EloCare Menopause Assistant

In 2025, there will be over 1B women entering menopause, 75% of them develop symptoms such as hot flash, night sweat and irritability. More critically, the physiology of menopause puts women at higher risk for heart disease, bone loss and cognitive decline. Without timely intervention, these chronic conditions become irreversible. However, there is no objective way yet to detect and monitor menopause outside of lab and no quantifiable way to evaluate treatments, leaving a huge number of women untreated or getting the ineffective treatment. 

At EloCare, we develop wearable and data-driven mobile solution that monitors menopausal symptoms, evaluates treatment, creates customized plans, and connects users with medical care so that they can be diagnosed in time and get optimal treatments to manage menopause with ease. With modern women spending more than 1/3 of her life in menopausal period, our mission is to help these women live healthier and longer.

Over 1B women will enter menopause in 2025. 75% of them experience more than 35 life-troubling symptoms such as hot flashes, heart palpitations, sleep disorder, etc. More critically, estrogen deficiency causes higher chronic diseases’ risks including cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer's disease. 1 in 3 heart attacks admitted to US hospitals is from a menopausal woman, and the risk of stroke doubles during the first decade after menopause onset. These risks are preventable, only if we can detect the menopause onset and have reliable tools to assess individual risk profiles for timely intervention.

Unfortunately, menopause has been the most neglected area of women’ health. Current menopausal management suffers from a huge number of misdiagnosis and ineffective treatment. Conventional blood-based hormone tests used to diagnose and prescribe treatment is often unreliable because hormone fluctuates in time and among women. Women with and without symptoms can have the same hormone level. Symptom detection and monitoring is a more reliable method, but no tool exists for this beyond the lab. Also, only 20% OBGYN US residency programs provide menopause training, and 60% of menopausal women feel uninformed and isolated. Currently, 3 out of 4 women who seek help for symptoms don’t receive it.

EloCare develops wearable technology and mobile app that monitors menopausal symptoms, evaluates treatment, creates customized plans, and connects women with medical care so they can be diagnosed in time and get optimal treatments to manage menopause with ease.

Major biomarkers to measure by wearable device:

·     Skin conductance: proven by research as the golden standard to detect hot flashes, the most common symptoms for menopause and is leading reason menopausal women seek medical care. This will also be used to detect stress and mood disorders of menopausal women.

·     Activity level: measures sleep disorder, combined with skin conductance to detect night sweats.

·     Heart rate: monitors heart irregularities including heart palpitations and other chronic conditions.

Mobile App:

·     Creates personalized health profile for each menopausal woman based on their biomarkers.

·     Gives data-driven suggestions on early interventions (seeking medical attention, adjusting treatment, adopting new lifestyle, etc.).

·     Connects menopausal women with verified menopause specialists.

EloCare provides 1B women with better gynecological healthcare in their midlife years and beyond. Between the ages of 45 and 65, nearly 1 in 3 women are currently in a menopausal phase. Social stigma has caused menopausal women to suffer in silence. But this is changing, starting with the menopause movement originated from UK. Modern women are thus more vocal about menopause, and have both economic and technological background to adapt to new innovations. We provide these women a reliable tool to manage their menopausal health. With EloCare, women will know exactly what is going on with her body, get the best menopausal care and take control of her health & life.

We have collected >140 survey responses, conducted many in-depth interviews with menopausal women, gynecologists, menopause researchers, and reached out to 9 menopause groups (~36k members combined) to validate the problem and solution. We have secured 4 LOIs and 2 future pilots with global parties, and communicating with 2 pharmaceutical companies (Que Oncology and Astellas) which are developing drugs to treat hot flashes. We are in the process of launching a website and free app to build user base and collect constant feedback, along with future marketing campaigns.

Menopause remains severely unaddressed in women’s health. Women have been suffering in silence due to the taboo and lack of healthcare resources surrounding menopause. Menopausal women undergo significant gynecological & general health-related changes, suffering from symptoms that last 4 to 20 years or more. Critically, estrogen deficiency causes higher risks of heart, bone, and cognitive diseases, which could eventually become irreversible. In this perspective, menopause provides a unique time-window for risk identification and modification to prevent diseases and promote longevity. Our solution empowers menopausal women to take control of their gynecological & general health to live healthier and happier.

Traditional blood-based hormone tests used to diagnose and prescribe treatment to menopause could be unreliable due to high hormone fluctuation in time and among women. Tracking the symptoms is a more practical approach. However, there exists no home-based tool to help women objectively monitor their menopausal symptoms. Women often monitor and report these symptoms based on their personal perception, which could be highly subjective and often inaccurate. There exists some instrument (Biolog) to objectively detect hot flashes but is only used in research and are impractical to use as daily-wear. Moreover, the lab device is highly expensive (~2000USD) and can only count the number of hot flashes, without measuring severity or other symptoms.

Existing wearable devices that indicate general health conditions, e.g. apple watch, fitbit, oura ring, etc. have been used to track general health and fitness. But none of them focus on menopause, so they don’t have built-in sensors to gather relevant bio-signals for menopausal symptoms detection. Some more specialized devices (eg, empatica) have these sensors but lack the algorithms to interpret bio-signals in a menopausal context.

Our wearable device is the first wearable device that uses different sensors and advanced signal-processing algorithms to provide unbiased detection and continuous monitoring of several important menopausal symptoms in daily context, taking into account possible environmental interference. Data sensed by the device creates an accurate and personalized menopausal health profile and corresponding customized treatment plans. The system will also become smarter and more accurate over time with more data.

EloCare wearable device consists of several sensors that are able to reliably capture the bio-signals most relevant to menopausal condition:

-     Skin conductance: proven by research as the golden standard to detect hot flashes, the most common menopausal symptom. This will also be used to detect stress and mood disorders of menopausal women.

-     Activity level: measures sleep disorder, combined with skin conductance to detect night sweats.

-     Heart rate: monitors cardiovascular irregularities such as heart palpitations (common menopausal symptom) and more chronic disorders.

-     Temperature and humidity: measures relevant environmental conditions, so the system can know if the user is having a hot flash or just being in a temperature-fluctuating environment.

Although these sensing technologies have been used in research, they have yet been translated to a commercial daily-wear product to monitor menopausal clinical symptoms. To achieve this, we are developing the unique AI-driven signal-processing algorithms that can reliably process these biomarkers and link them to menopausal symptoms. These clinical-based algorithms take into account the contributing environmental noise and variation from users’ activities as they go about daily life.

In terms of system architecture, our reliable cloud services securely receive and process bio-data from end users. Bio-data is transmitted to the mobile application via bluetooth protocol to create a personalized health profile for each user based on their own biomarkers, and give data-driven suggestions on early interventions for users. Overall, our bio-data models trained in the menopausal context will get more accurate and smarter overtime.

Skin conductance has been used in research to detect hot flashes (HF), the most common menopausal symptom, and other conditions such as stress. Example of research studies using skin conductance to detect HF can be found below:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30440580

Forouzanfar et al. presented an automatic algorithm for HF detection based on sternal skin conductance signal and ECG-derived heart rate pattern.

https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/doi/abs/10.1002/ajhb.22415

Lynnette L. Sievert reviewed the physiology of HF and different methods to examine HF. HF has been objectively measured with different parameters, among which skin conductance was most highly correlated with subjective report. The paper also pointed out that concordance between subjective and objective HF report can reach 100% in the lab, but much lower in ambulatory setting using current methods.

This justifies our choice of using skin conductance in our wearable. We are working on the detection and evaluation algorithm so it can reliably detect HF in the daily environment, and can measure other aspects including severity which was not included in the available method. Moreover, our device has other sensors to monitor other bio-signals, so it can detect other relevant menopausal symptoms.

Currently, we are actively developing the prototype and evaluating different sensors in the menopausal context. Especially, we are collecting skin conductance data from menopausal women in a hospital in Singapore to develop and improve this HF detection algorithm. The brief product demo can be found at:https://youtu.be/fRROdCIMIUk

Our early prototype was also the winner in the Menopause Hacking Challenge 2020, organized by AARP Innovation Labs:https://www.hackster.io/contests/aarpmenopause

EloCare provides wearable and data-driven mobile solution that monitors menopausal symptoms, evaluates treatment, creates customized plans, and connects users with medical care. We expect our solution to improve women's quality of life with the following outcomes:

Short-term outcomes:

-           Women understand better what is going on with her body and get the support she needs, she no longer lives in frustration and isolation when it comes to menopausal health concerns.

-           Women can be diagnosed in time for her menopausal condition and get the optimal treatment. Currently, 3 out of 4 women who seek medical care for menopause do not get treated, this will vastly change with the use of EloCare.

-           Women do not have to suffer from menopausal symptoms which could be detrimental to every aspect of her life. This will also positively impact lives of whom she is associated with.

-           Women will improve health awareness and take active actions to maintain a healthy lifestyle (diets, exercises, etc). She can take control of her health better with the aid of technology.

 Long-term outcomes:

-           Important chronic diseases could be detected earlier and even become preventable. Estrogen deficiency exposes women to higher risks of heart, bone and cognitive diseases that could “silently” progress and become irreversible over time. 1 in 3 heart attacks admitted to US hospital is from a menopausal woman, and the risk of stroke doubles in the first decade after menopause onset. Early research has also been linking significant change in cognitive parameters to menopausal onset, independent of chronological age. Thus, timely and optimal menopausal care will help women live more than 1/3 of her life healthier and longer.

-           Better healthcare for women in midlife years and beyond translates to enhanced organizational productivity and advancement to society. Menopausal women currently consist of 20% of the US workforce and they play important roles in family, organizations and society. This is particularly relevant in the context of aging population. EloCare has potential to transform women's quality of life and work productivity to facilitate gender equality.

Currently we are still in the developmental stage and have not yet launched the product. Once we launch, we target that our wearable and mobile solution can serve at least 300 menopausal women within 1 year, while at least 1000 women can benefit from our app alone. We have reached out to 9 menopause social groups so far with 36k members combined and these are potentially our early adopters.

Our primary market will be the US in the beginning. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports that over 2 million US women reach menopause every year. Currently, there are about 38 million American women who are menopausal, who could benefit from our solution. In 5 years, we want our solution to reach at least 5% of this population, providing a solution to more than 1.9M US women directly.

As the product develops, we will enter other markets and reach out to all international women who seek a solution for their menopausal health. By 2025, there will be over 1B women entering menopause globally. Our vision is to empower millions of menopausal women with a tool so they can take control of their health.

Within next year, we seek to achieve the following goals:

·    File for IP protection, finish the first stage of R&D and have the device ready for pilot testing in Chinese University of Hong Kong and Harvard Cancer Center.

·    Ready to launch consumer-grade wearable and mobile app, sales and feedback from early adopters should be expected by the end of the year.

·    Continue our R&D effort to develop a medical-grade version of the product with more medical functions.

·    Fundraising and online marketing campaigns, build an online community to support menopausal women.

  Within 5 years, we seek to achieve the following goals:

·    Have our product FDA-cleared and can be used in both research communities/clinics and daily home environment.

·    International scale-up such that the solution can impact millions of menopausal women globally, including countries with lack of medical support and awareness about women’s health.

·    The solution not only provides the best menopausal care, but will also be able to predict and alert important health risks to prevent chronic diseases. Our future clinical trials and R&D results could emphasize that women can live healthier and even longer from their midlife years into old ages. Mortality rates from heart, bone and cognitive diseases decline with enhanced menopausal support provided.   

To reach the goals in the next year, our biggest challenge is obtaining enough fundraising so that we can dedicate sufficient R&D effort to produce the best solution that can benefit early users. This is especially critical in the context of COVID-19 which could impose more financial constraints and delay in possible supply chain/operations.

To reach the goals in the next 5 years, our challenge is how to scale up internationally and make sure our solution can reach where it is needed most. Women in countries where menopause movement is happening will be the first to benefit from any femtech innovations dedicated in this area, as they are more aware, vocal and actively seeking the solutions they deserve. However, there will be a barrier to reach women in countries where menopause still remains a social stigma and women either continue to suffer in silence or be “conditioned” to dismiss their own health concerns. Creating enough awareness and educating these women about the importance of their own health and available options for them will be a challenge. Ironically, women without obvious symptoms, or those who learn to adapt with their symptoms, could potentially suffer more from long-term health risks as they miss the chance to identify these risks early. It is our ultimate goal to reach out to these women and impact their lives.

To overcome the barrier to reach the goal next year, we have secured early funding and will continue to look for more financial resources. We are also leveraging our experience with supply chain and hardware development, and utilizing existing medical and scientific network support especially from our advisors, to reduce the cost in prototyping and ealy testing. 

In addition, we hope to seek more support from Solve and MIT communities to overcome the barriers in both short-term and long-term goals. Specifically, we look for:

·       Build connections to investors and grantors to help with fundraising to sustain and scale up our project.

·       Support and mentorship from Solve & MIT communities to strengthen our business strategy and long-term technological R&D pathway.

·       Support with brand building and communications so the solution can reach out to global communities, especially where the solution is needed most.

Currently, our startup team has 2 co-founders/directors and 4 advisors. We are in the process of looking for interns and early employees to expedite the product development.

Mabel (CEO) has a PhD in biomedical engineering from National University of Singapore (NUS). She has extensive research experiences in medical devices and applications. She built a hardware system to study heart disease during her PhD, which resulted in 11 publications and 6 conference presentations.

Fandi (CTO) has two master’s degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology in computer science and electrical engineering. He previously co-founded a hardware company in Shenzhen, China, and has over 4 years of R&D experience with 4 patents in machine learning and human computer interface, familiar with supply chain & hardware ecosystem. He was selected for Forbes China’s “30 Under 30” list.

We have also on-boarded with us a strong advisor team:

1. Prof Leo Hwa Liang (regulatory advisor) is deputy head of Biomedical Engineering Department in NUS , and is an expert in medical innovations & regulation.

 2. Prof John Ho (technical advisor) is PI of Wireless bioelectronics lab at ECE Department in NUS. He is conducting cutting edge research in wearable sensors for healthcare and is listed in Innovators under 35 by MIT technology review.

3. Prof Susan Logan (clinical advisor) is gynecologist and director of O&G program at National University Hospital, and also co-lead for women’s health in Alexandra hospital (Singapore). 

4. Prof Rossella Nappi (clinical advisor) is gynecologist and sexologist in Italy and an active member of International Menopause Society. She is also PI for a large number of clinical trials.

EloCare currently has 2 groups that we partner with for product development and initial testing:

-        National University Hospital (NUH), Singapore: we are working closely with our clinical advisor at NUH to collect initial data and validate the algorithm to detect and evaluate menopausal symptoms, in preparation to the next phase of piloting our solution on more patients. 

-        National University of Singapore (NUS): our regulatory and technical advisors are professors/PIs from Department of Biomedical Engineering and Wireless Bioelectronics Group, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in NUS, which will help us with later-stage of more advanced technology development.

We have also secured 2 future pilots with Chinese University of Hong Kong and Harvard Cancer Center to evaluate our product at the later stage (tentatively in 2021).

Menopause related markets are rapidly growing and our solution can be applied both in the consumer healthcare sector and in the research based clinical trials.

As for the consumer market, globally there are 40M women newly enter menopause every year and the number is growing with an aging population. Our solution enables midlife women to monitor their symptoms, evaluate treatment and connect with menopause specialists. With the direct-to-consumer model and a tentative retail price of $200, the total 2C addressable market is 8B every year.

For menopause research & clinical trials, EloCare enables objective and automatic menopausal symptom detection and recording in ambulatory settings, which can significantly increase the efficiency and data resolution for the research and treatment validation process. Currently there are 200,000 participants globally in all menopause related clinical trials. With a tentative price of $500 per participant, the total addressable market is 100M USD per year.

Currently we are in the R&D phase with the initial pre-seed funding we raised from a medtech incubator. After we launch our product later this year, the direct-to-consumer revenue model will primarily contribute to our financial sustainability. Also, part of the potential revenue will come from menopause related research and clinical trials, where our solution can be applied to facilitate the validation process.

We need more resources, mentorship and network support to sustain and scale up the project globally which Solve and MIT networks can help substantially. Specifically, we seek:

-     Support and mentorship from Solve & MIT communities to strengthen our business strategy and technological R&D pathway. We believe biomedical and AI-driven technology can revolutionize the standards of women’s health and advance not just menopausal health but women’s longevity ultimately. Realizing this vision also means we have to tackle longer and more challenging R&D pathways compared to other non-tech approaches. Directing our R&D to what matters most both short-term and long-term, and adopting a strong business strategy to sustain and scale both revenue and impact, are crucial elements.

-     Connections to investors and grantors to help with fundraising. Having clinical pilots and trials in the long-term R&D plan is important to validate and advance our solution scientifically, which inevitably requires substantial fundraising. We believe receiving the network support from the MIT community is extremely influential to help us attract more funding to achieve this goal.

-     Support with brand building and communications so the solution can become global. It could be a challenge to reach out to all international women communities, especially where the solution might be most impactful. With media and conference exposure from Solve & MIT support, we believe we can strengthen our communications and accelerate international brand building, and get connected to key-opinion leaders to spread the impact in different global communities.

We seek the partnerships and support from Solve & MIT communities to help us strengthen the business model and advise on a R&D pathway that is sustainable and impactful both short-term and long-term.

We also seek to raise more capital to sustain the clinical validation of our solution and long-term R&D. We believe belonging to Solve & MIT communities and getting connected to the relevant networks would be extremely beneficial for us to attract more funding.

Importantly, our ultimate goal is to scale the impact globally, which requires strong support in terms of marketing, media and exposure.

We would like to seek partnerships with any strong and credible organizations/Solve members and MIT labs that are experienced in supporting technology-driven projects/startups commercially and/or technologically, and sharing the vision of advancing humanity’s health and wellbeing. We also seek to partner with any organizations with a large and expanding network, which can support us with brand-building and scale.

All women have to go through menopause, yet this area in women’s health remains severely unaddressed. Moreover, the social stigma around menopause has caused women globally to suffer in silence, with symptoms lasting 4 to 20 years or more and also higher chronic health risks. 70% of women say symptoms impact their daily life, 60% feel uninformed and isolated. Worse, 3 out of 4 women who seek medical help for symptoms don’t receive it. There is definitely a demand for better menopausal care, which is also proven by the on-going menopause movement globally. EloCare develops scientific-backed technology and AI-driven solution to provide women and her medical professionals a reliable tool to assess her personalized gynecological health-profile and find the optimal treatment. We aim to empower menopausal women with a reliable and convenient tool so they can take control of their health during midlife years and beyond, and embrace a new stage of life gracefully. With technology and better medical support, we believe women can navigate through menopause with ease, and even prevent or delay chronic diseases so they can live healthier and longer.

Being an early-stage startup, the financial support from Innovation for Women Prize will help us tremendously to reach the next stage of product development before further fundraising. More importantly, being recognized by Vodafone Americas Foundation will validate the impact of our project to international communities, which is crucial for us in reaching out to key-opinion leaders to scale up the project and spread the impact globally.

Currently, only 20% OBGYN residency programs in the US provide training in menopause. 3 out of 4 women who seek help for their menopausal symptoms do not get treated. Every woman has to go through menopause, yet there is a severe lack of clinical awareness and resources to help women cope effectively with this important transition of their lives. EloCare empowers women with a reliable tool to take control of their health and get the optimal care. The solution aims to tighten the interaction between women and her healthcare providers to fill the gap in knowledge and reduce the delay in action. We leverage sensor technology and machine learning to revolutionize menopausal diagnosis and management. Women can gain better access to menopausal care and have better tools to self-manage their own health conditions. At the same time, health workers can manage their patients more effectively and gain insights for better treatment plans. 

We look forward to getting connected to a wider network of health workers globally to achieve this goal, especially in countries where relevant healthcare resources are more scarce and menopause remains a significant social stigma. 

Machine learning is extensively applied in our solution for biomarker processing, symptom detection and personalized medical & lifestyle suggestions. We look forward to combining the cutting edge information technology with our deep medical domain knowledge to help 1 billion midlife women globally live longer and age gracefully.

There will be over 1B women going through menopause globally in 2025. Menopause exposes women to over 30 symptoms which could last 4 to 20 years or longer, and higher health risks including heart disease, osteoporosis and Alzheimer's diseases. Yet menopausal health concerns are currently severely dismissed, especially in less developed countries where women have "learned" to suffer in silence. Our solution empowers women with a better tool to navigate this important transition to improve their health, quality of life, and work productivity. Women can take control of their health to live healthier and longer during more than 1/3 period of their lives. 

We look forward to getting more funding and collaborations to support R&D pathway of our product development, and to have means to facilitate scaling of our project to reach global communities. 

Our solution addresses the need of 1B menopausal women who demand a better healthcare solution to help them navigate this important transition of their lives. Every woman has to go through menopause, yet currently 3 out of 4 women who seek medical care for their menopausal symptoms do not get treated. EloCare leverages sensor technology and machine learning to revolutionize menopausal diagnosis and management, serving a huge unmet need for both clinical and consumer markets.  

We look forward to getting more funding and collaborations to support R&D and commercial pathways of our startup, and to have means to facilitate scaling of our project to make it global.