Onera, a spin-off from imec and Holst Centre, announces the successful closure of a seed round of financing enabling the company to develop a wearable, fully disposable, medically graded sleep diagnostic device. The startup’s mission is to bring gold standard sleep diagnostics from the sleep lab to the comfort of the patient’s home. The seed investment is secured by imec’s venturing program imec.xpand and the Dutch development agency Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschapij (BOM).
 
Sleep related health issues are rapidly becoming one of the biggest healthcare challenges. In recent years, innovation in the field of sleep mainly focused on developing simple screening devices such as smart watches or mattress sensors that provide limited and inaccurate information on sleep quality.
 
Onera packs superior sensing hardware and advanced algorithms in a fully disposable medical device. The company expects that their solution will cause a paradigm shift in the diagnosing and treatment of sleep disorders and will contribute significantly to the comfort and the general well-being of those affected by sleep related illnesses.
 
“For far too long people suffering from sleep disorders remained undiagnosed by lack of a reliable alternative to the existing expensive and inconvenient diagnostic tools,” Ruben de Francisco, co-founder and managing director of Onera, said. “Our mission is to give every patient access to a wearable, patch-based and disposable device to accurately diagnose sleep related health issues in the comfort of their own home.”
 
“Imec has a long history of spinning off successful research results and promising technology into high-tech start-up companies” said Luc Van den hove, president and CEO at imec. “Onera fits this strategy perfectly: over the years, imec has built a comprehensive portfolio in wireless sensing solutions and flexible electronics, and Onera will leverage this expertise to commercialize innovative sleep diagnostics solutions that meet a rising need in the healthcare sector today.”