in 2016, reached a market capitalization of $891 million.

While most products still lack authoritative certifications and are mired in a bubble of homogenization, VCBeat has identified VivaLNK, a medical IoT company originating from Silicon Valley. Since its inception, the company has collaborated with Google on an "electronic skin" project. Its flagship medical-grade flexible smart temperature patch has obtained multiple professional certifications, including FDA, CE Medical, and TGA approvals. Furthermore, through a partnership with Reckitt Benckiser, a Fortune 500 company, VivaLNK has successfully achieved global commercialization.

Building on its foundational technology platform, VivaLNK has launched the “Developer Program” for the global market, aiming to co-create an Internet of Health Things (IoHT) ecosystem with partners. Currently, VivaLNK is collaborating with AlacrityCare and Myia to drive innovation in remote diagnosis and treatment for cancer and cardiovascular diseases. In addition to providing clinical solutions for cancer and cardiovascular conditions, VivaLNK has partnered with Stanford University and Case Western Reserve University to conduct research on stress management.

How is VivaLNK, with its capabilities in both underlying technology platform development and integrated hardware-software development, poised to become a cornerstone of innovation in the healthcare sector? To explore this, VCBeat conducted exclusive interviews with Dr. Li Jiang, Founder and CEO of VivaLNK, and Ms. Xu Lei, the company’s spokesperson.

VivaLNK possesses independently developed, disruptive electronic skin (eSkin®) medical sensing technology and advanced medical cloud-based AI data analytics capabilities. Committed to enabling multi-parameter vital signs monitoring and physiological analysis in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) sector through medical-grade wearable devices, VivaLNK provides its market partners with comprehensive solutions for health management, patient monitoring, and remote care.

Currently, VivaLNK’s three flagship products are the Fever Scout temperature monitoring patch, the Vital Scout health monitoring patch, and the ECG monitoring patch. All three products are built on VivaLNK’s proprietary eSkin® medical sensing technology, which enhances the quality of dynamic vital data management through soft, wearable patches that provide real-time monitoring of vital signs. This approach overcomes the limitations of traditional devices, such as their inability to provide continuous monitoring and their bulkiness, while also addressing the lack of precision prevalent in existing wearable devices on the market.

The three critical pillars of medical data—vital signs, biochemical markers, and medical imaging—are indispensable, with body temperature serving as a fundamental indicator of health. Fever Scout, paired with medical-grade double-sided adhesive patches, can be applied to the axilla of children to enable real-time, “zero-distance” temperature monitoring.

Xu Lei told VCBeat, “Fever in children can easily trigger febrile seizures and other conditions, requiring parents to monitor their child’s status in real time. Postoperative infections or other complications may also be indicated by changes in body temperature. VivaLNK collaborates with companies such as AlacrityCare to effectively connect patients with caregivers during cancer treatment, enabling better tracking of physiological parameters—including body temperature—throughout the course of therapy. The company is also committed to providing clinical-grade monitoring solutions for hospitals.”

In addition to its body temperature monitoring product line, VivaLNK has also developed a series of products for monitoring heart rate and atrial fibrillation-related health signs based on patented technology. The hardware features top-tier sensors, while in terms of soft capabilities, VivaLNK leverages AI, cloud computing, and other technologies to support data integration and analysis.

Taking Vivalnk’s Vital Scout health monitoring patch as an example, it leverages heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV)—with HRV referring to the variations in time intervals between consecutive heartbeats, serving as a valuable indicator for predicting sudden cardiac death and arrhythmic events—along with professional backend algorithms to help consumers better manage their health. By using a small patch adhered to the chest and a companion app, users can view indices such as stress, sleep, exercise, and recovery on their devices.

In the realm of vital signs monitoring, VivaLNK leverages patented chip and sensor technologies, along with advanced material innovations, to achieve medical-grade data collection and integration while delivering the portability and intelligence characteristic of consumer-grade products.

In addition to partnering with Google at its inception to launch the “electronic skin,” VivaLNK has recently entered into a collaboration with Stanford University. The Vital Scout health monitoring patch, independently developed by VivaLNK, will assist researchers in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in real-time, long-term tracking of stress levels and other key physiological parameters in adolescents. This project aims to investigate whether there is a correlation between stress levels and depression among adolescents.

In late December last year, VivaLNK secured another partnership, collaborating with the world-renowned Case Western Reserve University. The university will utilize VivaLNK’s devices to examine the relationship between key physiological metrics and stress levels. These critical indicators include heart rate, respiratory rate, sweat rate, and the acute-to-chronic workload ratio, which is a established metric for assessing sports injury risk.

The demand in this market will be substantial. According to VCBeat’s 2018 special report on the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), the global IoMT market is projected to exceed $158 billion by 2022, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.9% from 2017 to 2022. Among various applications, vital signs monitoring, asset management, and personnel management have emerged as the most prevalent use cases for IoMT.

Most of the earliest consumer-grade products for vital signs monitoring have turned into bubbles, while the remaining ones are striving to break through by upgrading consumer-grade devices to medical-grade standards.

Dr. Robert Pearl, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, stated: “The main reasons for the limited adoption and promotion of health-grade wearable devices are their limited monitoring accuracy on one hand, and their inability to provide follow-up medical intervention services on the other.”

There is a solution to these two issues: obtaining physician endorsement of the data so that it can inform clinical decision-making. FDA clearance can lend credibility to the product in both respects.

In this regard, there are two leading companies that have established a strong presence: one is iRhythm, and the other is the tech giant Apple. The fortunes of these two companies are closely intertwined; when Apple launched the Apple Watch equipped with ECG monitoring, iRhythm’s stock price plummeted as a result.

iRhythm’s core product is the Zio® Patch, a wearable device for rapid arrhythmia detection. However, the Zio® Patch is available only by prescription and does not support real-time data transmission. After two weeks, patients mail the patch back to iRhythm, where data are analyzed on a cloud platform and the results are subsequently sent to the patient’s physician. This workflow fails to deliver the portable recording capabilities and instant lifestyle management and feedback offered by VivaLNK’s products.

For users, merely presenting data offers limited value; devices need to not only provide interactive feedback but also propose solutions after data presentation.

Dr. Li Jiang stated, “Electronic skin faces technical barriers in circuit design, structural design, packaging processes, and signal processing. Vivalnk’s upcoming ECG product can identify atrial fibrillation, features data alerts and automatic monitoring, and is reusable, helping users manage their lifestyle.”

Apple, which dictates the direction of the tech tide, has also made substantial investments in vital signs monitoring. News reports have indicated that multiple individuals have had their lives saved thanks to the abnormal heart rhythm alerts provided by the Apple Watch.

While the FDA clearance of Apple Watch products is commendable and signifies a trend toward greater precision in medical wearable devices, authoritative in-hospital monitoring currently focuses on areas near the heart. Data obtained from the wrist typically requires further verification.

VivaLNK’s ability to develop user-friendly, data-analytics-enabled, medical-grade IoHT cutting-edge sensing devices and platform-level solutions is underpinned by its strong team.

Founder Li Jiang earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, holds 23 U.S. patents, and previously served in senior management roles at high-tech companies such as AMD and Spansion. The impetus for founding VivaLNK stemmed from his personal experience seeking medical care in the United States, where his slower-than-average heart rate nearly led to a misdiagnosis.

“Due to the lack of my routine ECG data, hospitals found it difficult to make accurate diagnoses. Over the past few decades, the IT industry has advanced at a rapid pace, yet the healthcare sector has been slow to reap the benefits of technological innovation. I immediately decided to devote myself to the digital health industry,” said Dr. Li Jiang.

Apple builds its teams through aggressive poaching from multiple companies. In contrast, VivaLNK has expanded its team in a more organic and natural manner. Take VivaLNK’s medical advisor, Jeffery Olgin, as an example: a world-class expert in cardiac electrophysiology, he agreed to join VivaLNK after a single meal, drawn by his passion for Chinese cuisine.

Leveraging its core foundational technologies and a top-tier team, VivaLNK was introduced to Hangzhou as a Category A key-funded enterprise through the “5050 Overseas High-Level Talent Entrepreneurship Program” shortly after its establishment in Silicon Valley, earning it the designation of a National High-Tech Enterprise. Moving forward, VivaLNK will continue to strengthen its presence in both the Chinese and global markets, providing comprehensive IoT monitoring solutions for institutions and individuals.