Orange Family Secures Tens of Millions in Series B+ Funding Led by Philips to Advance Respiratory Chronic Disease Management

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that Orange Family, a Chinese expert in chronic respiratory disease management, announced the completion of its RMB tens-of-millions B+ round financing, led by Philips and co-invested by Chongshan Capital. With this, Orange Family’s cumulative financing has exceeded RMB 100 million.

According to Orange Family, the funds raised in this round will be primarily used for developing new products, expanding the sales team, boosting product sales, and increasing the scale of its customer base.

Orange Family, established in 2014, is a service provider specializing in the management of chronic respiratory diseases, committed to comprehensive management encompassing initial screening, referral, treatment, and rehabilitation of respiratory conditions.

The company not only offers portable wearable medical devices such as the “Orange Pulse Oximeter” and the “Remote Portable Pulmonary Function Tester,” but has also pioneered in China the establishment of a “Chronic Respiratory Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Management System” on its cloud-based doctor-patient interaction platforms, “Orange Health” and “Orange Doctor.” This system provides patients with chronic respiratory diseases with a one-stop remote home-based diagnosis and treatment management solution, encompassing screening and diagnosis, clinical assessment, personalized treatment, and follow-up testing.

After years of development, Orange Family has been granted more than 60 software copyrights and patents. It is a National High-Tech Enterprise and a Tianjin High-Tech Enterprise. The company has received numerous honors, including the "Top 10 Excellent Enterprise Award" at the 4th China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, the "2015 Outstanding Digital Healthcare Solution Award," and the Third Prize at the Tianjin Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.

Aligned with national policies on the prevention and control of chronic diseases, Orange Family has vigorously expanded its innovative respiratory chronic disease management services, implementing a series of strategic layouts across China’s health examination centers, specialized respiratory medical consortia, and the broader health industry, thereby establishingSleep Respiratory Chronic Disease Management Center、COPD Rehabilitation Center、Sleep Breathing Experience CenterThree Major Service Platforms Open Up New Development Prospects for Enterprises.

Severe snoring, medically known as "obstructive sleep apnea" (OSA), is a serious threat to health. Recurrent intermittent hypoxia during sleep significantly increases the risk of hypertension, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and diabetes, and is associated with Alzheimer's disease, arrhythmias, and other chronic respiratory conditions.

In China, the prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing is as high as 5%, yet only 2 per thousand patients receive treatment. The primary reason lies in the complexity and inconvenience of existing diagnostic methods, which prevent a large number of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients from receiving timely diagnosis and effective treatment.

Moreover, as existing treatments cannot completely cure obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), most patients with severe OSA require long-term monitoring of their sleep breathing patterns and timely diagnosis and treatment at specialized medical institutions. However, there is a serious shortage of dedicated sleep diagnostic centers, leaving the majority of patients to rely on self-health management to prevent and alleviate disease symptoms.

Therefore, the home-based sleep-disordered breathing diagnostics market presents a blue-ocean landscape, harboring significant opportunities.

In 2014, Orange Family launched its first product—the Snoring Monitoring Watch (i.e., the Orange Pulse Oximeter)—a novel portable diagnostic device developed specifically for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). By monitoring patients’ blood oxygen levels during sleep, it generates continuous oximetry indices to form monitoring reports, thereby extending its scope from respiratory disorders to chronic disease management.

Compared with traditional medical devices, Orange Family’s products feature internet connectivity, enabling remote data transmission and collection. In contrast to ordinary wearable devices, the snoring monitoring smartwatch not only captures patients’ physiological data via sensors but also aligns the data with established diagnostic criteria to facilitate disease diagnosis, thereby possessing medical-grade attributes.

With its compact, user-friendly design and precise, intelligent features, this snoring monitoring watch gained recognition from leading experts in respiratory medicine upon launch and was rapidly adopted by the respiratory departments of hundreds of Grade 3A hospitals across China.

In 2016, Orange Family launched its second remote portable spirometer for the diagnosis of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic respiratory condition characterized by incompletely reversible airflow limitation and is closely associated with chronic bronchitis and emphysema. According to the Report on Nutrition and Chronic Disease Status of Chinese Residents (2015), the mortality rate of chronic respiratory diseases in China was 68 per 100,000 population, second only to cardiovascular/cerebrovascular diseases and cancer, with hospitalization rates rising year by year.

In China, the confirmed diagnosis rate for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is only 35.1%. Merely 15% of patients receive treatment at tertiary hospitals, while 75% are distributed across primary care settings. However, these grassroots facilities lack effective diagnostic tools and pharmacological treatment protocols, leaving a significant market gap. Currently, COPD is primarily managed through nebulized medication, bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) ventilation, oxygen concentrators, and exercise-based pulmonary rehabilitation.

After years of development, Orange Family has continued to deepen its expertise in the field of chronic respiratory diseases. In addition to the Orange Family pulse oximeter and remote portable spirometer, the company has successively launched several telemedicine products related to respiratory system diseases, including end-tidal CO2 monitors, nebulizers, and oxygen concentrators, establishing itself as a true expert in the management of chronic respiratory conditions.

In fact, there are quite a few companies in the current market engaged in the management of chronic respiratory diseases. Why has Orange Family consistently attracted capital interest? VCBeat analyzes that this is mainly due to the following four reasons:

First, the market size is enormous., China has 260 million patients with chronic diseases. Although the expenditure on chronic disease treatment is substantial, there is a lack of adequate solutions. The "Internet + Chronic Disease Management" sector represents a blue-ocean market.

Second, the business model is clear., Orange Family has made a precise market entry by focusing vertically on respiratory diseases, positioning itself as China’s first provider of comprehensive, medical-grade solutions for the management of chronic respiratory diseases, with a highly clear revenue model.

3. Comprehensive Product and Service Offerings, Orange Family offers a medical-grade health management product and service system, including diagnostic products, therapeutic products, an intelligent data analytics cloud platform, and remote health management services.

Fourth, excellent sales channels, Orange Family’s products are medical-grade devices certified by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA), delivering services to users through multi-channel penetration across domestic tertiary hospitals, primary care facilities, health examination centers, and pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

In 2016, Orange Family Technology (TIANJIN) Co., Ltd. entered into a strategic partnership with Meinian Onehealth, establishing sleep centers and respiratory chronic disease management centers across more than 80 of its affiliated health checkup facilities. By introducing multiple products, the company enriched Meinian’s one-stop health screening services. Leveraging health examinations as an entry point, the partnership enabled precise identification of patients and high-risk individuals testing positive for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), while providing corresponding solutions for those who tested positive.

Group Photo of Senior Executives from Orange Family, Philips, and Meinian Onehealth

In December 2017, Orange Family signed a strategic business cooperation agreement with Philips and joined hands with Meinian Onehealth to provide a “one-stop comprehensive disease management solution” in the field of chronic respiratory disease management, covering initial screening, referral, treatment, and rehabilitation. On the day of the signing, Philips also announced its equity investment in Orange Family, and the first “Sleep and Breathing Experience Center,” jointly established by Philips and Orange Family, was officially unveiled.

Orange Family told VCBeat that following this round of financing, the company will accelerate its expansion of partnerships with health examination centers, strive for rapid replication to establish channel barriers, and sign agreements with strategic partners to cover private clinics, setting up independent sleep centers in more than 10 cities. Finally, the company will also focus on developing a specialized respiratory medical consortium, planning to sign contracts with over 500 hospitals within the consortium this year.

Regarding this round of financing, Sun Chao, Partner at Chongshan Capital, stated“With the continuous enhancement of public health awareness and favorable trends in consumption upgrading, the demand for diagnosis and treatment among patients with chronic respiratory diseases such as COPD and OSA is bound to increase. As a leader in chronic respiratory disease management, Orange Family leverages high-need scenarios and remote screening and diagnostic products to centralize potential customer information on its platform. By integrating report interpretation and course-of-treatment services, it has formed a closed-loop ecosystem for chronic respiratory disease management. Its business model has been successfully validated and will enable rapid expansion across different regions and channels through a standardized system in the future. We believe that Orange Family will continue to lead the field of chronic respiratory disease management.”

Zhang Dan, founder of Orange Family, stated“Chronic respiratory diseases are one of the four major chronic diseases globally and rank as the third leading cause of death in China. Abroad, specialized medical institutions provide long-term home-based management services for patients with chronic respiratory conditions, whereas this field remains largely undeveloped in China. Orange Family focuses on the vast market of home-based management for chronic respiratory diseases by developing a remote management cloud platform and creating a closed-loop service model. It has established three types of service outlets across China: Sleep-Related Breathing Disorder Management Centers, COPD Rehabilitation Centers, and Sleep Respiratory Experience Centers. In the future, Orange Family will gradually adopt a chain-operation business model, ultimately building a nationwide home-based management service network for chronic respiratory diseases.”