💌 Issue 76: Persperity's $1m for continuous hormone monitoring | Health & Her acquired | FemTech's best inventions
+ lots more in your weekly round-up of women's health innovation and FemTech news
Hi! Welcome to issue #76 of FutureFemHealth, here to bring you your weekly news about women’s health innovation and FemTech (w/c 4 November 2024).
The US election result will have profound and far-reaching implications for women, women’s health policies, reproductive healthcare, and the women’s health / FemTech sector. We’ll report on the impacts as they happen in the coming weeks and months, but for now, sending love and solidarity to everyone.
🌟 Coming up today we’ve got:
💦 The start-up using sweat for continuous hormone monitoring
💰 Venture Life Group acquires Health & Her
🔥 FemTech start-ups make TIME’s prestigious best inventions list
🌎 The CensHERship campaign heads to Europe
Got news to share from the world of FemTech and women’s health innovation? Let me know at anna@futurefemhealth.com
💦 This start-up uses sweat to track key hormones
How about a wearable device that continuously monitors key hormones like estradiol, progesterone, and luteinizing hormone (LH) in real-time?
Persperity Health is building just that. And what sets it apart is that it uses sweat to provide instant insights. A non-invasive process called ‘iontophoresis’ induces sweat on demand, so no strenuous exercise is required!
The start-up is a spin-out from Caltech, and it recently announced $1 million in pre-seed funding as well as a $3m win from the Sprint for Women’s Health (read our full story here on both of those).
Dr. Wei Gao, co-founder and inventor of the core technology said:
"By analyzing sweat, our device provides detailed information about what's happening inside your body.
“Once you realize the potential of sweat for health monitoring, it's hard to go back to conventional methods."
The rise of continuous hormone monitoring in women’s health
This new field of continuous hormone monitoring has potential across multiple areas of women’s health: from decision-making during fertility treatment, to improving pregnancy care and supporting menopause care too. There are applications in clinical settings (reducing in-person visits, fewer blood tests and less lab processing) as well as likely demand from consumers too for proactive health management at-home and on the go.
Persperity isn’t alone in this field. Level Zero Health and a Bayer-Impli partnership are also developing continuous hormone monitoring technologies, showing a growing interest from start-ups through to established pharmaceuticals.
And although these is much to work through (accuracy, user-friendliness, affordability/access), this is an exciting landscape with so much potential.
As Dr. Heather Lukas, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Persperity Health, puts it:
"We're not just creating another wearable device; we're unlocking a new dimension of personalized health monitoring. By making the invisible visible, we're empowering women to understand their bodies like never before.
“This is more than a technological advancement — it's a revolution in women's health."
(Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
💰 Funding, deals and investment news
📌 UK: Venture Life Group acquires Health & Her. After a recent launch into both the US and China, hormonal supplement brand Health & Her has sold for a £7.5m cash deal to consumer healthcare products firm Venture Life Group. Founded in 2019 by Gervase Fernandes and Kate Bache, Health & Her’s menopause and perimenopause products make up the majority of revenue, with plans to broaden further across women’s and men’s health. The start-up also boasts an app (the second-largest menopause app in the world!) and deep insights from extensive research with academic partners. So, while H&H is currently loss-making, its recent expansion coupled with a pipeline of new products is expected to deliver growth in the short to medium term. (Continue reading: Vox Markets)
🌟 More news from this week
📌 FemTech startups make TIME’s prestigious best inventions list. Nuvo Invu’s remote pregnancy monitoring, Daye’s diagnostic tampon and Dandi’s IVF Care kit make the annual list of TIME’s 200 best inventions. Roche’s HPV self-collection kit and Aspivix’s Carevix for IUD insertion also make the list. Brilliant to see the representation! (Continue reading: TIME)
📄 Govt & policy news
📌 BULGARIA: Bulgaria’s state health system failing pregnant and vulnerable women. Bulgaria has one of the smallest preventative health budgets in the European Union and nearly one million working age citizens (around 25%) do not pay health insurance. One of the areas this is felt is in maternal health where many pregnant Bulgarian women have not had a single check-up during pregnancy - with just 37% using the state-funded medical check-up in 2022. As a result, maternal and child health indicators are below the EU average. (Continue reading: Euractiv)
✅ Jobs
📌 US: Product Manager - Health Plans and Programs, Progyny
🌎 CensHERship wants to hear from you!
Have you experienced censorship when sharing health content on social media? Have you had ads banned or removed? Or certain content restricted?
CensHERship and The Case For Her are partnering to drive meaningful change in this space on behalf of everyone.
We want to hear from you if you are a founder / business which operates in the EU. Please support our campaign by sharing your insights with us about social media censorship.
Add your experience to our short survey here. (EU-operating businesses only for this one please!)
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com
Before you go: Would you like to support FutureFemHealth through sponsorship and get your brand in front of thousands of professionals, founders and investors in women’s health? I’m taking bookings from December onwards. For more info and a copy of our media pack drop me a line: anna@futurefemhealth.com