New technology from startup ventures is transforming the global sports industry. This Startup Series has introduced over 200 startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience by allowing Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story and pitch their idea. Feel free to submit your startup’s answers to the below questions or contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for inclusion in this series.
Company name: Kenzen
Founder(s): Dr. Sonia Sousa, CEO and Co-Founder
Steve Pecko, Co-Founder, EVP Design and User Experience
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Kenzen creates wearable diagnostics to continuously monitor, predict and prevent avoidable health conditions using non-invasive sweat analysis. Kenzen’s ECHO Smart Patch is a Personal Health Lab 3.0 with patented biosensors packed into a small and flexible wearable patch. It continuously measures a wide range of vital health signs and gathers reliable data to prevent injuries, turbo-boost recovery and human performance. Recently awarded in the “Future Athlete” category by NFL, TechCrunch and Stanford University, Kenzen is changing the way we monitor health and performance—once and for all.
2. Problem & Solution
For over 50 years, scientists have been talking about sweat. Readily available, it can tell as much about our health as expensive and invasive blood tests. Kenzen researchers accepted the challenge of finding a cost-effective solution to collect, recover and analyze non-contaminated sweat samples in real time. They engineered the ECHO Smart Patch for non-invasive analysis of key biomarkers found in sweat. Continuous real-time analysis that covers a wide range of vital health signs and helps us finally tune in and listen to what our bodies are trying to tell us all the time.
ECHO Smart Patch uses patented biosensors to deeply analyze body fluid and measure hydration levels, heart rate, calorie intake and burning, lactic acid and glucose levels, skin temperature and more. The whole Kenzen ecosystem includes wearable smart patches, apps for smart mobile devices with at-a-glance reports, and the Kenzen cloud, which together, makes use of data fusion, predictive models and machine learning for real-time advanced diagnostics.
Kenzen’s wearable science can help reduce the billions spent annually in the treatment of chronic illness conditions, prevent injuries and even offer life-saving benefits.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
There are several immediate applications for the ECHO Smart Patch that will be meaningful for consumers, clinically relevant for medical professionals, vital for high-risk workers, and game-changing for athletes (with more to come):
- Pro and college sports: ECHO Smart Patch provides lab-level measurements of an athlete’s hydration and respiration in addition to glucose, cortisol, and proteins. It also measures activity levels, including vital signs such as heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration and skin temperature helping athletes know their limits by providing constant feedback. Kenzen is already piloting projects with NFL teams, including the San Francisco 49ers, and with FC Dallas soccer team.
- Consumers: A person with type 1 diabetes pricks his finger to get blood four times a day—that’s 1460 finger pricks a year. If you don’t have such a life-changing diagnosis, would you do the same to monitor your health? With ECHO Smart Patch you get a precise understanding of your condition or changes in your health in real-time and in a non-invasive way.
- High-risk workers: For people like emergency response personnel or construction workers who put their bodies on the line every day in extreme environments, Kenzen’s wearable diagnostics help decrease the risk of exhaustion, overheating and can have life-saving benefits. In 2016 the sensors were successfully tested on first responders for heat exhaustion.
- Medical industry: The changing legislation under the American Care Act (ACA) is moving the market to value-based patient care that puts an emphasis on preventative medicine and services. Having better health data and safer conditions for patients through smart wearables benefits the Healthcare Ecosystems.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
Kenzen is already piloting projects with NFL teams, including the San Francisco 49ers, and with FC Dallas soccer team. Functional ECHO Smart Patch prototypes will be available in February 2017 for additional commercial pilots. The consumer version of the product will become available for purchase before the end of 2017.
5. Management Team – with titles
- Dr. Sonia Sousa: CEO & Co-founder
- Steve Pecko: Co-founder, Design & Experience
- Dr. Peter Seitz: Sensing & Science
- Dr. Stephane Follonier: Fluidics & Chemistry
- Matthew Shoup: Development & Platform
- Heidi Lehmann – Chief Commercialization Officer
- Edith Schmid – COO (Switzerland Subsidiary)
6. Anything else you want the audience to know about your venture?
Kenzen’s team is deeply committed to advancing precision medicine through wearable diagnostics that are meaningful for consumers, clinically relevant for medical professionals, vital for high-risk workers, and game-changing for athletes. Kenzen’s panel approach combines multiple sensor signals and technologies to provide a higher level of reporting accuracy and truly meaningful and actionable data. Even the smallest micro-bead of sweat is enough for ECHO Smart Patch to perform a very detailed analysis of important biomarkers.
Kenzen’s wearable diagnostics allow to also measure other vital signs like heart rate, skin temperature and more for a comprehensive real-time snapshot of your health. All of the sensors in the ECHO Smart Patch have been validated against known standards, both internally and by various clinics and universities. Kenzen is also looking at the potential of performing sophisticated scientific analysis of other body fluids in the future.