Level Zero Health Banks $6.9 million Wearable Medtech Proves that Hormonal Testing can put a burden on

Level Zero HealthThe medical device startup, founded by a woman who aims to open up new ground by developing devices for ongoing hormone monitoring, has been $6.9 million despite just over a year. The pre-seed fundraising round has been closed. Startups are seeking to introduce the need for invasive blood draws and support studies that could lead to new treatments for conditions related to hormonal imbalances, such as hormone imbalances and individual administration for hormone-based contraception. I would like to abolish it.

“One of our investors says that there are companies that build basic technology and there are companies that build rappers around that technology. You’re creating new technology here.” says Ula Rastamova, co-founder and CEO. Last fall When they announced on the TechCrunch stage as part of the Startup Battlefield Competition.

“The goal is to create a whole new market now, right? Just like CGM (continuous glucose monitor). They literally have nothing, but they’ve created a multi-billion dollar market,” she continues. It’s there. “This is, by definition, a brand new product category that is unique. It encourages people to use their devices and data to create many companies on top of it, and have ripple effects in the coming decades. I hope for it.”

In stages

Building an entirely new product category of stripes can take time. What makes this a hardware startup and a medical device that launches is not explicitly level zero health that it cannot provide a paradigm shift in the way hormones are monitored overnight.

This is why the team is also working on disposable stepping stone products (prototype format above). I hope this will be cleared for prescription use next year. IVF) and low testosterone (TRT).

Current prototype wearables contain small needles that can detect trace amounts of hormones by taking samples just below the skin.

This is a step towards hormone monitoring wearables that we hope to eventually bring to the market, and is scheduled tentatively for 2028, but it will include interstitial fluids from the wearer’s interstitial fluids, including progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, and more. You can extract a continuous measure of (This is a liquid that fills the space around the cell and acts as an intermediate between plasma and cells. Therefore, this is why biochemical compounds in the blood can also be detected in interstitial fluids.)

The continuous hormone monitoring device, or rather the data it picks up, could play a transformative role in enhancing a scientific understanding of the role hormones play in human biology.moreover).

But Level Zero Health is also building a business – originally a B2B business, aiming to sell technology to a network of healthcare providers. So the founders are working on twin product development trucks, reducing time to market and closing the gap between Big Bang missions. And what is possible now.

“I think we have a source of this truth that we can utilize. This is an interstitial fluid,” Rustamova tells TechCrunch. “And I think there’s a short-term product here right away and you need to start it first.

“Continuous (hormonal monitoring)… is the Holy Grail – it’s the future – it makes sense, so again there’s no friction, so you can wear it and you really get a consistent measurement But today we need to enter the market so that we don’t try to change the protocol, and we don’t have a seven-year research question, “Let’s try and interpret this data,” The first device is actually similar to a fingerstick device, but it’s also a patch. ”

The prototype wearable can be measured throughout the day when worn. You can extract a set of data points with the goal of “providing value immediately” for use cases such as IVF. Hormonal levels.

Rustamova said the team hopes to ensure clinical trials and clearance of this one intermittently surveillance patch next year. Market (she says she doesn’t know which will come first).

“Hopefully this year we want to show some correlation (between the level at which wearable patches are detected and detected via a blood draw).

CTO and co-founder Irene Jia said the team’s goal is to be able to correlate more than 90% with what patches can pick up compared to measuring hormone levels via blood draws. Masu.

Risk vs. Reward

Later – when discussing the delay between blood-based measurements and detection via interstitial fluids, Rustamova stirs the chimes to highlight the difference in medical risks of CGM and hormone monitoring. She points out that risks for people with diabetes (i.e., if blood sugar readings are delayed or turned off), but hormone monitoring is usually not as high as that harmful. It’s not a relationship.

“When it comes to glucose, it has fatal consequences for giving or delaying the readings… (But when it comes to hormone monitoring) the risk that slight deviations or some kind of correlations are not tight. There is,” she tells us. “Obviously, we try to correlate as much as possible. But here we have this very different risk profile.” She also said that the first CGM on the market is what these devices are doing now. We also noted that the correlation with blood measurements is lower than that.

The suggestion is that the team’s goal is to keep the bar up with accuracy. This probably suggests why investors want to actively incorporate this early round of MedTech startup.

Another, without a doubt – a useful factor here is that zero-level health doesn’t focus solely on women’s health issues. Surveillance of male hormones is a core part of the initial business plan. (And it remains that most tech investors are men who bet on solving problems that speak their profits.)

The pre-seeding round of Level Zero Health was led by European VC Redalpine. HAX (SOSV), Entrepreneur First (EF), and industry experts also contributed to the round. SOSV previously accepted Startup into the DeepTech/Hadware Hax Accelerator program, and Rustamova is also an EF alumni.

Commenting in a statement, Philip Kneis, an investor at Redalpine and Level Zero Health Board member, said: Continuous hormone measurement is one of the holy grails of diagnosis, and as basic science moves to engineering, bringing health back to zero-zero level zero health in the mission of converting hormone tracking with new biosensors. I couldn’t be more excited about it. An era of personalized health care. ”