Vancouver-based Mio Global, which offers heart rate monitoring wristbands and watches, announced $19 million CAD in a funding round led by Germany-based Hydra Ventures.
“The era of heart rate has finally arrived. Multiple wearables offer accessible, unobtrusive heart rate monitoring, yet most consumers do not fully engage with the heart rate sensing capabilities or do not know how to make sense of heart rate data,” said Liz Dickinson, Founder and CEO of Mio Global. “PAI solves this problem by using one simple metric. This new investment will be used to fuel continued growth and develop future technologies that will improve global health.”
Mio Global was founded in 1999, and is known for its Mio ALPHA wrist watch, which promises EKG-level accuracy for fitness training and day-to-day monitoring. The company recently introduced “PAI” (Personal Activity Intelligence) into its products, which it says can track the body’s response to all types of physical activity, while users receive a score on their activity level — which, ideally, should be over 100.
Mio will use the funding to further develop Mio’s AI-based sensor analytics and insights platform within PAI, and accelerate the launch of the Mio SLICE, its next generation of Mio wearable which will capture all-day heart rate data and display PAI directly on a wristband.
Mio acquired the PAI technology from Dr. Ulrik Wisloff, Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and the Head of Cardiac Exercise Research Group and K.G. Jebsen Centre for Exercise in Medicine. To study the PAI method, Wisloff completed a study in which more than 60,000 individuals were closely monitored during a period of 20 years. The findings of the study will be published later this year.
