Scanadu develops handheld devices that scan and upload medical-grade diagnostic data to smartphones, including the Scout and a urine-testing stick called Scanaflo. The Scout measures heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature and has more than 8,000 orders shipped. Scanaflo can detect blood in urine, pregnancy and certain STDs and uploads results to a smartphone. The company came out of the X Prize Foundation’s Qualcomm Tricorder competition and operates out of the NASA‑Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Scanadu is working with the FDA, which has authorized testing of its devices as investigational, and is pursuing full regulatory clearance. The company says new funding will be used to push devices into market testing and continue the path toward approval in the U.S. and China. Scanadu is a medical device developer building the Scout, a handheld medical tricorder that aggregates off-the-shelf sensors to measure blood pressure, heart rate, ECG and other metrics. The Scout pairs with a companion app that stores measurements as a medical record and can provide recommendations and analyses of tracked metrics. The company plans to conduct clinical testing of the Scout in partnership with Dr. Eric Topol at the Scripps Translational Science Institute, with trials set to begin in Q1 2014. Each sensor and sensor combinations will require 501(k) clearance from the FDA as part of the regulatory pathway. Scanadu raised $1,664,574 via Indiegogo and has 8,000 preorder customers from that campaign who will receive early units for usability testing. The company says the commercial device target window is winter 2014 to Q1 2015, and it is developing additional products such as urine analysis. Scanadu's core product, the Scanadu Scout, is a small, round scanner that takes a person’s vital signs and transmits them wirelessly to a smartphone. The device is positioned toward consumer medical empowerment rather than a clinical pathway, aiming to give users actionable personal health data. The company vastly validated demand through an Indiegogo campaign that became the site’s highest-funded project, raising over $1,378,545 with roughly 7,000 funders from about 100 countries. The campaign met an initial $100,000 goal in under two hours and doubled that within five hours, and Scanadu opted to extend the campaign past its original deadline. Founder Walter De Brouwer said the device was developed mostly without prior consumer testing and that crowdsourcing ultimately served to gauge market interest. Next steps highlighted in the article focus on developing an educational component so users not only have data but understand what it means and how to act on it. Scanadu is developing a personal, mobile auto-diagnostics device it calls the 'Medical Tricorder,' aimed primarily at parents to help avoid unnecessary hospital visits. The product leverages smartphone capabilities and sensors to let users check basic health conditions more frequently. The company is building a core team of biomedical engineers, software and hardware developers, and AI specialists and has formed a Medical Advisory Board including Dr. Daniel Kraft and Dr. Jordan Shlain. Scanadu has raised $2 million from a network of global angel investors to advance development. It is relocating its team from Belgium to the San Francisco Bay Area and establishing a lab at NASA's Research Park. The company is actively hiring and seeking technology partnerships with telemedicine and diagnostic startups to accelerate product development and distribution.

Total raised

$49M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Apr 2015