Onera raises $9m Series A for home sleep diagnostic

Onera Health said today that it raised $9.3 million in a Series A funding round to support its at-home sleep diagnostic patch system.

The round was led by Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Imec.xpand and joined by Imec and BOM, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said.

“Imec is proud of the progress made by Onera. It’s inspiring to see another Imec spin-off having great success in creating breakthrough medical technologies. Onera is capitalizing on its new funding to explore, develop and revolutionize the field of sleep studies, advancing itself while adhering to imec’s core focus of world class R&D and innovation in nanoelectronics and digital technologies,” Imec CEO Luc Van den hove said in a press release.

Onera is developing a patch-based sleep testing product designed to replace a number of sensors normally attached to the face, scalp, chest and limbs, the company said. The product will allow patients to undergo conventional in-lab sleep testing at home, Onera said.

Onera said that it will offer the patch-based system through a sleep diagnostics service model, and that it plans to launch pilot programs of the system across the U.S. over the next several months.

“Our mission is to help the medical field provide the much-needed answers for millions who are affected by sleep disorders. For far too long, people avoided searching for those answers because understanding their issues was expensive, inconvenient or unreliable. And nobody enjoys spending hours hooked up to sensors in a sleep lab. Soon, thanks to our technology partnership with Imec, our medical-grade, disposable patches will accurately diagnose sleep-related ailments in the comfort of a patient’s own bed and using it will be as simple as putting on a band-aid. We’re making sleep diagnosis accessible to many without compromising quality. And thanks to our partnership with Jazz and the recent approval of their drug Sunosi for excessive daytime sleepiness associated with narcolepsy or obstructive sleep apnea, we keep expanding the continuum of sleep care,” co-founder & CEO Raphael Michel said in prepared remarks.

CORRECTION April 24, 2019: This article has been amended to remove remarks attributed to Jazz Pharmaceuticals chairman & CEO Bruce Cozadd, which were included in a press release that was later retracted.