OxiWear is an ear wearable device that continuously monitors oxygen levels and alerts the wearer when their oxygen levels fall too low.OxiWear
After her first cardiac arrest, Shavini Fernando was told by a doctor in her native Sir Lanka that the blood pressure in her lungs was so great that the 33-year-old only had two years to live.
That was in 2015, a full seven years before she launched Oxiwear, an ear-worn oximeter that continuously measures oxygen levels and can send alerts, first to the wearer and then to emergency medical services, when it drops. And the path there required indomitable spirit, dogged persistence and a serendipitous grounding near Georgetown University, where Ted Leonsis took an interest and wrote her first investment check.
That first diagnosis prompted Fernando to fly the US for a second opinion. One of the cardiologists at Johns Hopkins Hospital indicated that a transplant would be needed, but Dr. Todd Kolb in the pulmonary hypertension clinic believed she could be treated less invasively — but she had to stay where she was. The risk of a flight home was too great.
Fernando immediately entered problem-solving mode. She would need a visa to stay, so she told her doctor, “Maybe I’ll just get another Master's." She already had an MBA and a graduate diploma in computer science from a pair of Australian universities.
Georgetown University accepted Fernando into its Communication, Culture and Technology program. Her core medical issue was a previously undiagnosed hole in her heart — which had been labeled asthma in her childhood — that, when stressed, can lead to a serious drop in her blood oxygen levels. Previously she couldn’t live alone, but her own use of Oxiwear has restored her independence.
“I'm a bit of a rebel,” Fernando said. "When people say all this negative stuff and nonsense, I want to challenge them and prove them wrong.”
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The device is designed to look like an earring and be an unobtrusive way to monitor saturated oxygen levels.
Photo: OxiWear 
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OxiWear was developed in 2019 by Shavini Fernando, a VR/video game and web designer who suffers from pulmonary hypertension as a result of Eisenmenger Syndrome.
Photo: OxiWear .ashx)
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The OxiWear device will allow a wearable to obtain the medical assistance needed in an emergency.
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Oxiwear graduated from the leAD Sports Health & Tech Accelerator in 2021 and launched as a consumer product last fall, retailing at $500. Apex Cycling joined as an early sports partner alongside Air Locker Training and a couple high-altitude Obstacle Course Racing groups. Fernando said the company has completed clinical testing for FDA 510k Class II clearance as a medical device and was about to submit its application for review. Oxiwear is also a national finalist for funding from an accelerator backed by the American Heart Association.
“She turned bad news into an opportunity,” said Kolb, who now serves as chief medical officer. “We see lots of folks with similar medical problems. It's rare. For us, it is not. And we have a slightly different perspective that management of this issue is possible, and that there may be some options for her that don't necessarily require transplantation and big surgeries.”
When Fernando first approached her Georgetown program director about the product idea, she prefaced it by saying, “I have this crazy idea.” She outlined the premise of Oxiwear. “And they said,” Fernando recalled, “‘We love crazy ideas.’”
Because she couldn’t return home for summers, Fernando spent extensive time in the studio of one of her professors, Evan Barber, who counseled her as she made her first prototype. Soon after that was the Leonsis Family Entrepreneurship Pitch Competition, nicknamed Bark Tank. The panel of judges, including Ted Leonsis and his son, Zach, awarded her $30,000, which Ted Leonsis takes care to describe not as an investment, per se, but “starter money to professionalize an idea.’
“Her personal story grabbed me, but it was her simplicity in explaining how she could solve for a very scary health issue affecting many people in such a cost-effective way. I knew I wanted to give her the starting capital to see her idea really take off,” Ted Leonsis wrote in an email.
He added, “I am a firm believer that when investing in a startup, you are investing in the founder just as much as you are investing in the company. It was very clear from her investor presentation that Ms. Fernando has what it takes to be an extraordinary entrepreneur.”
OxiWear founder and CEO Shavini Fernando (pictured center) was awarded $30,000 from Ted (left) and Zach Leonis for the Leonsis Family Entrepreneurship Pitch Competition.OxiWear
Fernando previously raised $1.5 million, but last year began seeking a $3.5 million round of investment, of which she said $3.25 million is already committed. Among the members of her advisory board are Leonsis, Global Wireless Solutions co-founder Rose Carter and Clay Path Partners founder and Clay Path Partners managing director Michael Ledecky (who also happens to be the brother of legendary Olympic swimmer Katie Ledecky and the nephew of New York Islanders owners Jon Ledecky).
When Oxiwear launched, Fernando found early resistance to the idea, with a number of investors discounted the need for oxygen monitoring. She countered that close to 50 million Americans had cardiovascular diseases and thus might stand to gain some benefit. Silent hypoxia, the serious condition caused by low blood oxygen without accompaniment by other symptoms, can still trigger heart failure and strokes.
And then of course the global Covid pandemic heightened everyone’s awareness for such technology. Most people are familiar with finger measurements, but that’s not practical for ongoing measurement. Potentially the best option for accurate data is the ear anyway. Oxiwear’s intellectual property, completed in collaboration with Cooley LLP, extends not just to the hardware but also its location, with patents protecting the placement of the device.
“The product meaningfully changes how people can live their lives on a day-to-day basis and allows people to live without fear,” Ledecky said.
In all, Fernando said she has endured four cardiac arrests and three strokes but none in the last five years. For a while, she needed supplemental oxygen but weaned off that a while back, too. She keeps a sense of humor about her medical history — joking, for example, “I’m literally like a Sherpa now” about her ability to function with reduced oxygen — but she’s insisted that her device is as precise as possible because she knows firsthand what can happen.
“Oxygen is life and death,” Fernando said. “Even the consumer one, I wanted to make sure it's medically accurate.”
