LactApp

LactApp is the first digital lactation consultant in your pocket that gives mothers customized expert answers to breastfeeding and maternity questions powered by AI technology. With over 500,000 users worldwide, LactApp is available in English and Spanish as a version for mothers and as LactApp Medical for healthcare professionals.

Enric Pallares (Co-Founder and CEO) and Maria Berruezo, (Co-Founder and COO). 

Approximately 140 million babies are born every year and over 80% of mothers initiate breastfeeding or intent to do so globally. But suboptimal breastfeeding rates cause over 800,000 child deaths and 20,000 mothers deaths a year (Unicef, The Lancet, 2016). Breastfeeding has long lasting benefits on the child’s immune system, reduces obesity, infections and is generally linked to better health outcomes of the population.

We mistakenly think that the problem we are facing is low breastfeeding rates, but this is only the consequence: the real problem is that women who want to breastfeed do not find the right information, professional support or peer support to facilitate it. LactApp provides this in the form of a highly accessible mobile app with content created by IBCLCs (International Board Certified Lactation Consultants), nutritionists, midwives and paediatricians. 

75% of our users say that LactApp has contributed in prolonging their breastfeeding journey and 58% say they have avoided a medical appointment thanks to the information provided (user survey). Therefore LactApp is highly likely to improve breastfeeding rates in the user population and reduce costs for the healthcare system: a clinical study that proves efficiency has been approved and is in progress in local hospitals.

LactApp’s target audience are new mothers, mostly first time mothers, but not only, who initiate breastfeeding and have questions about it, as well as healthcare professionals who support them. The app is designed to ask what are the mothers wishes and gives suggestions and advice according to the mothers desires and personal situation. Our expert team simultaneously works in our brick and mortar Clinic, LactApp Clinic and engages constantly in person, virtually, over our in-app chat function and through our social media channels (106k Instagram followers) with mothers. Our in-app function predicts new informational needs of mothers, for example during the coronavirus pandemic we were able to inform mothers about the implications of breastfeeding and coronavirus, as well as about the suitability of the coronavirus vaccine in breastfeeding mothers immediately. Every time we receive a high amount of questions on a certain topic, we gather scientific evidence and expert advice to inform our audience by immediately updating our in-app content. But because evidence in lactation is often lacking, our medical team is carrying out our own scientific research (3 articles published and several studies in preparation), one of them about the Covid-19 vaccine in breastfeeding mothers.

The basic version of LactApp for mothers with its unique symptom checker currently consisting of over 70,000 paths that lead to over 7,000 personalized answers (content that would cover over 3 novels) will always be free to download and use for the benefit of all mothers worldwide. The research on human lactation management we have published and will be publishing in the future in this highly under-researched field will also be a public good and knowledge for the benefit of humanity and especially for the benefit of advancing science in Women's Health, that aims to close the gender data gap in health sciences.

Breastfeeding initiation rates are consistently over 80% all around the world, but many mothers quit before they were ready to do so: 90% of women in England, one of the countries with the lowest breastfeeding rates worldwide, say they stopped breastfeeding before they wanted to. (national-maternity-review-report.pdf (england.nhs.uk)). LactApp prevents this by giving mothers information and support.

The basic version of LactApp is free and accessible to all new mothers worldwide and is available for those who cannot afford lactation consultants and postnatal care, where they are not available or where in-person support has been reduced due to the strains on the healthcare system by the pandemic.

New mothers and their babies will and do benefit from using LactApp, but so will the whole family and wider society thanks to improved health outcomes and wellbeing of mother and child. 

LactApp increases breastfeeding duration in it's mothers users (see user survey) and a clinical study to evaluate efficiency in raising breastfeeding rates and impacting cost savings in a hospital setting has been approved and is in preparation in the area of Valencia, Spain.

The Lancet: Increasing breastfeeding worldwide could prevent over 800,000 child deaths every year - Baby Friendly Initiative (unicef.org.uk)

We will launch the Portuguese version in Q2 2021, which will make our digital support App available to the millions of Portuguese speaking mothers worldwide in countries like Portugal, Brazil and Angola. Further investment and the roll out of our premium version business model will make it possible to translate our App in other languages quickly and with moderate investment, so we can potentially reach all 130 million new mothers worldwide and support them in their infant feeding journey.

We measure our impact in the number of consultations, these are questions that mothers raise and are answered by our app (currently 98% automatically answered through the symptom checker decision trees and 2% in-app chat function). Currently these are over 100,000 consultations weekly and have been over 10 million since we started counting.

We measure our net promoter score, currently 94% and also our app reviews, 4,9 stars in Google play store. 

Our biggest barrier is financial funding. We are a revenue generating for profit start-up and currently looking for funding to fuel our growth and scale our impact faster. Our goal is that our app will be reimbursed by healthcare systems and employers, but this B2B monetization strategy takes time and a huge initial investment to generate the evidence and the sales funnel. We need investment to further prove our effectiveness in clinical trials in different countries. We are currently actively looking for investors.

We have the clinical expertise and a highly passionate team, as well as a pipeline of prospective team members that are ready to jump onboard, when we can afford it, as they are attracted by our mission and purpose (many are current or former users).

When we obtain funding we will scale our technological development team, invest in more R&D and in scaling our solution internationally.

The Trinity Challenge can provide much needed funding, but also increase our reputation. Our clinical and technological reputation and endorsements by important entities such as this challenge will help us to reach contracts with employers and healthcare systems.

We would like to partner specifically with universities in the field of human lactation research (such as Imperial College London), but also with health insurance providers such as Aviva, where we could become a reimbursed digital health tool for their customers. Furthermore big employers such as Microsoft would be welcome partners, as they could include our premium app as benefit for their employees who have children (mothers and fathers).