Chicago startup SwipeSense wants to get more doctors to wash their hands, and provide hospitals with internet-of-things technology to keep healthcare facilities connected.
To do so, the company announced Thursday that it has raised $10.6 million in new funding. The round was led by Eclipse Ventures, with participation from Sandbox Industries. SwipeSense has raised $23.3 million to date.
SwipeSense began in 2012 by making a wearable hand sanitizer device that doctors would carry with them throughout the day. It would track how often doctors cleaned their hands each day and provide analytics back to the hospitals, with the goal of increasing hand hygiene and eliminating hospital infections.
Today, SwipeSense has pivoted to putting sensors inside wall-mounted hand sanitizes that are located inside a patient's room. The startup says it's building a "connected hospital platform" that will hopefully eliminate hospital-acquired infections.
SwipeSense has also expanded from just measuring how often doctors clean their hands. It has also launched an asset tracking feature to help hospitals instantly locate equipment like wheelchairs and thermometers. And its SwipeSense Rounding app automatically records when nurses make patient rounds, making sure patients are receiving the care they need.
“Healthcare institutions today lack credible data-driven information, and they cannot improve what they cannot accurately measure,” Mert Iseri, CEO of SwipeSense, said in a statement. “SwipeSense offers executives and hospital staff the ability to monitor all of their core metrics in one platform so they can instill the required change that will lead to higher compliance rates, healthier patients, and millions in savings.”
