Mayo Spinoff Ambient Clinical Analytics Completes $5.4M Finance Round

Mayo Clinic medtech spin-off Ambient Clinical Analytics of Rochester says it has wrapped up a $5.4 million Series A funding round, which it will use to ramp up the sales and marketing of its critical care monitoring software product.The company announced the financing round was led by Waterline Ventures of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Bluestem Capital of Sioux Falls, with participation from earlier investor Social Capital of Palo Alto, California.Ambient is an early-stage company spun off from Mayo Clinic research and housed in its Rochester startup incubator, the Mayo Clinic Biobusiness Accelerator. Its product is the AWARE patient monitoring software, which aggregates and organizes once-scattered vital patient information into a single, easy-to-read interface, which it says results in reduced errors, lower health care costs, and better patient outcomes.Ambient first received FDA 510(k) pre-market clearance for AWARE (which stands for Ambient Warning and Response Evaluation) in 2015. Dutch multinational medical manufacturer Philips announced in February 2016 it was rolling out the AWARE dashboard, renamed the IntelliSpace Critical Care Console, as a key upgrade to its line of critical-care patient monitors.“With FDA Class II Clearance, and the collaboration with Philips on AWARE for their IntelliSpace Console Critical Care product, Ambient Clinical is in a great positon to grow the market for our Mayo Clinic-developed analytics based clinical decision support tools,” company CEO Al Berning said in released statement.“We’re excited to be starting a partnership with Waterline Ventures and Bluestem Capital, both with extensive experience in health IT. With the Series A funding, Ambient Clinical is in the process of expanding its sales, marketing and product development activities.”Berning is a well-known Rochester business figure who cofounded Ambient in 2014 with five Mayo clinicians after landing $1.1 million in seed funding from Mayo Clinic Ventures, Social Capital and others, including Rock Health, Rochester Area Economic Development Inc., Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation, Gopher Angels and angel investors.The startup’s team of Mayo clinicians—Vitaly Herasevich, Ognjen Gajic, Andy Boggust, Vern Smith and Brian Pickering—developed the AWARE system after receiving a $16 million research grant from the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which saw the technology as a way to reduce health care costs by making the presentation of emergency room and critical care patient data more efficient.