Seattle health-tech startup CalmWave, working to eliminate unnecessary alarms attached to patients in hospital intensive care units, raised $4.4 million in new funding.
The additional seed round financing, coming after $5.2 million in fresh cash last November, was led by investors Third Prime, Bonfire Ventures, Catalyst by Wellstar, and Silver Circle.
CalmWave said Thursday that it plans to use the capital to meet strong demand from hospital systems.
The company’s “Calm ICU” software solution targets non-actionable alerts triggered by monitoring systems that do not require immediate intervention or clinical response. Such alarms make up 80-99% of alarms in ICUs, straining healthcare staff and impacting overall patient care, according to CalmWave.
CalmWave’s pilot partner, Wellstar Health System, recently published a case study demonstrating CalmWave’s impact on alarm reduction, clinical responsiveness, and operational clarity. Among the findings over a six-week pilot:
- The CalmWave platform reduced technical bedside alarms by over 50%, cutting clinician interruptions from 68 to 36 per hour.
- Patients experienced 10 fewer hours of alarm exposure per stay, while average bedside monitor alarms dropped from 1,635 to 873 per day.
- Nurses implementing CalmWave’s AI-optimized recommendations received earlier alerts to patient deterioration — up to 15 minutes faster.
Originally spun out of the AI2 Incubator in 2022, CalmWave was founded by CEO Ophir Ronen.
“We’ve done what many believed impossible and shown significant reductions in non-actionable alarms, a key driver of ICU alarm fatigue,” Ronen said in a statement.
Ronen is a serial entrepreneur who founded Event Enrichment HQ, a Seattle startup that helped companies respond to IT-related events and was acquired by service reliability giant PagerDuty in 2015.
CalmWave is No. 75 on the GeekWire 200 ranked index of Pacific Northwest startups. The company won UX Design of the Year at the 2023 GeekWire Awards and Health Innovation of the Year at the 2024 event.
Read the full article here
