Senphonix has received a U.S. National Science Foundation Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I award to advance SleeveSense, its investigational wearable platform designed for continuous, long-term monitoring of patient vital signs. The award was made through America’s Seed Fund and will support engineering work with the University of Arizona. Financial terms of the award were not disclosed.
Senphonix plans to use the funding to improve SleeveSense’s wireless and radio-frequency systems and move the patent-pending technology from a prototype toward a product capable of being manufactured at commercial scale.
SleeveSense is being designed as a wearable sleeve capable of continuously monitoring multiple vital signs over days, weeks or months in both clinical and home environments.
The company is targeting a healthcare workflow in which patient vital signs are often collected through periodic manual measurements.
Senphonix said nurses can spend as much as, and in some cases more than, 20% of a shift manually measuring patient vitals.
SleeveSense is intended to automate portions of that process while providing clinicians with continuous data that could help identify patient deterioration earlier.
The platform is also designed to remain with patients after hospital discharge, potentially giving providers a more complete view of recovery and changes in health outside the hospital.
Under the Phase I award, Senphonix and the University of Arizona will work on antenna, power and radio-frequency performance in real-world hospital environments while addressing engineering requirements associated with higher manufacturing volumes.
The federal funding follows earlier support from the State of Arizona through matching grant funding provided by the Arizona Commerce Authority and the WearTech Applied Research Center.
Senphonix has also conducted market research indicating interest from healthcare professionals and financial decision-makers.
In a national survey of 402 practicing nurses, 98% said they would support SleeveSense if it reduced some of the time required for manual vital sign collection.
In a separate survey of 457 healthcare CFOs, 94% indicated an intent to support adoption, particularly if the platform could improve nursing efficiency, patient outcomes and readmission avoidance.
Senphonix plans to begin clinical testing in late 2026 or early 2027.
The company intends to pursue U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance for SleeveSense in early to mid-2027 after clinical testing is completed.
SleeveSense is currently an investigational device and is not FDA cleared or approved for sale.
KEY QUOTES:
“This award is significant validation of the critical needs SleeveSense will address. Continuous, comfortable, long-term monitoring can change how patient vitals are tracked both in the hospital and at home. NSF’s support lets us further engineer the technology as we prepare to go to market in 2027.”
Mike Haldane, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Senphonix
“Translating advanced wearable sensing from the lab into a device that performs reliably in a real clinical setting is a significant engineering challenge, and it is exactly where academic research and a focused startup accomplish more together than apart.”
Dr. Philipp Gutruf, Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona
