For many years the menopause was something that women suffered through in silence, never really speaking out about how much it can affect their lives.
But in recent years, it has been brought to the forefront that the menopause is not just hot flushes and that some women suffer immensely in both the peri-menopausal and menopausal stage.
Seeing the health struggles that women go through, Heidi Davis wanted to create something that could help monitor and manage symptoms, and so she created identifyHer.
This is is a digital health company that has developed a biosensor linked to an app so that women, for the first time, can objectively monitor their menopausal symptoms, without just having to speak about them to a doctor.
Explaining what identifyHer is, Heidi said: ‘We’re early stage but what it is is a wearable sensor that will sit under a woman’s left breast, and it will detect all the menopausal symptoms and it will quantify it, the frequency and the severity, and you’ll get that on an app.
‘So there’s no manual input happening, it really is just physiological responses being detected by this wearable.’
Heidi then spoke about how identifyHer came about: ‘The truth is it started quite a while ago when we started thinking about women’s health, and menopause really hasn’t been addressed properly.
‘There’s a lot of platforms that personalise the management of menopause by using algorithms wherein you tell them how you feel and it will give you an output.’
‘But it’s always the woman who has to say how they feel or what’s going on so it’s not an objective measure so we’re trying to give an objective measure of it. It’s only at stage one of product development but we think it’s going to lead to increasing a healthy life span for women, that’s our stage two.’
Speaking more about how it can help women, the nutritionist shared: ‘There’s also a lot of women who are peri-menopausal and don’t know it, they’re not getting the care they need when they go to their GP because they’re too young, but the truth is the symptoms can actually be worse early on.
‘So what we’re giving them is a tool that can objectively show their symptoms and they can get the right treatment at the right time and give them a better quality of life going through menopause, and really to feel normal.’
Heidi noted that this research could also help women who develop health issues later in life due to menopause, and they will be able to link it thanks to identifyHer.
This start-up is continuing to work on their product and app but it definitely looks to be a game-changer for women, making sure to keep up to date with their social media for all updates.
This content was originally published here.
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