Huneo is all about the data.
The young Cleveland-area startup is looking to use its IT expertise to help capture and send data in real time to several different types of doctors for a number of different health applications — sleep studies, heart studies and athletic performance monitoring, for example.
Huneo is looking to fill a gap found in traditional databases, CEO and co-founder Phil Ryder said. Most databases simply aren’t robust enough to handle the volume of data associated with real-time capture, in which data may be recorded as often as 100 times per second, according to Ryder.
“Lots of data from lots of people,” he said. “That’s what our strength is.”
So sensing an opportunity in growing demand for real-time data in the health industry, Ryder and his two partners formed Huneo to capitalize on real-time data capture prowess they honed in the manufacturing industry. The idea is that doctors could use Huneo’s technology to improve patient care, monitoring or diagnosing a patient’s condition in real time as health data streams in.
The company manufactures small, wireless sensors that can be attached to patients to gather health data. The convenience of not having cords attached to a patient’s body could expand the market for real-time health data, but Ryder said selling the sensors isn’t the company’s focus.
“The whole idea of what we’re doing is very low-cost data acquisition,” he said. “The value is in having and presenting data — not the devices themselves.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The sleep studies market is the first that Huneo’s looking to sell to, so it helps that one of the company’s founding partners, Dr. Jed Black, is the former director of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic. A sleep medicine professor at Stanford, Black is in the midst of a leave of absence from the California university to pursue research interests.
One of Huneo’s advantages is that, thanks to its small sensors and the cloud-based data storage, sleep studies can be conducted in patients’ homes rather than sleep medicine centers. Huneo would also provide a web-based software interface enabling doctors to monitor and access data.
So far, the company is self- and angel-funded, and has pulled in a dollar amount “in the six figures,” Ryder said. Later this year, Huneo may shop around for a series A investment round between $2 million and $5 million. The company would use the cash to go after federal regulatory clearance for its software and devices, plus to hire new workers, develop software and manufacture sensors.
“Our core infrastructure is really solid and in place, but we have ongoing development of applications targeted towards different types of physicians,” he said.
