Sleep apnea is a torturous problem with a cumbersome solution – in-person sleep observation at a local clinic.
A Buffalo-based startup wants to solve that conundrum by removing all the friction points that currently exist.
Ognomy has raised $700,000 in pre-seed funding from venture capital firms and local angel investors to expand its home-based testing and treatment technology into states across the U.S.
“The round allows us to expand into new states and to continue building out our technology platform,” said Greg Ross, Ognomy chief operating officer.
Ognomy is the brainchild of Dr. Daniel Rifkin — a sleep medicine specialist and neurology professor in the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences — who has been working on the challenge of untreated sleep apnea throughout his career.
The problem: Many potential patients are loathe to visit clinics, while general telemedicine platforms don’t address the specific pathway of sleep apnea treatment, which requires alignment of doctors, patients and insurance companies through multiple appointments and follow-ups.
The Ognomy solution: a software platform that makes onboarding patients easy and automates the clinical workflow.
It’s better for sleep medicine specialists and better patients, Ross said.
Ognomy effectively opens up markets on a state-by-state basis, partnering with a doctor who is licensed to do medicine there and then marketing its solution directly to patients. In New York, Georgia, California and Arizona, approximately 1,000 patients have been treated through the platform thus far.
It’s just the beginning.
“We are creating a direct-to-consumer brand that is absolutely positioned to be a market leader,” Ross said. “We’re taking the friction out of the process while building a HIPAA-compliant software platform that allows doctors to run a viable sleep medicine practice without having all these manual administrative tasks to track.”
Ognomy plans to build out its sales and software teams in Buffalo over the course of this year, Ross said. The round included contributions from two venture capital firms, including Bay Area venture capital firm Future Communities Capital, led by investor Rohit Gupta.
It is one of 12 startups with significant operations in Western New York to acknowledge growth-oriented capital this year. The others include Tackle.io ($35 million), Jerry ($28 million), Torch Labs ($25 million), Circuit Clinical ($7.5 million), SomaDetect ($6 million), Kickfurther ($5.9 million), HELIXintel ($1.6 million), Ellicottville Greens ($1 million), Braid Babes ($415,000), MemoryFox ($380,000) and Zizo Technologies ($200,000).
