Scanadu

Scanadu

Type	Private company
Founded	2011, Silicon Valley
Headquarters	NASA Ames, California, USA
Founder(s)	Walter De Brouwer, Sam De Brouwer, Misha Chellam
Employees	25 [1]
Website	www.scanadu.com

Scanadu is a Silicon Valley-based company that makes medical technology devices for consumers.^[2] It was founded some time before January 2011 by Walter De Brouwer, Sam De Brouwer and Misha Chellam^[3][4] in Silicon Valley.^[5] In mid 2011, Scanadu set up a lab at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., to help grow the company.^[3]

A prototype of Scanadu’s first product, the Scanadu Scout, was unveiled on November 29, 2012.^[6] The Scanadu Scout is a portable electronic device for consumer use designed to measure different physiological parameters, including temperature, heart rate, blood oxygenation, respiratory rate, ECG, and diastolic/systolic blood pressure.^[7][8] The device’s expected price will be around $199.^[9] Scanadu’s goal was to make the Scanadu Scout available by March 2014 to those who preordered it through Indiegogo and afterwards, to general consumers by Q1 of 2015.^[10] Scanadu is seeking approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the device before bringing it to market to ensure clinical-grade accuracy.^[11] Scanadu missed the initial shipping deadline; the devices finally began shipping in February 2015.^[12]

Products

On November 29, 2012, the company unveiled a suite of new tools to “revolutionize consumer healthcare.” The Scanadu Scout is a lightweight device that is touched to a patient’s temple and is touted as being able to return key vital sign results in less than 10 seconds. Project ScanaFlo is a urinanalysis test for conditions like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, kidney failure and urinary tract infections. Project ScanaFlu is used when a patient is exhibiting cold-like symptoms. The saliva test checks for Strep A, Influenza A and B, adenovirus, and RSV.^[6] The suite of products, originally conceived of in partnership with IDEO,^[13] is being designed by award-winning industrial designer Yves Behar.^[14]

Scanadu’s long-term product vision is to combine a broad array of electrical and biochemical sensors with intelligent algorithms to create a real-life Tricorder.^[15] Accordingly, the company is often mentioned as a leading contender for the $10m Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize.^[16] Another of Scanadu’s goals is to develop a corps of users willing to share their medical readings, such as heart rates and stress, over many years.^[17] The idea is to help enable personalized medicine by generating collective information about the relationships between such readings as respiration, temperature and oxygen intake before the onset of a disease.^[17]

The need for a product like the Scanadu Scout occurred to CEO Walter De Brouwer in 2003 after his five-year-old son^[18] fell about 40 feet and lapsed into a coma for 11 weeks.^[17] De Brouwer learned that none of his son’s various health data was being consolidated for collective analysis. “To someone from the tech world, this was like something from the dinosaur age,” he told The New York Times.^[17]

Personnel

The company was co-founded by CEO Walter De Brouwer and his wife Sam De Brouwer.^[19] Walter De Brouwer previously set up the blue skies research institute Starlab. Prior to Scanadu, Walter De Brouwer founded PING, which was later sold to EUnet (EUnet was itself sold to Quest Communications International).^[20][21] He also founded electronic employment site Jobscape, which merged with similar sites to comprise Stepstone.^[22]

Co-founder and former COO Misha Chellam left Scanadu in the summer of 2012. Other notable people involved in the company include Chief Medical Officer Dr. Alan Greene, Chief Technology Officer Ivo Clarysse, and Medical Advisor Dr. Daniel Kraft.^[5]

Funding and clinical trials

During summer 2013, Scanadu raised $1.66 million from 8,800 backers in more than 100 countries through Indiegogo.^[17][23] Of those investors, more than 20 percent were U.S.-based medical professionals such as doctors and nurses.^[17] Scanadu has since received an additional $10.5 million in Series A funding from Relay Ventures, Tony Hsieh's VegasTechFund, Jerry Yang's Ame Cloud Ventures, The Broe Group, Mindful Investors and Redmile Group.^[5][19]

As of November 2013, Scanadu had raised $14.7 million.^[11] The funding will support Scanadu’s goals of participating in clinical trials to win FDA approval and then bringing the Scanadu Scout to market.^[11] Also in November 2013, Scanadu announced it had formed a Medical Advisory Board and would conduct its first clinical trials at the Scripps Translational Science Institute.^[24] The institute’s study will test the accuracy of Scanadu Scout and will be drawn from Scanadu’s Indiegogo contributors.^[17]

In April 2015, Scanadu announced it had raised $35 million in new funding and $49.7 million in total funding so far.^[25][26]

Press and accolades

Scanadu has received press attention from a number of blogs and media outlets such as The New York Times,^[17] The Wall Street Journal,^[27] NBC's TODAY show,^[28] Popular Science,^[29] The Economist,^[30] Fast Company,^[31] Forbes,^[32] Time,^[33] TechCrunch,^[34] Wired,^[35] and the MIT Technology Review.^[36] It has also won a number of accolades including:

• CES Innovations 2014 Design and Engineering Award for Health and Fitness (honorable mention).^[37]

• 2014 Everyday Health Award for Innovation in the Healthy Consumer category.^[38]

• VentureBeat 26 Amazing Startups You Need to Watch in 2014.^[39]

• CES Best Innovation of 2013 in Personal Electronics Category.^[40]

• Company of the Year by the 14,000+ member Digital Health LinkedIn (NASDAQ: LNKD) group, beating out other notable health tech companies such as Fitbit, Withings, AliveCor, and Proteus Digital Health, among others.^[41]

• Number Two Health Story of 2012 in Fast Company^[42]

• Number Ten Medtech Story of 2012 in VentureBeat.^[43]

References