Artesian has led a $5.7 million Series A investment round in patient condition tracking technology company Nutromics.
Melbourne-based Nutromics is developing wearable biosensor technology that monitors the condition of patients in real time at a molecular level and wirelessly transmits that information to a software application. The technology has potential to enable patients who would currently be admitted to hospital to be treated at home.
Nutromics is initially targeting monitoring patients’ response to drug treatment starting with the widely used antibiotic vancomycin.
One in five patients admitted to hospitals in the US are treated with vancomycin. The drug needs to be dosed accurately to ensure effectiveness but as high as 60% of doses are not in the effective range while between 10% and 20% of doses are high enough to cause harm, according to Nutomics.
Nutromics says its CMM platform will provide clinicians with continuous real-time insights into the concentration of vancomycin in a patient’s bloodstream. This will assist with determining follow-up doses and should improve patient outcomes.
Nutromics was founded by chemical engineer Peter Vranes and former healthcare consultant Hitesh Mehta in 2017. Now the company’s joint chief executives, they have raised a total of $10 million in investment capital.
Vranes and Mehta went through Artesian’s MedTech Actuator program in 2018. At that time they were working on a device to track absorption of micronutrients to produce an improved glucose monitoring device for diabetics. They later realised the technology could be applied to tracking the effectiveness of medications in individual patients and changed their focus.
Vranes and Mehta believe they will have a commercial product within two years. They plan to initially target sales in Australia and the US but anticipate global demand.