Jenny Button first considered Emm in the course of the COVID lockdown. She was utilizing an Oura ring and the Whoop monitoring band and getting insights about her physique, however there wasn’t a tool that might present knowledge about one of the essential elements — reproductive and menstrual well being.
“It appeared loopy to me, as a result of these are issues that each girl needs to have the ability to monitor and higher perceive,” she instructed TechCrunch. She thought to herself: Why not make a wearable machine that may inform somebody extra about their reproductive well being? She penned a letter to one of many engineers at Dyson, made a connection, and began testing the thought.
“5 years later, following 1000’s of designs and iterations and prolonged person testing, we’ve revealed the world’s first sensible menstrual cup,” stated Button.
The UK-based firm has additionally raised a $9 million (£6.8 million) seed spherical, one led by Lunar Ventures because it prepares to formally launch its product subsequent yr.
The product features like a daily menstrual cup — designed to retailer interval blood quite than take up it. However Emm’s medical-grade silicone is “fitted with ultra-thin, superior sensor expertise.” This sensor gathers knowledge that may assist customers perceive patterns about their cycles. Button hopes that it might “remodel the analysis, prognosis and therapy of menstrual and reproductive well being situations.”
She isn’t the one one who thinks this fashion. Different femtech founders instructed The Guardian a few months ago that menstrual blood was an “missed alternative in girls’s well being” that might provide insights not accessible from well being exams primarily based on circulatory blood.
It might, for example, assist diagnose painful and typically misdiagnosed medical situations like endometriosis.
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“One in ten girls immediately suffer from endometriosis,” Button stated. “A situation that, like many others in reproductive well being, takes a median of seven to 10 years to diagnose.”
That delay “is largely due to the dearth of significant knowledge and poor characterization of menstrual well being in medical settings,” Button believes. “There have been no dependable instruments to precisely and objectively monitor that side of well being till now.”
Past endometriosis, she added that one in three women experiences “extreme reproductive well being points” all through their lives.
Information gathered from the Emm app is encrypted and saved securely, with two-factor authentication. “It’s additionally at all times anonymized or pseudonymized,” that means private identifiers are eliminated or changed with codes, “and can solely be accessed by the folks at Emm who genuinely want it,” she stated.
Button used the phrase “strategic” to explain her funding spherical and stated she linked together with her lead investor by her community. Others within the spherical embrace Alumni Ventures (who backed Oura), The Labcorp Enterprise Fund and BlueLion International. Cash shall be used to launch the product into the UK market subsequent yr, she stated, including that the waitlist has already topped 30,000 pre-orders to go dwell quickly.
Capital may even be used for analysis and improvement. Button hopes to enter the U.S. market in early 2027.
“Menstrual well being is just the leaping off level for Emm,” stated Button. “In the end, I imagine we could have a profound impression on girls’s well being extra broadly,” she continued, including she hopes to broaden the product in the future, maybe into prognosis, different digital care instruments, and even therapeutics.
“Our mission is to speed up prognosis, equip folks with the info to advocate for themselves, and finally assist them take management of their very own our bodies and well being journeys,” she stated.
