Massachusetts-based digital health firm Epicore Biosystems has raised $26m in series B funding to help develop sweat-sensing wearables.

The funding will help Epicore drive global adoption of its personalised hydration and cloud analytics platform and expand into new biomarker targets relevant to kidney health, women’s health, malnutrition and environmental toxin exposures.

Excessive heat exposure poses significant global problems, particularly for individuals at the highest risk of heat injury, such as industrial workers, children and expectant mothers. The threat of heat and the compounding effects of environmental toxins have been shown to result in acute health risks and chronic conditions at alarming rates.

Epicore addresses this with its sweat-sensing products that offer real-time insights into hydration, stress, nutrition and wellness. The technology taps into the underlying biochemistry and metabolic health by measuring sweat composition and fluid losses, non-invasively, and in tandem with traditional digital biomarkers to alert when a wearer is at risk of heat injury, dehydration or malnutrition.

“Epicore has developed a new class of biochemical sensing wearables that enable the sports, fitness and connected worker sectors to unlock key health and wellness insights,” said Roozbeh Ghaffari, CEO of Epicore Biosystems. “Our technology delivers data-driven recommendations to the wearer to help manage these types of challenges. The series B investment will help expand our global reach and accelerate the validation of new biomarkers needed to shape the future of personalised hydration and wellness strategies for all.”

Epicore’s suite of sweat-sensing wearables includes the Gx Sweat Patch (www.epicorebiosystems.com/our-solutions/gx-sweat-patch), commercialised in partnership with Pepsi and Gatorade, the Discovery Patch Sweat Collection System (www.epicorebiosystems.com/our-solutions/discovery-patch), an FDA Class I device, and the Connected Hydration (www.epicorebiosystems.com/our-solutions/connected-hydration) wearable and cloud platform for industrial workers.

The funding round was led by the Steele Foundation for Hope (SFfH, www.steelefoundationforhope.org).

“Epicore’s commitment to improving personalised health for those in critical need aligned strongly with our mission to improve the quality of life for people in need worldwide,” said Joe Exner, SFfH CEO. “We are proud to back Epicore’s pioneering work in sweat-monitoring technology, an innovation with significant potential to address the critical health challenges frontline populations face due to climate change.”

Since completing its series A round over three years ago, Epicore has expanded beyond sports and fitness and grown its customer base 24 times with multinational enterprises in the energy, construction, manufacturing and aviation sectors. With ever-growing health and environmental disparities, the need for connected digital products that measure biometrics and provide personalised recommendations is driving a health tech revolution.

Epicore Biosystems (www.epicorebiosystems.com) is a digital health company spun out of Northwestern University’s Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics and the John Rogers Laboratory. Epicore has developed sweat-sensing wearables that provide real-time personalised health insights. Its clinically validated biowearables and cloud analytics are deployed globally and licensed by Fortune 500 companies, the US Department of Defense and the National Institute of Health.