EnsoData, a healthcare artificial intelligence company, last week closed a $1,500,000 seed funding round led by Colle Capital, a New York City & Los Angeles based venture capital fund focused on data-driven early stage technology companies, with participation from new and existing venture capital firms HealthX Ventures, Sternhill Associates, Wisconsin Investment Partners, M25 Group, and others. The round included investors from New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Madison, Chicago, Austin, and together with investments from two current EnsoSleep customers, brings the company to more than $2,000,000 in Series Seed funding to date.

EnsoData, founded in 2015, provides artificial intelligence (AI)-based software-as-a-service that automates complex, arduous, and time-consuming data analysis for frontline clinicians with a goal of enabling more time for direct patient care with less time manually crunching data. Its first product, EnsoSleep, received FDA clearance in April 2017 to automate scoring of in-lab and home sleep studies and aid clinicians in the diagnosis of sleep disorders like sleep apnea. Since then, clinicians from more than 50 customer sleep clinics have started using EnsoSleep to analyze their sleep studies.

The funding will be used for working capital, research and development to drive further time-savings for EnsoData’s growing customer base, and to more than double the size of the company’s engineering and sales teams. “Many sleep clinics have reduced scoring time by half within one or two weeks of trying EnsoSleep. EnsoSleep is providing sleep clinics a level of efficiency that allows them not just to survive but to thrive in a changing sleep environment. Sleep clinics today are working hard to keep up with the increasing volume of home sleep studies, the growing shortage of clinicians, and the downward pressure on reimbursements. Given the success we’ve seen with our current customers—more time for patient care, less stress, reduced costs, improved workflows—we believe EnsoSleep is ready for mass market adoption,” says Chris Fernandez, CEO and co-founder of EnsoData, in a release.

Victoria Grace, founding partner of Colle Capital says, “Based on the company’s traction and FDA milestones, we have practical evidence that EnsoData’s artificial intelligence approach to automating data analysis just works. Clinicians have seen a lot of hype stories about AI in the healthcare space, and it’s refreshing to see EnsoData standing out as a clear, in use, example of AI pushing medicine and diagnostics forward. Beyond the impact the company is already having in sleep medicine, we’re thrilled to partner with the EnsoData team to expand their core AI approach into a series of products that will help clinicians tackle the most time-consuming data workload challenges in other important areas of medicine.” Grace and Ziad Sultan of Colle Capital will join the company’s board of directors as part of the investment.

Arun Ramabadran, CEO of Florida Apnea Diagnostics, a current EnsoSleep subscription customer, says, “We have used other algorithm based scoring products in the past for sleep scoring, but Ensosleep’s speed and ease of use allowed our scoring technicians to save 25% in labor time during normal daytimeshifts. EnsoSleep has improved their ability to handle and process these studies, which has effectively increased our capacity on a daily basis.”

EnsoData’s vision is that AI is the next major succession in a wave of digital technologies that started with the personal computer, then the internet, and most recently mobile technology—and that the impact of this wave of AI on healthcare will be on par or even greater than the previous generations. With this funding milestone completed, the company is positioned to continue growing in the translation of AI technologies from the data science lab bench to the clinical bedside.