CellScope Nabs $1M From Khosla Ventures To Turn Your Smartphone Into A Microscope

Founded in the mobile microscopy lab at UC Berkeley, a young startup called CellScope is on a mission to turn your smart, mobile devices into a microscope, giving parents the ability to perform easy, at-home diagnoses. Graduating as part of Rock Health’s inaugural batch of startups, CellScope is preparing to launch its first product, an otoscope — that strange-looking device doctors use to look in your ears — that can be attached to smartphones to enable anyone and everyone to perform remote diagnoses of, say, pediatric ear infections. (Which, by the way, create 30 million doctor visits annually in the U.S.)

The startup has been developing its first product for over a year now, adding functionality that will give consumers the ability to share images of the eardrum with remote pediatricians for diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. To help bring its device to shelves near you, CellScope is today announcing that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from Khosla Ventures.

After this epic post on the future of health care and medicine, you can bet that veteran investor and Sun Microsystems founding exec Vinod Khosla has had his eye out for smart, mobile health devices. His venture capital firm has been stepping up its investments in healthtech startups of late, participating in Misfit Wearables $7.6 million in funding, along with $10.5 million for AliveCor.

For the young team from UC Berkeley, Khosla’s participation is great early validation for its mission (and its device), allowing the team to accelerate its development and ramp up hiring.

Updating

CellScope at home here.