”la Caixa”, through its fund specialised in life sciences, Caixa Innvierte BioMed II, and CRB Inverbío, through its fund CRB Bio II, have led an investment round of 3 million Euros in the wearable medical technologies company Nuubo. They are accompanied in this round by existing partners, including Fides Capital, the main investor so far, and new minority partners.

The technology developed by Nuubo, an innovative system based on state-of-the-art biomedical garments, simplifies the typical procedures for heart monitoring, allowing the electrocardiogram (ECG) to be read continuously in dynamic environments in a non-invasive manner, with no need for cables, only wearing a piece of clothing.

To do so, Nuubo has a platform known as nECG DYNAMIC PLATFORM, which makes it easier to perform and read an electrocardiogram remotely. Specifically, the system patented by Nuubo is made up of three elements:

• A biomedical garment that allows the electrocardiogram signal to be captured without interfering with the patient’s daily activity.
• A device that continuously records the information captured by the garment and which also allows the data to be sent wirelessly and in real time for processing.
• Analysis and visualisation software that, using artificial intelligence algorithms, can interpret all of the information transmitted by the wireless device.

The devices designed by Nuubo allow patients’ hearts to be monitored for longer periods of time and without the experiencing feeling uncomfortable or intrusive.

From its headquarters in Madrid to its production centre in Paterna (Valencia), Nuubo has 22 employees. The company, which started its commercial activities in 2012, will use the investment to position itself in the main European markets, where the company expects to exceed one million Euros in sales in 2014.

The market for “wearable medical technologies”

Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death and disability worldwide. They are responsible for one-half of all deaths in Europe, where the World Health Organisation estimates that one out of eight men and one out of seventeen women will die before the age of 65 due to heart disease. They are also the main cause of disabilities and decreases in the quality of life, plus they incur the greatest costs in terms of healthcare. According to the European Cardiovascular Disease Statistic 2008, cardiovascular diseases in Europe have an overall cost of 192 billion Euros a year.

It is expected that wireless technologies will greatly change the current quality and cost structure of medicine and healthcare assistance. In this area, Nuubo technology can help the development of an industry which, just in the US, is estimated to be 96 billion dollars in the field of wireless healthcare.

The integration of electronic systems into electrically conductive textiles, a field of technology developed by Nuubo for monitoring physiological parameters, provides a new perspective into the field of medicine by offering new features to one of the most widely used materials, representing 70% of the materials that we are in contact with daily. The market for wearable wireless sensors is expected to grow by over 400 million devices a year in 2014. Furthermore, it is estimated that the “wearable technologies” sector will generate a sales volume of 3 billion Euros in 2017.