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Novel device offers at-home fertility monitoring for women
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A group of Mount Sinai researchers are piloting a new device designed to monitor two key fertility markers in women, offering a way to measure personalized reproductive health data at home, according to a press release from OOVA, a spinout company from Mount Sinai Hospital.
The device, developed in partnership with Thorne Research, measures levels of luteinizing hormone and progesterone in the urine with a paper-based test strip embedded with biochemistry technology, according to the release. The user can scan the strip with a smartphone camera. Artificial intelligence can interpret the data, predicting peak fertility levels over time and providing goal-based recommendations.
“No two women are alike, and it’s about time we start treating them as individuals,” Aparna (Amy) Divaraniya, PhD, CEO and co-founder of OOVA, told Endocrine Today. “OOVA provides women with personalized information by learning her fertility profile. By capturing hormone trends through daily urine samples, we remove the subjectivity and need for invasive procedures required to diagnose fertility issues. Our hope is that physicians will be able to use the information provided by OOVA to guide diagnoses. OOVA’s first product is just a glimpse at the future of personalized health care.”
Jerome Scelza , co-founder and chief technology officer of OOVA, said the device can help women monitor fertility in real time “in a precise and meaningful way.”
The OOVA team is made up of colleagues from the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, an interdisciplinary research group that includes career biologists, data scientists and engineers.
“[OOVA] is empowering patients to take control over their own fertility,” Alan Copperman, MD, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility and vice chair of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the Mount Sinai Health System, said in the release. “This product combines technological innovation and human behavior to meet an unmet demand in the market. The technology is a sophisticated, direct-to-consumer test with widespread partnership opportunity and potential for impact.”
The company’s technology also serves as a prognostic tool for fertility issues and polycystic ovary syndrome, as well as a detection tool for cycle management and menstrual assessment after pregnancy and before menopause, according to the researchers.
The partnership will make the product available to more than 3 million potential customers and 35,000 clinicians through bundled sales with Thorne supplements, according to the release. OOVA expects to launch in the third quarter of this year. – by Regina Schaffer
Disclosure: Divaraniya reports she is CEO and co-founder of OOVA.