A Madison-based startup that has developed artificial intelligence technology to unlock data for sleep physicians is on the fast-track after it successfully closed a multimillion-dollar Series A round, and quadrupled its customer base over the past year.
EnsoData uses Waveform AI and machine learning to analyze health data, including from EMR, EKG, wearables and other sources. Its flagship product, EnsoSleep, provides sleep scoring software to sleep center physicians across the country. The company claims clinicians are freed from the manual processes of “poring over data points to reach conclusions” with the software, allowing them to repurpose their time for diagnosis and treatment of sleep conditions in patients.
Sleep disorders are often indicative of broader health problems, such as obesity, depression, diabetes or stroke, said EnsoData CEO and co-founder Chris Fernandez. By leveraging the technology built into its platform, health care systems can quickly identify patients at high-risk for sleep disorders like sleep apnea, and provide a treatment plan before their health issues are exacerbated.
“Today, more than 80 percent of sleep clinics manually, visually analyze the results of a sleep study,” Fernandez said. “There are 40,000 patients for every one physician, and a three- to six-month waitlist to get in from any health care provider. It’s a huge constraint on specialists.”
With EnsoSleep in play, the difference is feedback within minutes rather than hours, Fernandez added.
According to the American Sleep Apnea Association, an estimated 22 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea, with roughly 80% of those cases going undiagnosed — many of which include people in rural, underserved and disadvantaged communities, Fernandez said. The result is a population that experiences poor health outcomes and accrues billions of dollars in additional medical costs.
“Bad things can happen and it leads to a lower quality of life,” Fernandez said. “We wanted to help those patients access easier, more affordable health care, and catch (these health issues) faster.”
Fernandez founded EnsoData in 2015, but he first began experimenting with AI software in the health care space while still a biomedical engineering student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The self-professed “nerd” said he was prone to skip out on football games with his friends to partake in Kaggle data science competitions; later his passion for data science — and his dreams of becoming a doctor — would lead to the first iteration of the EnsoData platform.
“I wanted to make a positive impact,” he said. “But physicians treat one person at a time. If we could build a technology-driven approach, we could scale that impact to millions.”
With his two fellow classmates turned co-founders Sam Rusk and Nick Glattard, the trio developed an end-to-end hardware monitor for surgery patients under the auspice of the university. But Fernandez said the team struggled to find funding. They looked to larger companies such as Google, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic, but they hadn’t yet entered a space to take advantage of the AI the team had developed.
In the end, they were left with a “killer application,” but no place for the technology to call home.
Fernandez said the young startup evolved through nearly a dozen iterations throughout the years until it ultimately landed on the sleep-health industry.
“We were a solution looking for a problem,” he said. “We found a huge unmet need in sleep.”
Currently, EnsoData, a 2020 Inno on Fire honoree, works with nearly 400 clinics in the U.S. — more than quadruple its number of customers roughly one year ago — including leading health systems, integrated delivery networks and those in academic health. In addition to the software, the company has published nearly a dozen peer-reviewed studies around sleep data analysis, the startup’s effort to reduce the silos often present within the industry.
Landing in a space ripe for disruption has attracted investors into EnsoData’s fold. This summer, the startup successfully raised $9 million in a Series A round, co-led by Zetta Venture Partners and Wisconsin-based Venture Investors, bringing their total raise to $11.1 million since 2015, according to Crunchbase.
As the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, Fernandez said he was privy to the struggles that stem from a lack of affordable, quality health care, motivating him to be a part of the change. While he sees potential for other applications for EnsoData, such as in cardiology and neurology, there’s still lots of room for improvement in the world of sleep.
“We definitely plan on staying in this space because of the positive impact we’re having,” Fernandez said. “We’re hearing feedback from physicians and patients that they are happier and healthier. We’re creating the future. That’s what gets us to slam our feet on the ground and go to work.”
