SAVA's health monitoring microsensor raises $8M in Seed funding

SAVA, the startup reinventing health monitoring with its real-time, affordable and painless microsensor – is emerging from five years of stealth today to announce it has raised $8 million in a Seed funding round led by Balderton Capital and Exor Ventures, with participation from Exceptional Ventures and existing investors, Sweet Capital and SOSV.

The London company has developed a novel, ground-breaking microsensing device to detect molecules in the interstitial fluid, just under the skin. Its smart, connected wearable patch has been designed to streamline this data and deliver it directly to a user’s phone.

SAVA’s first microsensor is focused on glucose monitoring for people with diabetes. It recently gained approval from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to go ahead with clinical trials on patients with diabetes, which will help Sava validate its breakthrough technology on a larger scale. 

SAVA's microsensor will not only offer pain-free, real-time insights for users but will also offer much more affordable, accessible pricing. An upcoming clinical study is scheduled to start with investigators from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Much more than diabetes

Yet glucose monitoring is just the tip of the iceberg. With its modular design, SAVA’s sensor will, in time, be able to simultaneously monitor multiple molecules. 

Multi-analyte sensing unlocks the ability to monitor a vast range of conditions – from chronic conditions, to next-gen wellbeing applications, drug adherence to personalised therapy and more. SAVA’s aim is to power the next era of healthcare.

This funding round brings the total raised by the London-based startup to $13 million. It will be used to expand SAVA's team further, design its next-generation product line with high-throughput manufacturing capability, and demonstrate the platform’s clinical performance.

Renato Circi, co-founder of SAVA, said:

“At SAVA, we are tackling preventable illness by building a new operating system for health monitoring. Our microsensor will revolutionise healthcare by making world-leading monitoring technology available to all.

With this capital, we can accelerate our goal of creating a new paradigm for healthcare—preventative, personalised, and painless.”

James Wise, Partner, Balderton, said:

“This could be the defining product in personal health monitoring in the coming decade and an essential tool for patients and clinicians in diagnosing and treating many chronic diseases as well.

Renato and Rafael have a compelling user-centric vision to revolutionise chronic disease management and preventative care, and the credibility and knowledge to execute in this vital area.”

“SAVA’s unique approach and novel technology underline its potential to become a foundation of a new healthcare system. It offers a platform that addresses the needs of both patients and healthcare systems and which will allow other companies to build upon.” - said Noam Ohana and Ileana Pirozzi, of Exor Ventures.

Lead image: SAVA. Photo: uncredited.