Private medical device company Epi-Minder says it has achieved two milestones in its goal to commercialise its lead product for epilepsy, Minder.
The company said it has successfully completed an oversubscribed Series A funding round and raised $AU18 million.
The raising, the company’s first significant venture capital funding round, was supported by private investors as well as the current shareholders - Cochlear, the Bionics Institute, Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital and the University of Melbourne.
Epi-Minder has also appointed Dr Rohan Hoare as its new chief executive officer.
The company said the funds raised will support ongoing clinical trials for Minder. It is an ultra-long-term ambulatory electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring device.
The smartphone-enabled device is designed to improve on ‘wearables’ and other tools such as patient diaries.
Epi-Minder said it plans to launch a pivotal study the results of which will support regulatory submissions to the US FDA and European Union (CE Mark).
It said an initial trial conducted at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne has produced promising results.
“We are extremely pleased by the results obtained to date, especially the quality of the brain signals obtained and the very positive feedback from patients on ease of use and comfort,” said Professor Mark Cook, St Vincent’s Hospital neurologist and chair of medicine at the University of Melbourne.
Epi-Minder was launched in June 2018 to develop and commercialise intellectual property created by a research team led by Professor Cook and Bionics Institute Associate Professor Chris Williams.
New CEO Dr Rohan Hoare has extensive experience in the global device industry.
“I am passionate about improving the lives of people with chronic neurological diseases and have spent a large part of my career working to develop improved diagnostics and therapies for these patients. Epi-Minder’s technology is a paradigm shift in the way epilepsy will be monitored and managed and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to lead its development,” said Dr Hoare.