ROCHESTER, N.Y., Jan. 24, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Casana, the leader in smart toilet heart health monitoring, announced today a catalyst year of advancement while pursuing FDA clearance for the firm’s first product, The Heart Seat™. After securing $30 million in Series B funding last January, bringing the firm’s total capital to $46 million, Casana experienced more than double the growth in personnel, research partners, and FDA clearance milestones in 2022.
The Heart Seat™ is a first-of-its-kind device designed to support in-home health management, specifically to help people manage and control high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. The smart toilet seat passively monitors heart rate, blood oxygenation and blood pressure, aiming to effortlessly provide physicians and other caregivers with reliable and actionable trend data from the home.
“We are ardently focused on doing everything we can to bring the Heart Seat™ to market in 2023, so we can do our part in easing the burden for people managing their blood pressure from home,” says Olivia Lew, Chief Operating Officer at Casana.
In addition to being awarded Medtech’s “Newcomer of the Year” for achievement in healthcare innovation, Casana graduated from RIT’s Venture Creations incubator and became a member of the AARP AgeTech Collaborative.
According to a recent study by Market Research Future, the medical device market is expected to be worth $964.90 billion by 2030. Fueling research initiatives, Casana launched a clinical study partnership with Mass General Hospital, with a primary goal of evaluating the correlation between seat-derived and cuff-derived blood pressure obtained during routine clinical visits for cardiac rehabilitation. Casana is also planning a study to collect real world data on bathroom usage behavior with UMass Chan Medical School’s program in Digital Medicine, working to identify correlations with health information gathered from the patient’s EMR to demonstrate how patterns of The Heart Seat™ utilization may assist in detecting health deterioration.
Casana is seeking their 510k clearance from the FDA in hopes of initial product launch by the end of 2023. In preparation for a successful go-to-market, the health technology firm experienced more than 57% employee growth at both the Rochester headquarters and Boston office. Casana has also grown an additional remote-workforce nationwide, accounting for 30% of the organization’s overall labor force. Key leadership additions to the team include Kara Johnson, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs & Quality Assurance, as well as a newly appointed Chief Technology Officer, Samir Zahine.
“Kara and Sam are the perfect additions to the team,” says Casana CEO Austin McChord. “Adding their deep MedTech experience to our team is helping us move faster to get this product to market.”
Continued expansion for Casana will align with key milestones achieved in advance of FDA clearance, such as building out go-to-market and operations teams to enable distribution of The Heart Seat™, as well as focused hiring growth on research initiatives and future product development.
About Casana
Casana is unlocking a new category in healthcare technologies that enable effortless, integrated, and consistent in-home health monitoring. Casana’s first product, The Heart Seat™ is an IoT health monitoring toilet seat that captures clinically relevant measurements, including heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygenation. Casana’s mission is to assist medical teams in their care management of patients with chronic conditions beyond the four walls of the hospital, starting with hypertension. Casana was founded in 2018 by Dr. Nicholas Conn, whose vision was to use passive, connected sensors to solve the challenges of managing health at home. He developed The Heart Seat™ during his Ph.D. work at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
For more information about Casana, please visit www.casanacare.com and follow us on our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Casana is actively hiring: casanacare.com/about/#careers
Danielle Lewan
Director of Marketing & Communications
media@casanacare.com
