INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
If a twinkle in the eye of a venture capitalist could predict the longevity of a startup, Vital Labs is going all the way.During aquick demo
of the Burlingame, Calif.-based startup app, called Vitality, True Ventures partner Adam D&Augelli enthusiasm was potent
The company,which emerges from stealth today, is pioneering a new era of personalized cardiovascularhealthcare, he said.Vitality can read
changes in a person blood pressure using an iPhone camera andgraphics processing power
The goal is to replace blood pressure cuffs to become the most accurate method of measuring changes in blood pressure and eventually other
changes in the cardiovascular system.The app is still inbeta testing and is expected to complete an official commercial rollout in 2019.Here
how it works: The technology relies on a technique calledphotoplethysmography.By turning on the light from a phone flash and placing a
person index finger over the camera on the back of the phone, the light illuminates the blood vessels in the fingertip and the camera
captures changes in intensity as blood flows through the vessels with each heartbeat
This technique results in a time-varying signal called the blood-pulse waveform (BPW)
The app captures a 1080p video at 120 frames per second and processes that data in real time using the iPhone graphics processing unit to
provide a high-resolution version of a person BPW.The startup was founded byTuhinSinha, Ph.D., the former technical director for the
University of California, San Francisco HealtheHeartStudy
He been working on the app for several years.&Part of the reason this project strikes a chord with me is because if I look at the stats of
my own family, I probably only have 20 years left,& Sinha told TechCrunch
&Most people on my dad side of the family have passed away before 60 from cardiovascular disease.&Prior to joining UCSF, Sinha was an
instructor at Vanderbilt University and the director of the Center for Image Analysis, where he directed and developed medical image
analysis algorithms.He linked up with True Ventures in June 2015, raising a total of $1 million from the early-stage venture capital
firm.&[Sinha] saw an opportunity to improve a stagnant practice and invented a new approach that takes full advantage of today
technologies,& True D&Augelli said in a statement.Three years after that initial funding, Sinha says Vital Labs is looking to raise another
round of capital with plans to create additional digital tools to advance cardiovascular health.
