Anticipating FDA Clearance in 2012, Sotera Wireless Raises $12.2M

San Diego’s Sotera Wireless says it has raised $12.2 million in a Series D round of financing led by the Singapore-based global fund EDB Investments.

Sotera says it also signed a commercial agreement with Cerner, the Kansas City, MO-based giant that provides complete health IT systems for hospitals and other medical organizations to integrate and manage all electronic medical records, physician orders, and financial information. Cerner’s investment arm, Cerner Capital, joined the latest round as a new investor, along with existing investors Qualcomm Ventures, Sanderling Ventures, Intel Capital, and the West Health Investment Fund.

In a statement, Sotera says it has asked the FDA in August to clear its mobile vital signs monitoring technology for the U.S. market. If all goes as planned, funding from the current financing round will be used to support the launch of Sotera’s “ViSi Mobile System” in early 2012.

As we reported last year, Sotera’s ViSi system enables hospital ICUs to continuously monitor critical care patients on general hospital floors. The system tracks a patient’s blood pressure, respiration, temperature, blood oxygen levels and heart rate. ViSi collects data from two sensors—one on the chest and one on the thumb—connected to a wristband device slightly larger than a sports watch, which maintains a Wi Fi connection to a hospital workstation.

By continuously charting a patient’s vital signs, the system can show whether a patient’s condition is deteriorating and serves as a kind of early warning system for developing problems.

In Sotera’s statement today, EDB Investments chief Chu Swee-Yeok, says, “Health systems worldwide are facing the challenge of an increasingly high-risk and frail patient population. We believe Sotera offers a disruptive platform that will provide clinicians with the visibility they need for pre-emptive and preventative care. EDBI looks forward to actively assisting Sotera to tap into new business opportunities in the Asia-Pacific market to expand its global footprint.”

The latest financing round brings Sotera’s total venture backing to roughly $46 million, according to VentureWire.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.