Eli Health - Hormone Tracking

4 min read

Eli Health was founded in 2019 by Marina Pavlovic Rivas and Thomas Cortina. The Canadian based Femtech start-up focuses on enabling women to take control of their health from puberty over contraception to menopause. They do this by providing them with information on their daily hormone levels, as well as hormonal fluctuation during the cycle.

But what is Femtech? Femtech is an electronic device, software or other technology relating to women’s health. For example a software that records information about ones menstruation and fertility. According to the Cambridge Dictionary the Femtech industry could represent a $50 billion industry by 2025.

Marina Pavlovic Rivas got it right from the very beginning - only by providing women with information about their current health situation one can enable them to choose and their own fertility-/health decisions.

Knowledge is power

By providing women with information about their health one empowers them to have their own opinions and make their own decisions. The more information and knowledge one has at ones finger tips the more choices become available. This again empowers women to dig deeper into the subject and makes them feel confident about speaking up and making their own individual decisions. Early on when having to decide what to study, Marina wanted to find a course which would enable her to work in different fields. By choosing communications & business intelligence she found courses which she would be able implement in most fields.

Empowerment through knowledge

The Eli hormone tracking device is designed to be used at home with a simple three step user experience. It is connected to an app which keeps track of the woman’s hormonal fluctuation during her menstrual cycle, pregnancy or the menopause. Firstly, one has to take a salvia sample with the cartridge, then insert it into the device and as a last step check the app to assess ones current hormonal status. The AI can then calculate, for example, if one is ovulating based on the other samples one has already taken before. This makes hormonal tracking individually customised to ones body.

But what differentiates Eli from other hormonal tracking start-up ideas? By using salvia instead of urine, temperature or cervical fluid it is easy, hygienic and accurate to use. In an interview with us Marina Pavlovic Rivas said Eli may even be possible to be used as pregnancy test by detecting the hormone ß-hCG through salvia in the future. Around about 3 - 4 weeks into pregnancy this hormone can be measured in the salvia - bye bye peeing on a stick - and let’s be honest most of the time on your hands.

In the beginning of 2021 Forbes magazine featured Eli as one of the Top 3 Femtech companies shaping the future of women’s health. But thats not all - up until now the start-up has funded a total of $2,1 Million USD with having a Latino co - founder and CEO. Marina Pavlovic Rivas explained

Only 90 Latino founders have ever raised $1-plus million and less than 3% of all VC funded companies have a female CEO.

While working on completing clinical and regulatory work in regards of using Eli as a contraceptive device, the company will initially focus on fertility. Many women are looking for an alternative to hormonal contraception since over half of those who use it experience unwanted side effects such as weight gain, headaches, irritability or moodiness. This could be the end to it all. ‘Unlike temperature, which is a biomarker influenced a lot by external factors, we do not have this problem with hormones. You can see hormones as the root information, while biomarkers such as temperature are proxy variables (i.e., variables that approximate the "source of truth"), says Marina after asking her if illness or night shift can influence the data. Eli will enable everybody to use hormonal and invasive free