INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Mira, launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, is a new device that aims to help women who are struggling to conceive
The Mira Fertility system offers personalized cycle prediction by measuringfertility hormone concentrations in urine samples, telling women
which days they&re fertile
The system is more advanced and accurate than the existing home test kits, the company claims, which can be hard to read and aren&t
personalized to the individual.The company behind Mira, Quanovate, was founded in late 2015 by a group of scientists, engineers, OBGYN
doctors, and business execs to solve the problem of the unavailability of advanced home health testing.&I have a lot of friends who, like
me, [prioritized] their career advancement and higher education, and they tended to delay their maternal age,& explains Mira co-founder and
&But there no education for them about when to try for a baby, and they have no awareness about their fertility health,& she says.Kang
received an MBA at Cornell Johnson, went to Columbia for an MS in Biomedical engineering and received atPhD in Biophysics from University of
Pittsburgh, before workingas a Business Director at Corning where she was responsible for $100 million in global PL, which she left to start
Mira.She says that women hormones are changing daily, and everyone profiles differ due to their lifestyle, stress levels and other factors
The only way to accurately track fertile days, then, is through continuous testing & something that been difficult to do at home.To solve
this problem, the team worked to develop the Mira system, which includes a small home analyzer, urine test strips, and an accompanying
The home analyzer miniaturizeslab equipment for home use, and brings down the cost.To use the system, the woman places the test strip into
the device which then usesimmunofluorescence technology to read the results
Currently, the device tests for the presence of luteinizing hormone (LH), which is an indicator of ovulation
However, the company has already has plans to update the device so it can test for other hormones in the near future
(It FDA-cleared to detect estrogen, for example, but that won&t be available at launch.)The system instead is $199 and ships with 10 test
After analyzing the strip, information about the hormone levels is displayed on the screen and sent to the Mira app via Bluetooth.
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The app offers women more information about what this data means &
like whether they should attempt to conceive today or wait
A subscription service will also offer them access to doctors so they can ask questions, but this will be free at launch.&This technology is
completely different from all the test strips on the market
It more accurate, but more importantly, this one is quantitative & that means we give you your actual, formal concentrations,& says Kang
&The [existing] tests strips only give you positive or negative
Since we have your numbers, our A.I
can do pattern recognition
Our algorithm prediction is based on your pattern specifically, not the average of all the population.&What this means, in practice, is that
women struggling to conceive will have more accurate, more actionable, and more personalized results with Mira
During a clinical trial with 400 patient samples, Mira reached 99 percent accuracy, compared with lab equipment, the company says
They also have 18 IPs covering hardware, software, database management and more, including utility patents and models, design patents,
trademarks and copyrights.The company is now working on a portal for doctors, so they could access their own patients& data for further
Mira may also eventually make its collected data, once anonymized, available to researchers, as well
But Kang says no formal decisions have been made on that front yet.Longer-term, Kang explains that the same system can be adapted to track
pregnancy and menopause, and eventually similar technology could be put to use for analyzing other conditions, like those related to kidney
problems or the thyroid.ThePleasanton, Calif.-based company, is currently a team of 36 and has raised $4.5 million from investors including
Gopher Ventures, and two other cross-border investors Mira doesn&t want to disclose publicly.At Disrupt, the company announced the Mira
device is now available for pre-order and will begin shipping in October 2018.It sold online via the Mira website, but is in discussions
with doctors and retailers to broaden its availability going forward.
