Last Monday Hedia – Diabetes Assistant more than doubled after a €750K investment made it possible to expand the team.
The goal with their diabetes mobile application is to add a range of new features and achieve the European CE category 2A mark. The pilot version is already live for iOS and next step will be making it available for Android as well as adding features to better support people with diabetes towards an easier life.
Gets Competent Angel Syndicate and Receives Large seed Investment
Last week Hedia finished a €750K investment from four Danish Angels. Just in time for five new colleagues to start on Monday morning, where the team grew by 125% as they went from 4 to 9 people.
The investment leaves room to focus on the clinical development and on the final version of their one-stop diabetes application. It has a range of new health features, uses machine learning to give the user better recommendations, and will be available for Android.
The pilot version of Hedia is currently available for iOS and has already caught the attention internationally – especially in Germany.
Update: see the full diabetes assistant now available at Google Play and the App Store!
Popular Nordic Health Startup
Hedia’s diabetes assistant has already made some noise when they were selected to be part of Startup Bootcamp Berlin as the top 10 out of 3100 applying startups. The boot camp focuses on digital health and Hedia attended the batch of 2017. Next step will be to implement their machine learning algorithm, to expand the functionalities in the application as well as introducing connectivity with other devices including NFC and Bluetooth glucose meters.
Hedia is one of the only independent diabetes applications in Europe with the CE mark after their biggest competitor, mySugr, was bought last year.
“When I was first diagnosed with diabetes myself, I wanted it to be easier to live with the diagnosis without having to do a lot of calculations myself. I found it extremely frustrating that there wasn’t a kind of assistant to do it for me. We changed that with Hedia. Now that we’re expanding, we can work towards our next version of the app and the CE mark in a higher class, which will strengthen our market position even further.” says CEO Peter Lucas.
Small team – Large Profiles
The new investment in Hedia gives room for large improvements and expansions. That’s why Hedia has hired five new profiles to help them reach the CE 2a mark. They’ve hired profiles with experience from large medical companies – locally and globally, expanded the team of developers with a couple of full-stackers and invested in a machine learning expert.
“It’s quite extraordinary to see your idea and product grow to include others than just the founder’s team. I’ve really been looking forward because now we can finally get started on developing on all the parts and features that we dreamed of back when we started. We’re on the path of making it even easier for people with diabetes!” CEO Peter Lucas explains.
Since the beginning, Hedia has had great competencies backing them up. Their Scientific Advisory Board consists of Doctor, Michael Skjødt, adjunct in Robotics & Algorithms from SDU, Anders Buch, and Brian Hedegaard who has more than 20 years work experience in software processes and regulatory affairs. All of whom have diabetes in their lives in one way or another. They’re all enthusiastic about the direction Hedia is heading in.
The Future is Brighter for People with Diabetes
The end goal is to make life with diabetes easier. As it is at the moment, it is not just inconvenient to do your own insulin calculations. It can be life-threatening if you make a miscalculation. Since Hedia has the CE mark, they’re allowed to give you dosage recommendation based on your input.
The new application includes considerations about exercise and diet which will make it even more accurate in the calculations. On top of that, their AI solution will make personalised recommendations to improve the user’s lives and health.
Hedia was founded in 2015 – just a few years after CEO Peter Lucas was diagnosed with diabetes. He found a gap when he was trying the existing solutions on the market. Since then he decided to build something that even he would use on a daily basis to take back the control of his glucose levels.
Contact Peter Lucas at Peter@hedia.dk or call + 45 50441153 to learn more about his story and Hedia.
Check out Hedia’s application at the App Store and now at Google Play too!
Related post: How to get the most out of Hedia
