The sensory bioengineering startup Onalabs is setting up in the Research Park of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (PRUAB) to accelerate the commercial development of its products, aiming for the first half of 2022. The company thus begins a new phase of growth since its founding in 2016, in the new location at the PRUAB, a collaborative tool of the UAB, CSIC, and IRTA for knowledge transfer, company creation, innovation projects, and valorization.
Elisabeth del Valle, operations director and co-founder of the company along with Xavier Muñoz, states that "being within the UAB Research Park is an opportunity to be able to share synergies in an excellent innovation ecosystem, where the company's various activities will be strengthened by the value provided by both the different services offered by the center itself and the university."
In this UAB environment, Onalabs will improve the quality of both its research and the products it has created thanks to collaboration with different research and development (R&D) groups, access to scientific-technical services, and public aid, both national and European, that will be within reach.
The added value of this company lies in making the skin a source of valuable information for monitoring patients who require permanent control of some metrics of their organism. Thus, the devices (wearables) —comfortable to wear on the skin— act as microlaboratories capable of translating the language of biochemistry into quality data.
Onalabs transforms the skin into a physical and biochemical database for the control of some vital signsThrough its monitoring, information is collected continuously and non-invasive on physical parameters---skin temperature, heart and respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, or sudden movements that may indicate possible falls---and biochemists---glucose and lactate measurement through sweat---, which are sent remotely to the user's reference doctor.
For Onalabs CEO, Josep Cardona, having this range of data, "besides allowing real-time patient monitoring and creating alerts for healthcare professionals, also facilitates the prevention and prediction of certain diseases". From this perspective, the startup's promoters argue that the devices will provide greater efficiency in monitoring patients in public and private health systems, so they will work to achieve their inclusion as a Social Security prescription.
In the first half of 2022, two of the three devices under development will be launched: Chronic Patients Home Hospitalization, aimed at remote monitoring of vital signs of complex chronic patients hospitalized at home, and Sport Medicine, aimed at understanding the performance and physical condition of athletes through monitoring of lactate levels in sweat. Both are currently in the validation process in centers such as Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol, the Centre d'Alt Rendiment Esportiu (CAR) of Sant Cugat del Vallès and the INEFC (National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia). The third wearable, aimed at diabetic patients, is in the laboratory phase.
In the first half of 2022, two of the three devices under development will be launched: Chronic Patients Home Hospitalization and Sport MedicineWith an eye on the international market, the company has opened a round of financing through three different private investment channelsthe issuance of tickets between 2,000 and 50,000 euros; contributions starting from 50,000 euros for leading investors in the sector, and a round ofcrowdfundingon the international platform Crowdcube, to obtain collective financing from minimum contributions from professional investors, suppliers, clients or small investors. The goal is to reach 1.2 million euros, a similar amount to what it has raised since its creation through competitive funds. According to the firm's managers, sales projections point to a 16-fold return on investment in five years.