Flagstaff's HemaSense Takes Its Bleeding-Detection Wearable Into the Clinic

By Kyle Macdonald, COO of Silicon Oasis

Some of Arizona's most interesting medical technology is being built far from the Phoenix core. HemaSense, a medical device startup with locations in Flagstaff and Phoenix, is developing a wearable patch that alerts clinicians to bleeding beneath the skin before it becomes visible, and the company says it has now begun collecting clinical data from its first patients.

The problem is a common one. After catheter-based procedures through the femoral artery or vein, nearly 10 percent of patients experience bleeding at the access site during recovery, according to an AZBio profile of the company. Today, those bleeds are usually caught through periodic visual checks by nurses. HemaSense's patch measures how electricity moves through tissue to detect bleeding under the skin, which In Business Magazine reports can reach as deep as 7 centimeters.

The company is led by CEO Nathan Friedman, with Chief Technology Officer Ben Trapp and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anita Asgar. HemaSense says its hardware is in pilot-scale manufacturing, preclinical feasibility has been demonstrated, and it has confirmed a De Novo pathway with the FDA. The device is investigational and has not been approved by the FDA.

HemaSense was funded the way many Arizona medtech companies get started. It received $250,000 through the Partnership for Economic Innovation's WearTech Applied Research Center in October 2025, then closed an oversubscribed $630,000 pre-seed round from 19 individual angel investors in November 2025. Several of those angels qualified for Arizona's Angel Tax Credit, which returns up to 35 percent of a medtech investment as a state income tax credit.

That matters because early medical device companies face a long, expensive road before their first sale, and the earliest checks are the hardest to find. A Northern Arizona startup reaching clinical evaluation on angel money and state applied-research funding shows those programs doing what they were designed to do.

It also widens the map. Arizona's medtech story is usually told through Phoenix and Tucson. HemaSense is a reminder that Flagstaff belongs in it too, and that the next generation of Arizona device companies may come from anywhere in the state. That is the larger Silicon Oasis story.

Articles of Reference:
https://hemasense.com/
https://inbusinessphx.com/economy-trends/this-program-could-unlock-2-5-million-in-arizona-startup-funding
https://www.azbio.org/?p=49099