Electronics
Nymi/Bionym
Designing Wearable, Biometric Devices Unique to All Users
Electronics
Nymi/Bionym
Designing Wearable, Biometric Devices Unique to All Users
54
Patent References to IEEE
$70M
Business Valuation
54
Patent References to IEEE
$70M
Business Valuation
Everyone’s heartbeat is unique based on the size and shape of the heart and the orientation of the heart valves.
Nymi has used this idea to develop wearable devices that authenticate a person’s identity via their heartbeat, giving access to secure places or sites by a watch-like band.14 In 2017, Nymi had a valuation of $47M to $70M.15
The Nymi Band is a wearable device that can be worn under all types of protective clothing and is uniquely assigned to each user, based on their unique biometric identity. The original use-case was for authorized consumer payments. Other applications include replacing passwords for computers and smartphones.
“With our new solution we address the very real challenge in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical market of ensuring secure and fast authentication, while also meeting compliance and data integrity requirements. We help our customers cut authentication times by up to 75%, thus significantly increasing their production efficiency.” - Obay Alchorbaji, Product Manager, Werum IT Solutions.16
The Nymi Band is unique because, once authenticated, it remains on, transmitting the wearer's identity until removed. It is considered one of the most secure biometric devices for authentication because the wearer needs to be alive, and, unlike fingerprints or iris-scans, a person’s unique heartbeat signal is difficult to reproduce.17
Nymi has nine US patents that reference the same six IEEE articles. Two of the referenced articles predate the first Nymi patent application by 13 years. This shows that the enabling science was published in an IEEE journal more than a decade before Nymi had a patented concept for their device.
Frequently Referenced IEEE Publications
The Nymi patents frequently reference the below documents from influential IEEE publications.
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
IEEE Transactions on Biometrical Engineering
14 Nymi website (2020) https://nymi.com/our_story Last accessed June 9, 2020 15 https://startup-map.berlin/companies/nymi 16 Anonymous (2020) "Werum IT Solutions launches new smart biometric authentication solution K.ME-IN for pharma and biotech in cooperation with Nymi," GlobeNewswire, January 8, 2020. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/werum-solutions-launches-smart-biometric-130010589.html Last accessed June 9, 2020. 17 Brewster, Signe. (2013) "With the Nymi wristband, your heart signal is the password," Gigaom.com, SEP 3, 2013 - 8:00 AM CDT https://gigaom.com/2013/09/03/with-the-nymi-wristband-your-heart-signal-is-the-password/ Last accessed June 9, 2020.