EarlySense Sells, Licenses Back Post-Acute Monitoring Tech to Hillrom in $30M Deal

EarlySense, which provided contact-free monitoring technology to hospitals and post-acute providers, sold its intellectual property to Hillrom (NYSE: HRC) for a cash consideration of $30 million, the technology firm announced on Monday.

Under the terms of the transaction, EarlySense will receive licensing for all intellectual property and technology sold to Hillrom for use outside the hospital, in addition to the $30 million, potential payments based on reaching certain commercial milestones, and a portion of Hillrom’s equity investment in EarlySense.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has created historic opportunities for smart health technologies outside the hospital, and this transaction will allow us to continue serving our global customer base and apply our clinically proven technology to this high-growth sector,” Matt Johnson, CEO of EarlySense, said in the release announcing the deal. “Our more than one hundred million patient-monitored hours uniquely position us to deliver intelligent, predictive, and patented solutions that elevate remote patient care without increasing the risk of harmful infection.”

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While the deal sells EarlySense’s hospital-usage IP to Hillrom, EarlySense will receive the IP licensing back to focus on clinical settings outside of the hospital, a spokesperson for EarlySense told Skilled Nursing News after publication.

“Moving forward, EarlySense will provide remote patient monitoring devices to long-term care facilities, skilled nursing facilities, virtual care, post-acute and home patient monitoring markets,” the spokesperson said.

Hillrom, a medical equipment manufacturer, was one of the backers of EarlySense’s $39 million 2019 financing round, along with Wells Fargo Strategic Capital.

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“EarlySense’s contact-free continuous monitoring technology provides caregivers with a full picture of patient health, allowing for intervention at the earliest signs of patient deterioration,” Hillrom president and CEO John Groetelaars said in the press release.

EarlySense — based in Ramat Gan, Israel, and Woburn, Mass. — funded a report in 2018 that suggested post-acute care facilities could significantly increase their profits and revenue through implementing its technology or one similar. The Allure Group, with six SNFs located in New York, was one of the early SNF operators to use this technology; Ignite Medical Resorts and Focused Post Acute Care Partners also employed it in their facilities.

In a discussion with Skilled Nursing News in February 2019, Avner Halperin, a founder of EarlySense who served as CEO until 2019 and currently sits on the company’s board of directors, explained that collecting data from the bedside and sending it to a centralized location was critical for adoption of the technology by post-acute facilities — and SNFs in particular.

“Most importantly, customers in SNFs that have used our system have seen achievements in terms of improving their clinical outcomes — so fewer readmissions to hospital, more effective care of complex patients, and fewer falls and pressure ulcers have been kind of key points that they’ve seen achieved,” Halperin told SNN at the time. “That has driven expanded growth both within these post-acute networks, and within these newer networks as well.”

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