University of Washington spinout Wavely Diagnostics, which is developing a smartphone app to detect ear infections, raised $1.35 million.
The Seattle company’s diagnostic app uses acoustic signals to detect signs of an ear infection via a paper funnel placed at the opening of the ear canal. If a child has signs of a possible ear infection, caregivers could connect to a virtual care physician.
The goal is to “shift pediatric care into the virtual space,” said CEO Arna Ionescu Stoll at the GeekWire Summit in October, where the app was featured in the “Inventions We Love” category.
Wavely will use the funding to prepare for a planned public release in app stores later this year, according to a company statement released Wednesday. Wavely’s platform is currently being piloted with a U.S. healthcare system.
Co-founders Randall Bly, a pediatric ear nose and throat physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital, and UW computer science and engineering professor Shyam Gollakota previously published a study introducing the tech. Fluid buildup in the middle ear results in limited eardrum mobility, which can be detected using acoustic methods. The study used a smartphone microphone and speaker to emit sound and analyze its reflection from the eardrum.
“What we do is we bounce an acoustic sound wave off the eardrum, we then pick up the reflection of that ping,” said Stoll said at the GeekWire Summit. “And then we use a machine learning classifier to determine if it’s indicative of fluid or not,” she added.
Gollakota also co-founded a company that developed an app to monitor breathing using sonar technology, Sound Life Sciences, which was sold last year to Google.
The new funding brings Wavely’s total investor and grant funding to $6.35 million, including an earlier $2.2 million seed funding round in February 2022 and $1.8 million small business grant secured in November from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
“We are at a critically exciting moment in Wavely’s trajectory as we prepare for wide scale commercialization, meeting the significant interest from providers and payers across the US who are ready to leverage Wavely’s technology to expand their use of virtual care for pediatrics,” said Stoll in the statement. “This new funding gives us the runway to cement existing and new partnerships, ultimately bringing our transformative digital health solution to providers and parents faster,” she added.
The new funding round was led by Robin Hood Ventures with participation from previous investors WRF Capital, Ambit Health Ventures, the WXR Fund, Wealthing, Healthtech Capital and Princeton Alumni Angels. Robin Hood Ventures member Sasha Schrode also joined Wavely’s board of directors.
