Myia Labs Secures $6.75M Seed Funding with Endorsement from American College of Cardiology to Advance AI-Powered Preventive Health Platform

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned from foreign media that Myia Labs (hereinafter referred to as “Myia”), a startup focused on developing intelligent health monitoring platforms, announced on December 4, 2018 (U.S. local time) that it had raised $6.75 million in seed funding led by BootstrapLabs and Zetta Venture Partners. Other participants in this financing round included Boston-based companies and the American College of Cardiology. The company declined to disclose its latest valuation following the funding round.

The newly injected capital will be used to develop Myia’s preventive healthcare platform. Meanwhile, the company stated that it would announce a partnership with a major U.S. healthcare services provider in the near future.

Image source: Myia official website

Myia, founded in 2017 and headquartered in California, USA, is an early-stage smart health monitoring platform. Myia primarily leverages wearable devices such as Apple Watch, Fitbit, and Motiv Ring to monitor the health status of patients with chronic diseases, aiming to predict relapses before they occur.

According to a report by the American College of Cardiology, one of the supporters of this funding round, cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure, affect more than 6.5 million people in the United States and are one of the leading drivers of hospital admissions. In fact, most of these cases can be prevented or hospitalizations reduced through proactive lifestyle changes and medication adjustments. Notably, evidence indicates that only 1% of heart failure patients currently receive the correct medication dosages during treatment.

Myia’s platform primarily extracts authentic patient health data from sensors and signal sources, leveraging AI technology to communicate changes in patients’ conditions to physicians and provide clinical decision support. The platform aims to reduce emergency visits among patients with chronic diseases and post-operative conditions (such as heart failure) and improve the quality of life for elderly individuals and their family members. Its technology is mainly used to monitor indicators such as heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and sleep data.

“We have had years of actual health data streams, but only with advances in machine learning and AI technologies can we begin to transform this data into trustworthy, actionable clinical recommendations and scale preventive virtual care in unprecedented ways,” said Simon MacGibbon (hereinafter referred to as MacGibbon), CEO of Myia.

He also stated that they believe remote medical monitoring will be a significant sector in the healthcare industry, and he pointed out that, to date, the data collected by wearable devices has offered little value to patients and healthcare providers. “How can healthcare providers succeed if they are unaware of what happens to their patients in 99.9% of cases?”

Currently, Myia employs 12 people in the United States and plans to significantly increase its headcount during the next round of financing.

Myia’s “head” management team also includes its Chief Medical Officer, Farzad Azimpour, and its Chief Technology Officer, Bryan Smith.

In an interview, MacGibbon stated that the involvement of American College of Cardiology would be a significant advantage for them, as the institution’s participation not only provides financial support but also offers Myia crucial professional advisory services and credit endorsement.

In the same week that Myia announced its financing, Amazon also announced a partnership with healthcare industry teams to leverage unstructured data for improving health outcomes.

“This funding gives us a two-year runway,” MacGibbon said, noting that it will allow Myia to acquire sufficient medical data to build its platform. “Accessing healthcare data and obtaining the endpoints needed to train algorithms is neither simple nor inexpensive.”

Myia, founded in 2017 and headquartered in California, USA, is an early-stage intelligent health monitoring platform. Myia primarily leverages wearable devices such as Apple Watch, Fitbit, and Motiv Ring to monitor the health status of patients with chronic diseases, aiming to predict relapses before they occur.

BootstrapLabs, founded in 2008 and headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, USA, is a venture capital firm specializing in the field of artificial intelligence. It primarily invests in early-stage startups and seed-round financing. Its key investment sectors include transportation, logistics, fintech, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The American College of Cardiology, founded in 1949 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit medical society dedicated to transforming cardiovascular care and improving patients’ heart health. Its journal, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, ranks first in influence among cardiovascular journals worldwide.