Percy

Percy is developing a contactless, non-video behavioral measurement system intended to make behavioral sleep therapy scalable for healthcare providers. The system combines a sensor-based medical device that passively collects nighttime data, an AI-driven algorithm that analyzes that data to identify behavioral and environmental factors affecting sleep, and a provider dashboard that tracks changes over time to support remote monitoring and consultation.

The company frames its approach as an alternative to three existing options it describes as inadequate: sleep labs (invasive, time-consuming and inaccessible to most people), sleep medication (which sedates rather than addressing root causes), and consumer biometric trackers (which report how a person slept but not why or how to change it). Percy instead focuses on behaviors and the sleep environment rather than in-body biometrics, on the premise that behavioral sleep therapy is effective but labor-intensive for providers and dependent on patient self-reporting.

Percy states a particular focus on neurodivergent populations — notably the autistic community — and people with chronic medical conditions, citing that 80% of autistic individuals have clinically significant sleep problems and that individuals with autism may receive many hours of weekly therapy with no therapeutic oversight during sleep.

Founding story

Founder and CEO Conner Herman was serving in the U.S. military when her first child was born and experienced postpartum depression accompanied by severe sleep deprivation. After leaving the military she searched for help and eventually worked with a sleep consultant, an experience that led her and a partner to create what is described as the first overnight sleep consultancy in Manhattan, sending experts to observe clients during their actual nightly routines rather than in a sleep study office. The consultancy demonstrated that changing a person's environment and nighttime behaviors could rapidly change their sleep, but was difficult and costly to scale, which led Herman to develop Percy as a contactless, non-video behavioral measurement system that delivers data to providers.

Business model

Percy plans to sell its device, algorithm and provider dashboard to healthcare providers once the product is fully developed; an earlier version of the site described the system as suitable for clinical or personal use. As of the Science Center profile the company was pre-revenue and operating a waitlist and demo request process.

Traction

Percy was described as pre-revenue and still developing its product. Founder Conner Herman participated in MassChallenge 2023 and the MIT Dual-Use Venture Incubator, attended HLTH 2023, was accepted into the Science Center's Capital Readiness Program Cohort 4 in March 2024, and exhibited at HLTH 2024 with a booth obtained at a discount through the Science Center — described as the company's first public showcase of the product.

Latest developments

Percy took part in the Science Center's Capital Readiness Program (Cohort 4, March 2024) and returned to the HLTH conference in 2024 with the Science Center, where it showcased the product for the first time while remaining pre-revenue.