EloCare Menopause Assistant

1 Demo video

2 Motivation

Up to 75% menopausal women experience over 30 symptoms and higher risks for chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer's disease. Good news, these risks are preventable, only if we can detect the onset of menopause, and have reliable tools to assess risk profiles of each woman for timely intervention. However, menopause has been the most neglected area of women’ health – and there is currently no such reliable tool to detect and monitor the symptoms.

Even in the menopause research field & clinical trials, despite the booming research need in recent years, researchers and principle investigators still use outdated technology to monitor hot flashes symptoms. The tool only provides single measurement – counting the number of hot flashes without severity or any other symptoms, and does not work well outside the lab setting. The device costs over 2000USD, and requires manual setup and data access. The complexity of using this device in ambulatory settings causes high burden on participation and compliance of the trials. Many principle investigators end up using self-reports of patients but are dissatisfied with this subjective method.

Outside research, menopausal women also suffers from a huge number of misdiagnosis & and ineffective treatment. Many people still rely on blood-based hormone tests to diagnose menopause and prescribe treatment. However, this test is often unreliable because hormone fluctuates in time and also among women. Women with, and without symptoms, can actually have the same hormone level. Tracking symptoms is a more reliable way, but no tool exists for this. 40% of women are not prepared at all for menopause transition and lack the ability to discern these symptoms. For this reason, only 25% of women who seek medical attention actually get treated at the moment, leaving a huge population untreated.

3 Solution

At EloCare, we develop wearable and mobile healthcare solutions for women to monitor symptoms, evaluate treatment and connect with trusted doctors, 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
• Activity level: measures sleep disorder, combined with skin conductance to detect night sweats.
• Heart rate: monitors heart irregularities. Menopausal women have higher cardiovascular risks. In the US, 1 in 3 heart attack patients admitted into hospital is a menopausal woman.

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.).
• Connect menopausal women with verified menopause specialists

4 Product illustration

5 Team

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

Fandi has two master’s degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology in computer science and electrical engineering. He has over 4 years of R&D experience with 4 patents, familiar with supply chain & hardware ecosystem.

6 Advisors

Prof. LEO Hwa Liang is the Deputy Head of department of biomedical engineering of National University of Singapore. He taught medical device regulation for Singapore-Stanford Biodesign (SSB) program. He has 7 international patents, 128 conference proceedings and 225 peer-reviewed journal papers.

Prof. John S. Ho is an assistant professor in the Department of ECE at the NUS. He is a recipient of the NRF Fellowship and the NUS Young Investigator Award, and has appeared on the MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35. His current research interests are centered on the development of wireless technologies and their application to human health.

Dr. Susan Logan, MD is an obstetrics & gynecology specialist. She has been practicing for 27 years and is the co-lead for Women's Health, Alexandra Hospital, the council member of the Obstetrical & Gynaecological, Menopause & Osteoporosis Societies of Singapore. She is an active member of multiple international medical societies.

Dr. Rossella Nappi is a gynecologist and sexologist. She is a member of prestigious national and international scientific societies in the several medical fields. She is also the principal investigator in many clinical trials involving different drugs development for menopause and active member of several advisory boards in medical field.