Ananya Health

Anu Parvatiyar is an engineer, ethnographer, and visionary leader focused on medical devices and social impact. She is the co-founder and CEO of Ananya Health, a medical device company focused on expanding access to high-quality care in developing countries. Ananya Health builds technologies uniquely suited for the infrastructure and cost considerations of the world’s poorest.

Prior to Ananya, she led the Global Programs team at eHealth Africa. Her team of 300 staff helped dramatically reduce the incidence of polio in Nigeria — from 122 cases in 2012, to 0 cases in 2015. She built & supported platforms that detect and prevent disease outbreaks, and has advised large global health NGOs on product adaptations that increase adoption in developing countries.

She started her career as an engineer at C. R. Bard, where she launched medical devices that have reached millions of patients. Anu studied biomedical engineering and economics at Georgia Tech.

The landscape of medicine has greatly changed in our lifetimes. But advances in life expectancy are unequal, due to unequal access to lifesaving technologies and clinical care. 90% of medical innovation is designed for 10% of the world’s population.

Patients in the hardest-to-reach areas of the world cannot be served with the same approaches and assumptions as traditional markets. They deserve products that are thoughtfully designed for their unique considerations. Ananya Health is building products that provide world-class clinical outcomes and function reliably in clinics with irregular power and unpredictable supply chains — at a cost that makes them accessible for doctors and patients in low- and middle- income countries.

We are building a cryoablation platform to treat lesions in the cervix. By treating these lesions, which are the precursor to cervical cancer, we can prevent 500,000 cases of cervical cancer annually, which disproportionately affects women in Africa and India.

Every two minutes, a woman dies of cervical cancer.

90% of the 570,000 cases diagnosed annually occur in developing countries. Whereas Pap smears and early treatment have drastically reduced the incidence in the US, cervical cancer is the most common cancer in African women. The disparity between affluent and developing countries is primarily due to lack of early screening and treatment for cervical abnormalities.

The tools to treat women are expensive, often require a steady power supply, or a strong supply chain of medical-grade cryogenic gas.

Ananya Health is building a cervical cryoablation device that allows health practitioners in constrained environments to treat women for precancerous lesions easily, effectively, and in a single visit. Our device sustains temperatures of -30℃ or lower, and is similar in freeze profile to existing devices used in the US. Our device will enable a cost per treatment of $1 or less.

Cervical cancer eradication is a global priority, but existing technologies and tools aren’t effective or available in the highest-burden regions of the world. Ananya Health's device will save the lives of 300,000 women in LMICs every year -- women that are the center of their families, communities, and economies.

Cryoablation is a technique used across the hospital to freeze unhealthy tissue, such as tumors, lesions, or skin warts. Traditional cryoablation devices require either a strong and stable power source, or regular shipments of medical-grade compressed gas such as CO2. For a primary care clinic in Guinea or a large periurban hospital in Nigeria, these two requirements are often out of reach.

Using a closed-loop compression system, our device uses a phase-change reaction to generate extremely cold temperatures across a skin-contacting probe. A trained healthcare worker applies to probe to the affected tissue — in this case, the lesions on the cervix. Within minutes, the device creates a freeze “bubble” around the affected tissue, killing the dangerous cells and allowing the body to regenerate healthy tissue in a matter of weeks.

Because the refrigerant used in the system is captured and recompressed with a small, rechargeable battery, there is no need to “refill” the unit with refrigerant. This means that if a woman takes the time to travel to a clinic and undergo a screening, she will not be turned away because the shipment didn’t arrive or the generator doesn’t have fuel.

Our focus is on building a platform that safely and effectively treats the 2.5 million women in developing countries each year who have dangerous cervical lesions, but no options for treatment.

We have partnered with several clinical organizations that provide on-the-ground womens health services in India (Mahati Trust), Africa (PINCC), and Latin America (Basic Health International). As soon as we are able with current travel restrictions, we will continue visiting clinics in Nigeria, Botswana, Kenya, and Belize. These partnerships are crucial to our design process, but will also be crucial for our future implementation. Effective cervical cancer treatment is dependent on culturally competent education, awareness, vaccination, and screening efforts, which these partners are experts in. By partnering early, we are ensuring that we can listen to and design for all the stakeholders involved in the ecosystem.

Additionally, we have an added focus on HIV+ women. Women living with HIV are 4x more likely to develop cervical cancer, and are 2x more likely to die from invasive cervical cancer within three years, than women who do not have HIV. Cryotherapy is the only WHO-recommended option to treat HIV+ patients, who paradoxically live in communities where cryotherapy is out of reach.

When you design products that people need, optimized for their lives and challenges, at a price they can afford, you tap into a market opportunity. The global cryotherapy market is $2.6B annually, and growing rapidly. Virtually all of that is in the developed world.

Ananya Health is born out of the belief that medical technology shouldn’t be limited to those who can afford to pay higher and higher prices. Through thoughtful design and a deep understanding of users in developing countries, we aim to expand access of high-quality medical care and improve health outcomes for the world's most vulnerable.

After 6 years in medical device R&D and 3 years living and working in West Africa on public health technology, I came back to the US thinking about how technology can transform, but how often it falls short of that promise. I met Dr. Daniel Burnett through a mutual colleague a few weeks after I returned to the US, and we immediately started brainstorming about medical devices to meet large public health needs. 

Cervical cancer was a natural fit for the discussion. It's highly preventable, with global health focus on education, awareness, and vaccination. It's easily detectable, and has effective treatments when caught in its earliest stages. And there is momentum within the global health community: in 2018, WHO published a Call To Action for the total elimination of cervical cancer deaths by 2030. 

Despite these encouraging factors, the number of cases and deaths continue to climb, due to a gap in the continuum of care. Vaccination is important, but expensive, and often not accepted due to cultural and religious factors. Screening is easy and cost-effective, but many clinics don't screen because effective treatments aren't available to them. By filling the treatment gap, we can prevent millions of deaths.

I'm an immigrant. I was one of more than 10 million baby girls born in India in 1986. My family wasn't wealthy or famous. But my life has been characterized by the benefits of parents who value and support me, an excellent education, a public infrastructure that provides for my safety and wellness, and the fortune to travel and live across the world. As Warren Buffett says, I won the lottery of birth. I've always wondered what happens when more people are given the same kinds of opportunities that I've had -- how much more progress and innovation we'd be able to achieve. 

As an undergraduate student at Georgia Tech, I lobbied the faculty to let me self-design a course in Design For the Developing World. While I enjoyed my technical coursework in biomechanics, electrophysiology, and pharmaceutical discovery, I've always been fascinated by technology that enables more people to achieve success, that levels the playing field, and that removes shackles.

Fast forward 10 years -- that research paper I wrote as a student evolved into the basis for Ananya Health's strategy. 

Medical devices require a blend of engineering expertise, regulatory know-how, and market strategy in order to succeed. Our team has over 40 years of medical device development experience -- from design, to manufacturing, to launch and scale up, to sales. We've launched technologies in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and navigated multiple regulatory bodies in the process.

Many medical companies shy away from operating in Asia and Africa, because they lack the distribution infrastructure, market knowledge, and legal and institutional support needed to succeed. I have operating experience with multiple stakeholders across the public health sphere. I've designed technology with and for large NGOs, national and local governments across Africa, major donors, WHO, nurses, doctors, and patients on three continents. 

At Ananya Health, we believe in building partnerships early. We are plugged in to a broader ecosystem of companies, nonprofits, governments, and advocacy groups in the cervical cancer space, such as MobileODT, TogetHER for Health, CHAI, and others. By leveraging this network in our development and beyond, and combining with our technical and operational expertise, we are uniquely positioned to launch and scale up our first technology platform.

In January, as our small team was preparing to pack up our prototype for our first in vivo study, the system burst a fitting and broke, spilling refrigerant into the lab and permanently damaging the tubing components. Our engineer had spent months calibrating the system and conducting benchtop studies to optimize the cooling profile. The timing was disastrous -- animal studies are scheduled weeks in advance, and this was our last chance to collect data prior to investor pitch meetings the following week. We now had less than 24 hours to fix the prototype, or cancel the study altogether.

I firmly believe that company culture is forged in moments of adversity. In seeing our distress, colleagues from other companies that share our space helped us find new fittings, and a few helped us put the device back together with a stronger, more robust tube. We rallied together the next morning to calibrate the system, and after a hectic 24 hours, had a very successful study! At a moment when we could have scrapped the trial and said "it's too hard", we pulled together to get a final product that was better than the original.

The fight to eradicate a disease is tireless and complex, and requires the coordination of millions of moving pieces. At eHealth Africa, I had the chance to see that work up close.

I led a team of over 300 staff at eHealth Africa that deployed to small villages, riding on the backs of motorbikes to reach remote health facilities, to help collect the data and build the base maps that have moved the needle on polio eradication. We built software dashboards, Android applications, and physical infrastructure that will endure after polio, strengthening public health systems in the region for years to come.

Nigeria went from 122 polio cases a year in 2012 to just 4 cases total since 2015, in large part to its strong focus on real-time data and geospatial planning that kicked off in 2013. Despite strengthening the disease surveillance network (ie, we're looking harder to find the virus), Africa hasn’t seen a case of wild poliovirus since 2016, and Nigeria was officially declared non-endemic for the disease in 2020. It is rewarding to see us inch closer and closer to a polio free world, and incredibly humbling to know how much work has gone into the achievement. 

Incorporated as a Benefit Corporation. We have a sister 501c3 nonprofit, Ethonova.

Our use of "closed-loop cryotherapy" is new and novel, and is game-changing for applications beyond cervical cryotherapy. By eliminating the reliance on the supply chain for medical-grade CO2, we drastically lower the total cost of ownership of this system vs. other cryotherapy systems, and generate less waste in the process. Our platform is significantly better for patients, for payers, and for supply chains.

Currently, our product is in development and we have not treated any patients. We expect to launch the product in 12-18 months.

In 5 years, we will treat more than 2 million women that have precancerous lesions.

We have a signed NDA with the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which is actively seeking promising technologies for cervical screen & treat in low-resource settings.

We have working agreements with TogetHER for Health and several NGOs / clinics operating in the screen & treat space: Mahati Trust (India), PINCC (Africa, Latin America, India), Basic Health International (Latin America, Africa, India, China), and eHA Clinics (Nigeria).

We are exploring a potential partnership with MobileODT, a smartphone-based screening technology.

Short term: Investment capital and grants.

Medium term: Tenders and contracts with government procurement agencies, NGOs that run screen & treat clinics, and distributors / private hospitals in developing countries.

Long term: Leverage existing distribution network and partnerships to launch additional products based on our cryotherapy platform, for oncology / dermatology / ophthalmology applications.

Grants: $20,000 (and actively seeking SBIR / other grant funding)

Investments: $30,000 (actively raising $600,000 in a seed raise)

SBIR grant through the National Cancer Institutes for low-cost cancer treatment technologies (up to $350,000).

Currently in a seed raise, with $30,000 delivered and an additional $35,000 committed from angel investors and private entities.