Remote patient monitoring company Alio scooped up $18 million in the first close of a Series C funding round.

The raise was led by the Widjaja Family Investment Office with participation from existing investors, including Chase Field LLC and Thomas Krebs, former treasurer of medical device company Penumbra.

Alio said the Series C brings its total amount the company has raised to more than $50 million. The startup last raised $20 million in Series B funds in 2021. 

WHAT THEY DO

Alio offers a remote monitoring system for chronic conditions, currently focused on patients undergoing dialysis.

Earlier this year, the company announced the system had received FDA 510(k) clearance to collect physiological data — like skin temperature; auscultation, or internal body sounds; and heart rate — in the home. 

According to the 510(k) summary, the system includes the SmartPatch wearable sensor, its Bedside Hub (which collects and uploads patch

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AI-enabled voice technology platform Sonde Health announced it raised $19.25 million in a Series B funding round led by Partners Investment, bringing its total raise to $35.25 million.

KT Corporation, NEOM Company and existing investors also participated in the round, including cofounder PureTech Health and M Ventures.

WHAT IT DOES

Sonde Health uses patented voice technology to detect various health conditions from biomarkers in a person’s voice, including analyzing respiratory fitness and detecting depression and anxiety.

WHAT IT’S FOR

The funding will help build out the company’s technology to detect additional health conditions, expand its current respiratory and mental health-monitoring technologies, and drive global commercial growth.

“Digital biomarkers are becoming a mainstay in healthcare. Today’s healthcare companies are realizing how vocal biomarkers can engage people earlier in their health. The data and insights found in voice can power health monitoring and patient stratification so issues can become apparent well before

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Amazon will no longer support Alexa third-party HIPAA-eligible Skills, which allows patients to share HIPAA-protected health information with hospitals and health insurers through its voice-based Alexa platform.

The company announced the HIPAA-compliant data transfer capability in 2019 alongside the launch of six Alexa Skills built by healthcare providers and other stakeholders, including My Children’s Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS), Livongo Blood Sugar Lookup, Swedish Health Connect, Cigna Health Today, Atrium Health and Express Scripts. 

Each Skill was designed to help members, patients and caretakers manage care at home with voice commands.

In an email to Skill users dated Dec. 5, Amazon said it would “suppress” Skills for users on Dec. 9, and delete any protected health information pertaining to their Skills per its Alexa deletion policies, according to Voicebot.ai, who initially broke the story

An Amazon spokesperson told MobiHealthNews in an email, “We regularly review our experiences to

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Lokavant, which provides a data analytics platform for clinical trials, raised $21 million in a funding round led by Edison Partners.

Roivant Sciences, which builds health tech and biotech companies called “Vants,” participated in the raise. Lokavant was incubated at Roivant and piloted its platform with some of the company’s other biotech ventures. 

As part of the fundraise, Gregg Michaelson, general partner at Edison, will join Lokavant’s board of directors. 

WHAT THEY DO

Lokavant offers a centralized data repository for managing clinical trials. The platform allows users to input different data types and sources and view visualizations. 

They can also use apps that aim to anticipate future events and mitigate risk, provide insight into study performance and use third-party and Lokavant data to predict the clinical trial’s performance in advance. 

The startup said it will use the capital to build up its commercial teams and speed development on new features

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German company apoQlar announced its plans to raise Series A funding after receiving FDA 510(k) clearance for its VSI HoloMedicine platform, a mixed reality offering that helps surgeons plan for procedures using 3D holographic technology. 

The platform enables surgeons to turn radiographic images such as PET, Angio CT, SPECT, CBCT, CT and MRI scans into 3D holograms to examine before surgery.

Through its subsidiary in Miami, Florida, apoQlar will distribute its HoloMedicine platform in the U.S. during the second quarter of 2023, and the prospective Series A raise will help scale its platform.

The Hamburg-based company said it has now received medical certifications in 30 countries. 

“With mixed reality, we are no longer bound to physical objects in a physical world. We can leverage digital objects and services on top of the real world for equal or greater utility and usually at a fraction of the cost. Mixed reality is

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