Pressure is funny. Too much of it and systems fail. Measure it right and decisions sharpen fast. That tension has lived inside CranioSense, Inc. for more than a decade, long before noninvasive brain pressure was something clinicians trusted outside the ICU. This company did not appear overnight. It incubated quietly inside Vivonics, Inc., grinding through defense-backed R&D while most of healthcare kept guessing instead of measuring.
The formal spinout in 2023 was not a reinvention. It was a release valve. Years of U.S. Department of Defense funded research, real patients, and direct comparisons against gold standards that still involve drilling into skulls. Noninvasive intracranial pressure was not supposed to perform like this. Physics had other plans, and consensus did not get a vote.
That work just spoke loudly. CranioSense secured ~$5.5M in non-dilutive federal funding from the NIH Blueprint MedTech Program and the DoD Joint Warfighter Medical Research Program. No cap table gymnastics. No equity tax. Just capital designed to push pivotal clinical trials, regulatory milestones, manufacturing readiness, and pilot deployment straight into execution mode.
Ryan Myers, PhD, MBA did not chase a problem in search of a market. He chased clinicians. Hundreds of conversations shaped IPASS, a system that reads intracranial pressure without breaking skin using near-infrared optics, signal processing, and an algorithm refined by Dr. Michele Pierro, PhD that finally learned how to listen through the skull instead of arguing with superficial arteries.
The data already carries weight. Multi-site ICU validation across 7 hospitals. Sensitivity at 91%. Specificity at 95%. Ongoing work at Massachusetts General Hospital comparing directly to lumbar puncture opening pressure. When more than 90% of physicians say they would adopt after seeing it, that is not hype. That is demand waiting for clearance.
Execution matters when science gets real. Kristian DiMatteo brings 30+ years of medical device experience, 90+ issued patents, and operational instincts forged at scale. Gordon Hirschman anchors the board and the Vivonics licensing backbone, carrying 40+ years of advanced technology development into governance and strategy.
Earlier this year, Illinois Venture Angels, She’s Independent Investments, Heinz Ventures, and Hillside Ventures did exactly what smart angels do. They bridged belief to proof. This federal funding does something sharper. It compresses time.
Emergency departments see ~3M traumatic brain injury visits annually, yet only ~2% receive ICP assessment. That is not a gap. That is a blind spot. IPASS does not shout. It listens. It gives clinicians information before pressure becomes damage, before decisions harden into regret, before outcomes turn into statistics.
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