Startup Gets First Aid From Revamped West Health Institute

San Diego’s West Health Institute has enrolled the first company in its new startup incubator, a move that advances wireless fetal monitoring technology developed in-house when the nonprofit was known as the West Wireless Health Institute.

The institute says it is licensing its Sense4Baby technology to the startup, also called Sense4Baby. The institute says the fetal sensor, radio crystals, wireless chip, software and other technologies were developed in-house to get “a more cost-effective model of care for high-risk pregnancies.”

Sense4Baby also is getting “significant” venture funding from the West Health Investment Fund, which is allied with the institute but technically not part of it. The amount of funding was not disclosed.

The Sense4Baby deal marks a re-start of the institute’s core mission on technology innovation and commercialization, following a reorganization that broadened its focus beyond wireless health and delineated its roles in health policy and tech development. Telemarketing billionaires Gary and Mary West founded the nonprofit institute in early 2009, ultimately committing $100 million from their family foundation. The Wests also founded the West Health Investment Fund as a separate, for-profit organization to provide funding for  innovative technologies that hold the promise of reducing healthcare costs.

“The West Health Institute exists to develop innovations that will lower the costs of health care,” Rob Matthews, chief technology officer, said in a statement released by the institute. “Sense4Baby has been designed to enable a new model of care that can potentially bring needed care to the expectant mother at a remote clinical setting, as opposed to requiring her to go through the frequent travel and expense of visiting a doctor at a central hospital.”

Last week, the West Health Investment Fund said it had participated in recent venture deals for two startup companies with innovative technologies that could lower the cost of healthcare. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

One of the startups to receive financing is GlySens, a San Diego startup developing an implantable, long-term continuous glucose-monitoring sensor that would be used to wirelessly track the glucose levels of diabetics. The other recipient is RxAnte, a McLean, VA-based company developing an innovative approach for ensuring that patients take their prescribed medications.

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.