PranaQ

PranaQ is a digital health firm focused on the sleep and breathing disorder market, operating at the intersection of wearable medical devices and artificial intelligence. Founded in 2021 by CEO Jerry Chen, the company is headquartered in New York City. Chen, a serial entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Princeton University, brings experience from venture capital and product development to the company. The leadership team also includes Chief Scientist Hau-Tieng Wu, a tenured professor at NYU with extensive expertise in signal processing and machine learning, and CFO Imyoung Do, an MBA from Columbia Business School.

The company's core business revolves around developing AI-powered biomedical signal processing algorithms integrated into wearable medical devices. A significant milestone was achieved on February 18, 2025, when PranaQ received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance for its flagship product, TipTraQ. This clearance has paved the way for a nationwide launch, targeting sleep clinics, telehealth providers, and hospitals. The company's business strategy appears to be B2B, providing these healthcare entities with tools for diagnostics and monitoring. PranaQ has secured $3 million in a seed funding round, with investors including NAVER D2SF, Smile Gate Investment, and Lighthouse Combined Investment, to support FDA certification and initial marketing efforts.

PranaQ’s main offering, TipTraQ, is a home sleep apnea test (HSAT) designed as a compact, single-point-of-contact wearable device worn on the fingertip. It is engineered to simplify sleep apnea diagnosis by allowing patients to conduct tests from home without the need for belts, wires, or nasal cannulas. The device uses advanced biosensors, including tri-wavelength photoplethysmography (PPG) and 3-axis gyroscopes, to capture clinical-grade data on metrics like blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), pulse rate, respiratory rate, and sleep architecture. This data is automatically uploaded via a cloud-based platform, where an AI algorithm analyzes it to generate a report, providing healthcare professionals with a longitudinal view of a patient's sleep health, ideal for multi-night testing and treatment monitoring. The system is cleared to identify sleep apnea severity levels as mild, moderate, or severe, offering actionable insights for clinical decisions. The accuracy of TipTraQ has been validated in multiple clinical trials at institutions such as Duke University Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco, demonstrating high sensitivity and specificity compared to polysomnography (PSG).

Keywords: sleep diagnostics, wearable medical device, AI algorithm, home sleep apnea test, TipTraQ, FDA 510(k) clearance, biomedical signal processing, digital healthcare, IoMT, remote patient monitoring, sleep architecture analysis, telehealth solutions, SpO2 monitoring, respiratory insights, patient compliance, clinical trials, venture capital, Jerry Chen, sleep clinics, cloud-based health platform