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Based in Enschede, the Netherlands, Sencure is an engineering and design company focused on medical devices for monitoring and diagnostic purposes, and wearable biometric sensor technology. The company has recently raised €1M in funding from Cottonwood Technology Fund. In addition, Lumana Invest contributed €500,000 to this investment round. 

The funding will be used for filing patent applications to protect Sencure’s unique IP as well as for development and the global rollout of Sencure’s products. 

Fourth impact investment of Cottonwood’s third fund

Cottonwood Technology Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund with investment focus on hard science and deeptech, providing (pre-)seed and early-stage funding to IP-driven companies. It makes impact investments in Key Enabling Technologies, like Photonics, Micro- & Nanoelectronics, Advanced Materials & Nanotechnology, Medical Technology, Cleantech/ Energy Transition, Advanced Manufacturing & Robotics. 

According to the VC firm, it primarily invests in the Southwest USA (NM, AZ, UT, CO, TX) & Northern Europe (The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland). The Cottonwood team screens around 1,500 technologies & companies per year, but invests only in 2 to 3 new disruptive companies per year (0.2% of all opportunities). In total it leads 8 – 10 investments per year (including Series B, C, D, E, F follow-on rounds).

Cottonwood recently launched its third fund — Cottonwood Technology Fund III, and this investment in Sencure marks the fourth impact investment made by this fund. 

Other investments made by Cottonwood Technology Fund III include flexible solar cell company mPower Technology and follow-on investments in BayoTech (on-site hydrogen production) and Infinitum Electric (disrupting the electric motor market).

Cottonwood Technology Fund has offices in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA) and Enschede (the Netherlands).

Next generation of wearable biometric solutions

Founded in 2021, Sencure originates from ItoM Medical B.V., a company founded in 2018 as the medical branch of chip development company Semiconductor Ideas to the Market (ItoM) B.V.

The Dutch startup claims to develop chips that help measure electrophysiological parameters on the human body in innovative ways. According to the company, it has developed an extensive library of signal processing algorithms that can be implemented in medical devices on an IP license basis. 

Jurryt Vellinga, CEO of Sencure, says, “Sencure will continue to collaborate with ItoM to develop power-efficient and high-quality integrated circuits – chips – for measuring physiological parameters such as heart activity (electrocardiogram), muscle activity (electromyography), and brain activity (electroencephalogram). These chips will empower the next generation of wearable biometric solutions and other medical devices required by the increasing shift to remote health monitoring and telehealth.”

Future plans

According to him, in the coming years, the company’s ambition is to produce high-quality sensor products that will have a positive impact on people’s health worldwide.

Sencure claims it will develop an ultra-low-power biometric sensing chip that offers wearable biometric solutions across a wide range of applications for medical technology companies. 

This technology can be used for easier (remote) patient monitoring and diagnostics for cardiac cases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), children’s asthma, neurological cases and electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings as well as enabling Intensive Care Unit grade ventilation and monitoring of vital signs.

It can also be used across multiple products, for monitoring COVID-19 symptoms, enabling better training or rehabilitation for athletes, and more generally to monitor stress and activity levels in people’s daily lives.

Vellinga says that in the upcoming year, the Sencure team will expand to accelerate developments. “Our experienced integrated circuit design engineering team will be strengthened with experts in developing and marketing medical devices in order to develop truly distinctive solutions.”

According to him, the company expects the first version of the new chip to be ready in Q1 2022.