SAVA raises $8M to build preventative, personalised, precision health monitoring at scale

SAVA is developing the first ever multi-molecule biosensing wearable capable of detecting biomarkers just below the skin’s surface, enabled by its novel microsensing technology.

SAVA – the startup reinventing health monitoring with its real-time, affordable and painless microsensor – is emerging from five years of stealth today to announce it has raised $8 million in a seed funding round led by Balderton Capital and Exor Ventures.

Founded by Renato Circi and Rafael Michali, bioengineers from Imperial College London, SAVA has developed a novel, ground-breaking microsensing device to detect molecules in the interstitial fluid, just under the skin. Its smart, connected wearable patch has been designed to streamline this data and deliver it directly to a user’s phone.

Preventative, personalised and effortless

SAVA’s first microsensor is focused on glucose monitoring for people with diabetes, which is projected to impact 1 in 8 adults, approximately 783 million people, by 2045. People with diabetes rely on accurate glucose monitoring technologies to adequately manage their condition. This has seen a growing number of health institutions globally make CGMs a default for diabetes care. The NHS alone has committed to providing every person in the UK with Type I diabetes with a CGM by 2025. Due to the scale of the diabetes epidemic worldwide, the CGM market is worth $8.2 billion and growing 10% year-on-year.

The startup recently gained approval from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to go ahead with clinical trials on patients with diabetes, which will help Sava validate its breakthrough technology on a larger scale. The MHRA validation process is one of the most stringent processes worldwide, assessing the safety and performance of the device, as well as the design of the upcoming clinical investigation. SAVA’s microsensor will not only offer pain-free, real-time insights for users, but will do so at a much more affordable, accessible price, with an upcoming clinical study scheduled to start with world-leading investigators from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Much more than diabetes

Yet glucose monitoring is just the tip of the iceberg. With its modular design, SAVA’s sensor will, in time, be able to simultaneously monitor multiple molecules. Multi-analyte sensing unlocks the ability to monitor a vast range of conditions – from chronic conditions, to next-gen wellbeing applications, drug adherence to personalised therapy and more. SAVA’s aim is to power the next era of healthcare.

This funding round brings the total raised by the London-based startup to $13 million from leading VC firms, angel investors, the European Union and UK Government (through Innovate UK). The team has rapidly grown to over 40 people, including some of the creators of the Abbott, Dexcom and Medtronic CGMs. The funding will be used to further expand SAVA’s team, design its next-generation product line with high-throughput manufacturing capability, and demonstrate the platform’s clinical performance.