SAVA – a startup reinventing health monitoring with its real-time, affordable and painless microsensor – is emerging from five years of stealth with a £6.3 million seed funding round.
Founded by Renato Circi and Rafael Michali, bioengineers from Imperial College London, SAVA 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.
The round was led by Balderton Capital and Exor Ventures.
“At SAVA we are tackling preventable illness by building a new operating system for health monitoring,” said Circi. “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.”
SAVA’s first microsensor is focused on glucose monitoring for people with diabetes, projected to impact 1 in 8 adults – approximately 783 million people – by 2045. People with diabetes rely on accurate glucose monitoring technologies to adequately manage their condition.
This has seen a growing number of health institutions globally make CGMs a default for diabetes care.
The startup 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.
The MHRA validation process is one of the most stringent processes worldwide, assessing the safety and performance of the device, as well as the design of the upcoming clinical investigation.
SAVA’s microsensor will not only offer pain-free, real-time insights for users, but will do so at a much more affordable, accessible price, with an upcoming clinical study scheduled to start with world-leading investigators from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
“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,” said James Wise, partner at Balderton.
“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.
With its modular design, SAVA says its 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.
The team has rapidly grown to over 40 people, including some of the creators of the Abbott, Dexcom and Medtronic CGMs.