Siren secures strategic funding for its socks that detect diabetic foot ulcers
Summary
After studying burn victims and war veterans, entrepreneur Ran Ma hand-made a sock that contained sensors to detect foot ulcers. Its now raised $43 million to date.About 830 million people worldwide have diabetes, over a third of whom can develop debilitating ulcers in their lifetime, which can lead to severe complications, and even amputations in some cases.Sirens product, Siren Socks, detects early signs of potential foot injuries by sensing a patients foot temperature and detecting hotspots that indicate potential ulcers in real time. The company claims it can reduce the risk of DFUs by up to 68% and amputations by 83% by collecting data continuously.I studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins and at Northwestern University, Ma told TechCrunch. I then paid a tailor in Chinatown to sew my second prototype with multiple sensors and created the first continuous temperature-monitoring socks, she said.In 2017, the startup won TechCrunchs Hardware Battlefield contest at Disrupt. It has now added M\xf6lnlycke as its first strategic investor, and as result the socks will be made more available in European markets via this partnership (as well as the U.S.).The space is clearly warming up, to coin a phrase.