Americans are getting older. The population of people over 80 years old is expected to increase by 79 percent in the next 10 years, according to a study published by AARP. However, the same study found that the number of people of “prime caregiving” age — 45-65 years old — are expected to increase by only 1 percent.
This is where Somatix, a wearable-enabled software platform, comes in. Just this week it raised $4.5 million, bringing this four-year-old company’s total funding amount to $11.5 million.
The New York and Israel-based company collects data through existing sensors embedded in commercial smartwatches and other IoT devices as well as its own wrist device called SafeBeing, which continuously tracks everything from falling to inactivity to medication intake. Gestures are monitored passively and the data is delivered to the Somatix cloud, requiring no manual data entry by the wearer.
The information is then analyzed and cross-referenced using machine learning, establishing behavior patterns to better detect abnormalities. The platform also provides actionable clinical insights, statistics, alerts and reminders based on the data collected to help wearers adhere to treatment objectives and live healthier lives.
“Healthcare-related organizations are charged with the complex task of keeping expenses down without compromising care quality,” Somatix co-founder and CEO, Eran Ofir, told MedCity News. “The opportunity lies in the technology – wearable devices that can continuously track people’s health and wellbeing. The challenge is being able to process, analyze and precisely interpret immense volumes of aggregated tracking data, to deliver actionable insights for health improvement. It is exactly this challenge that Somatix’s real-time gesture detection Remote Patient Monitoring platform addresses.”
