Fledgling biowearables startup Levels has raised a hefty seed round for a system that tracks the impact of diet on human health.
Founded out of New York in 2019, Levels has developed software capable of interpreting glucose data captured from a sensor that attaches to the back of a person’s arm via a tiny probe the user inserts under the surface of their skin. The device takes a glucose reading automatically every 15 minutes, transmitting the relevant data to the Levels smartphone app for processing.
With Levels currently running as part of a closed beta program ahead of its full consumer launch early next year, the startup today announced that it has secured a $12 million seed investment from Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from a number of notable angel investors, including Netflix cofounder Marc Randolph and former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.
Healthy market
The current wearable technology market, encompassing fitness trackers, sleep trackers, heart-rate monitors, and more, was pegged at $33 billion in 2019. Now Levels hopes to add a new metabolic health-tracking category to that list.
In the U.S. alone, some 122 million people have diabetes or prediabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for a staggering 38% of the population. The fact that 84% of people who have prediabetes are unaware of their condition highlights the potential for Levels in the broader health tracking realm — particularly as prediabetes is an entirely reversible condition.
Moreover, just 12.2% of American adults are considered “metabolically healthy,” meaning that only 27 million adults are deemed to be at low risk for chronic diseases such as heart disease or diabetes.
Although Levels is pitched as a consumer service and platform, it is easy to see how it aligns with the growing telemedicine trend that has exploded in 2020 due to the pandemic. But many remote medical care services are struggling to carry out examinations that can’t be done remotely. This is likely why New York-based startup Tyto Care was able to close a $50 million funding round for an at-home medical testing kit that allows health care providers to examine patients’ lungs, heart, throat, ears, skin, abdomen, and body temperature without coming into direct contact with them.
Levels could fit into any number of remote wellness initiatives, perhaps as part of an employer’s health care program, with coaches or health care professionals checking on the data from afar. At $399 for the first month, Levels is priced at the premium end of the spectrum, and it may not attain the kind of mass-market adoption enjoyed by health-tracking services from the likes of Fitbit, Garmin, and Strava.
Under the hood
Levels doesn’t develop its own hardware sensors, instead electing to work with a third-party provider.
“Because this (sensor) hardware can be difficult to access due to being prescription only, we have set up a fulfillment process for the hardware that includes a telemedicine consultation with a physician and shipment of prescription sensors from our partner pharmacy,” Levels cofounder and chief medical officer Dr. Casey Means told VentureBeat.
Above: Levels uses a sensor that attaches to the back of a person’s arm
The user wears the initial sensor for two weeks, and then switch it out for a second one, with the goal of completing a month-long program. For many, a month will be long enough to derive all the insights they need to make changes, while those who wish to join for the long-haul can continue using the platform for a reduced price of $199 per month.
To know what a person is eating, Levels relies on good old-fashioned manual data entry. The user can proactively input whatever food item they are consuming, but the Levels app also features a smart “event detection” tool that prompts users to log their food as it detects their glucose data changing.
Above: Levels: Entering a food item
Levels, which claims a waiting list of 45,000 people during its closed beta period, isn’t specifically designed to monitor for diabetes risk factors. Real-time glucose data can be used by anyone — including professional or amateur athletes — to improve diet, performance, and recovery by analyzing the impact of food intake on the body.
“We have the largest dataset in the world of continuously measured glucose paired with food,” Levels cofounder Andrew Conner told VentureBeat. “We use this to build personalized feedback for each person so they can see overall how their metabolic health is, what foods are they most or least sensitive to, and what levers they can pull to build metabolic fitness.”
Under the hood, Levels pairs continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) technology with its own proprietary algorithms to make the data easy to interpret for consumers — it merges various numbers into a single unified metric, like a score.
“Glucose monitoring alone is insufficient because it’s incredibly difficult to understand and loop back to things in your control,” Connor added. “Our goal is behavioral change: Learn about your metabolism and build metabolic fitness by forming a tight feedback loop.”
Above: Levels app: Scanning through metabolic scores from day-to-day
“Simple questions such as ‘What is normal?’ and ‘What changes should I consider to be more metabolically healthy?’ are hard to answer, because no one has focused on directly measuring and improving metabolic health for non-diabetic people,” Connor added.
