CAN a pair of socks help those with diabetes avoid foot amputations?

That’s one of the ideas behind Siren, a company that’s building smart, washable fabric wearables — the first of which is a pair of socks meant to help those with diabetes monitor their foot health and detect dangerous injuries early. They’ve just raised an US$11.8 million Series B to help get it done.

Siren co-founder Ran Ma says that amputations in patients with diabetes are largely the result of injuries that go undetected for too long. Over time, diabetes can cause nerve damage; when this nerve damage impacts the feet, patients can develop injuries and ulcers without noticing — out of sight, out of mind. Left untreated, these injuries can grow worse or become infected to the point that amputation is required.

Siren’s socks help detect injuries that might otherwise go unnoticed by monitoring the temperature of six regions of the wearer’s foot. If one region seems to be getting considerably warmer than those around it, it could indicate ongoing inflammation caused by an injury. The socks can connect to the patient’s phone via Bluetooth to help them keep an eye on their feet — and, importantly, that information is beamed to their doctors, who can keep an eye out for red flags. Siren won the TechCrunch Hardware Battlefield at CES back in 2017. Since then, the company has raised around US$22 million in funding.

(SD-Agencies)