Medigate, an Israeli startup developing a platform for securing and managing Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices, today announced that it had raised $15 million in its Series A financing round. The round was led by the US Venture Partners venture capital fund, with participation from YL Ventures and Blumberg Capital, which previously invested Medigate. The current round brings the amount raised by the company to date to $20.4 million.
"The trend towards connected medical devices poses two challenges to hospitals: protecting these devices, which treat people, and managing the large numbers of such devices on the hospital network. Medigate provides a solution for both problems. We identify the devices and also protect them very precisely," says Medigate cofounder and CEO Jonathan Langer.
Medigate develops a platform that is connected to the networks of hospitals and medical centers. It identifies the medical devices connected to the network, their regular activity, and the communications through them as part of this activity. The platform makes it possible to manage the device connected to the network on the one hand and to protect them on the other. Protection takes place when the platform detects abnormal behavior by one of the devices, for example a pacemaker trying to communicate with an IV device with which it has no connection.
Langer asserts that Medigate's accuracy stems from its ability to learn to read the communications protocols of the various medical device manufacturers. "Every manufacturer of medical devices uses a different communications network protocol. We learned how to read hundreds of different protocols and to handle most of them. That is what enables us to be much more precise than our competitors," Langer says. "In order to understand how a protocol is constructed, it is necessary to decode it - reverse engineering. This requires very specific expertise. All of the company's employees worked in cyber during their army service, and have this type of expertise."
Medigate plans to use the money it raised to expedite its growth and recruit research, development, marketing, and sales personnel over the next 18 months. The company currently has 30 employees, 28 of whom are in Israel. Medigate plans to expand to 60 employees over the coming year: 45 in Israel and the others in the US. The company already has 10 customers in the US - hospitals supported by the platform developed by the company.
Founded: 2017
Founders: VP R&D Itay Kirshenbaum, VP product Pini Pinhasov, and Langer.
Employees: 30 in Tel Aviv.
Capital raised: $20.4 million in two rounds.
Prominent investors: US Venture Partners, YL Ventures, Blumberg Capital.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 29, 2019
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