Company funded to develop visionary integrated IoT heart health device, in a toilet seat. Seasoned technology executive Austin McChord takes the helm as CEO

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Feb. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Casana, previously known as Heart Health Intelligence, Inc., a healthcare technology firm that is re-inventing in-home health monitoring, today announced that it has secured $14 million in Series A funding, bringing the total capital raised to $16.6 Million. The financing round was led by General Catalyst and the Outsiders Fund with participation from Bemis Manufacturing Company, the largest manufacturer of toilet seats in the world and the lead investor for Casana’s seed funding round.

Austin McChord, founder and CEO of Datto, has stepped in as CEO of Casana as part of closing the Series A funding.

Casana will use their new financing to bring to market the firm’s first product to market called The Heart Seat™. Casana plans to pursue FDA clearance to further validate the clinical grade technology built into The Heart Seat which makes it a unique IoT device for heart disease management. The company will also use the funds to accelerate their work studying the benefits of an IoT heart health device for Heart Failure patients with health systems and risk bearing organizations, including The University of Florida and The Villages Health.

McChord, who has been tinkering with technology since 3rd grade, fashioned his first data product in his parents’ basement at the age of 21, where he founded his first company. Datto is now a global company with more than 1,700 employees and a community of over 15,000 MSP partners and recently had a $4.5 billion IPO.

The Heart Seat™ that Casana is commercializing was originally developed by Founder Nicholas Conn, PhD at the Rochester Institute of Technology, to enable physicians to understand the health of their patients between doctor visits, without adding burden to their workflow. The Heart Seat™ is a cloud-connected, self-contained toilet seat-based cardiovascular monitoring system, that measures the important health parameters for assessing heart health. The Heart Seat has already been tested through multiple peer-reviewed research studies and is currently pursuing FDA clearance. By using the passive and consistent home cardiac monitoring data from The Heart Seat, doctors will have a better understanding of chronic conditions, and be able to address patient’s needs as they arise.

“Our goal is to be able to monitor a patient’s health more naturally at home, without interruption of their daily routine,” McChord said. “The toilet seat is not a tech gadget. Unlike a wearable device, you can’t take it off, forget to use it or mess it up. If we do our job right, when patients use our effortless in-home heart monitoring device, we are invisible unless their health status needs attention.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), heart disease remains the leading cause of death at the global level for the last 20 years and is now killing more people than ever before. The number of deaths from heart disease have reached nearly 9 million in 2019. The CDC estimates that Heart Failure costs the US $31B per year. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to keep people at home and out of hospitals, the ability to monitor their health digitally and remotely has become critical to reducing the burden on the healthcare system. COVID has accelerated Cardiologists and healthcare workers need for timely, reliable and clinical grade home-based data about their patients for heart disease prevention.

“As a clinical cardiologist who has cared for hundreds of heart failure patients, I know first-hand how important it is to get a real time picture of a patients’ health in order to adjust their medical regimen and avoid future hospitalizations,” said Jeffrey Leiden, MD PhD, Chairman of the Board of Casana and Executive Chairman and former CEO and Chairman of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. “As medicine moves out of the doctor’s office and into the home, Casana is employing a cutting-edge, user-friendly in-home heart health monitoring device, that allows doctors and patients to monitor their cardiac health status from home on a daily basis. The Heart Seat has the potential to both improve patient outcomes with heart disease prevention and decrease the high costs of heart failure in the US.”

“The next health revolution will bring sensors into everyday objects, and Casana is doing groundbreaking work creating a new category of effortless in-home heart health monitoring, using connected sensors,” said Paul Sagan, former CEO of Akamai Technologies, Casana Board member and Senior Advisor at General Catalyst. “Casana has a very promising future in transforming patient monitoring, starting with heart disease prevention. I believe Casana’s The Heart Seat™ will help physicians gain a better understanding of a patient’s health in the comfort of their home, taking burden off the healthcare system and better serving patients.”

About Casana
Casana is unlocking a new category in healthcare technologies that enable effortless, integrated and consistent in-home heart health monitoring. Casana’s first product, The Heart Seat™ is an IoT heart health toilet seat that captures clinically relevant measurements, including heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygenation, and cardiac output. Casana’s mission is to assist medical teams in their care management of patients with chronic conditions beyond the four walls of the hospital, starting with the 6M+ people in the US living with Heart Failure. Casana was founded in 2018 by Dr. Nicholas Conn, whose vision it was to use passive, connected sensors to solve the challenges for managing health at home. He developed The Heart Seat during his PhD work at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

For more information about Casana, please visit www.casanacare.com and follow us on our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

About General Catalyst
General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures — for our entrepreneurs, our investors, our people, and society. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. With offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, and Boston, the firm has helped support the growth of businesses such as: Airbnb, Datto, Deliveroo, Guild, Gusto, Hubspot, Illumio, Livongo, Oscar, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. For more: www.generalcatalyst.com.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/23a72424-641f-4bf3-88fb-a35836683ed8

RESOURCE: Intrado GlobeNewswire

Photo courtesy of HAI Solutions.
The Carlsbad-based startup is developing the first of its kind, single-use disposable device that will provide an underlying level of protection during IV fluid management.

RESOURCE: San Diego Business Journal

RESOURCE: Supportersfund.com

I live with a very simple phrase when it comes to business and it’s one that came to me many years ago with the wish for others to see doing business in this same way.  Business is the lifeblood of society and allows for sustainability to be part of our lives from sustainable income for people who work for us to a sustainable environment from what we practice and teach to a sustainable community which is what we are all trying to build.  So with it comes the phrase that I live and breathe.  

Business is Personal.  

Business is a life-giving system from which we provide for our families and the families of our employees.  It has to be done with ethics and love and unity and has a direct impact on our personal lives and thereby business cannot be seen as solely a form of making money.  We must also see our products, services, or technology we are providing as our creation (a part of us).  

We view business as a means for us to be of service to humanity.  There is no greater joy than the all-encompassing feeling of being of service to someone other than yourself.  Our ability to have service so central to our mission is thanks to our parents and mentors throughout life.  The commitment to the betterment of the condition of the world cannot be only part of our lives.  It has to encompass all decisions in our work and business life, our family lives, our consumption whether digital or physical, and our spiritual life.  How then can one say… “It’s business, don’t take it personally…” 

Everything we do is personal.  Our decisions are what make us who we are.  

I was raised in a Bahai family and feel blessed to be part of this Faith.   It was when I was about 30 years old that I truly embraced the Faith for myself.  I was at a Social and Economic Conference and had an epiphany.  This paradigm shift took me from looking at my spiritual faith being something that I could benefit from to what I can do for the world with the spiritual foundation I have at my fingertips to make the world a better place.  It’s why we make all the choices we do and some of the choices are difficult and painful, however, we know that at the end of the day they are always the right decisions when done in service and being open to the answers brought to us.

In line with these thoughts comes an infinite mindset where we build and give for the benefit of others and when we see the fruition of our goals and when we do indeed solve a pain point for others or bring a well-needed service, we will get paid in both monetary and personal growth.  

Shahin Enayati

Director/Co-Founder Made Noble Corporation

Nestled atop Finca Filadelfia in Jocotenango, Guatemala is the tiny village of Mano De Leon. Like many other rural villages, Mano De Leon does not have electricity, running water, access to healthcare,drinking water or drainage. A generator is brought up to the village to pump water from the well each month. Although only 30 minutes from the thriving colonial city of La Antigua,  the village is isolated from the rest of the world by a steep 5 km drive up a dirt road accessible only by 4-wheel drive vehicles, or on foot. There is no shuttle service and none of the residents have access to a vehicle.

Mano De Leon has one tiny school, Escuela Oficial Rural Mixta (EORM) Mano De Leon, with one teacher who teaches all students from grades 1 through 6.  Classes are only held twice a week. Education in Guatemala is only mandatory through grade 6. Although secondary school is available, students need to pay for their own tuition, books, supplies and uniforms. For most rural families, the schools are too far away and the costs are too much. Thus there are very few education opportunities for the kids after the 6th grade. For the children of Mano De Leon, it seems like the only option is to work on the coffee farm earning less than $5 a day, like their parents and grandparents before them. 

One of the organizations I met at the 2019 Foro Latinoamericano Conference in Antigua, Guatemala was Nuestros Pasos. The work of Nuestros Pasos started about 4 years ago when Bryan Mancill (a teacher from La Antigua) and Engineer Diego Romero walked an hour from the foot of the mountain to the community of Mano De Leon. When they arrived at the community, they played soccer with the children and just sat and listened to them talking about their dreams. The children inspired Bryan and Diego to form Nuestros Pasos as a way of helping the children of this lost village to pursue their dreams. 

Nuestros Pasos has developed into a small group of local teachers and families who provide education support and grants for those kids who want to continue their education beyond Grade 6.  In order to receive financial support, each child must have the passion and desire to attend school, must commit to walking 5 km down the steep hill to Jocotenango for school every morning…. and walking 5 km back up the hill after school. The walk in itself is not an easy task.

Nuestros Pasos is run solely by volunteers, and most of the tuition, books, school supplies, and uniforms are paid for by the volunteers and their friends.  In addition to the financial support, Nuestros Pasos, through its volunteers, provides tutoring in math, science, language, English, accounting and any other subjects as needed in Mano De Leon every Saturday to help the students succeed in School. Visiting the village with “Profe” Bryan, I could see the impact Bryan had on not only the scholarship students, but on the entire village.  

Two of the original students, Maria Juana Cuc and Eladia Cuc are an inspiration to us all, and seeing their dedication and success keeps the passion of Nuestros Pasos alive. The girls want to continue their studies because their dream is to one day become educators for the children of their community. Currently 10 children make the long walk to town every day, many of them with similar dreams and hopes as Maria and Eladia.  

Although focused on education, Nuestros Pasos also hopes to provide the students of Mano De Leon with all the tools to succeed. Tools such as solar lighting so that the students can study at night, medical checkups, hygiene supplies, recreational activities, and transportation when needed.