Springboard Enterprises Welcomes 10 Members to the Inaugural 2024 Women’s Health Innovation Program Cohort
January 10, 2024
WASHINGTON, DC: January 10, 2024– Springboard Enterprises, a leader in fostering and accelerating the growth of women-led innovation in health and technology, has announced its 2024 Women’s Health Innovation Program Cohort.
Founders and CEOs from ten innovative women’s health companies will participate in a comprehensive entrepreneurial bootcamp and an expansive workshop series. They will be paired with a dedicated team of strategic advisors, providing invaluable guidance as they navigate the next phase of their growth journey.
As emphasized in the latest report from Silicon Valley Bank on women’s health, there has been a remarkable upswing in the women’s health venture sector over the past five years. This sector has experienced a staggering 314% growth since 2018. This starkly contrasts with the 28% increase observed in overall healthcare investments during the same period.
“As we continue to see tremendous growth in the women’s health space, we could not be more excited to welcome our Women’s Health Cohort,” says Natalie Buford-Young, CEO of Springboard Enterprises. “Their innovative technologies bear the potential to reshape the women’s health landscape—a domain that, despite women constituting 50% of the population, has been significantly underserved. Through strategic collaboration, mentorship initiatives, and leveraging our extensive industry expert network, we are committed to empowering these companies to drive substantial and lasting transformation within the industry.”
2024 cohort participants include:
Ariana McGee, Founder and CEO, Navigate Maternity:
Navigate Maternity has created a system that allows clinicians and care teams to remotely monitor prenatal and postpartum patients. The goal is to improve outcomes and avoid inequitable care through real-time data.
Laura Yecies, CEO, Bone Health Technologies:
Bone Health Technologies (BHT) has developed the Osteoboost belt, the first and only safe and effective treatment for the 63 million people in the US with Osteoporosis or Osteopenia as well as a comprehensive digital therapeutic platform and services – a personalized digital health and telehealth solution for optimizing bone health. Osteoboost puts clinically-proven NASA vibration technology into a convenient belt form factor, focusing the vibration on the most vulnerable anatomy – hips and lumbar spine. The Osteoboost Digital Platform and Services fills an unmet need for a comprehensive diagnostic and therapeutic intervention allowing for ongoing patient support and immediate monthly reimbursement via RTM codes. BHT has achieved Breakthrough Device status from the FDA and received over $4.7m in NIH grants for clinical research. BHT recently submitted its De Novo application to the FDA. BHT is raising a $3M series A extension led by Terumo (leading Japanese Medical Device Manufacturer) and Berkeley Catalyst, $20m pre-money valuation, have closed the first $1.7M.
Shelly Lanning, Co-Founder and President, Visana Health:
Visana Health is a comprehensive virtual women’s health clinic, providing medical care and integrated whole-person support for the widest range of women’s health conditions. From menstruation to menopause, Visana goes beyond the narrow scope of family building to provide longitudinal, value-based care for all stages of a woman’s life, including preventive care, menopause care, complex gynecological care, contraception, and more. Visana’s unique clinical model treats the whole person instead of a single condition, with full-service clinical care provided by our 50-state medical practice and interventions that include diet and nutrition, behavioral health support, pelvic floor exercises, and sleep coaching. We acknowledge not all care can be delivered virtually, and we work to navigate patients to high-value providers in their network. From ultrasounds to cervical cancer screenings, we connect women to the in-person care they need. Visana’s novel care model helps women with complex needs get better faster, with 93% achieving symptom improvement in under four months and helping women avoid unnecessary gynecologic surgeries. Through a case match-controlled claims analysis with a national health plan, Visana demonstrated $2,434 in medical cost savings per patient.
Kristen Helton, CEO, Herself Health:
Founded by Kristen Helton and Juxtapose in 2022, Herself Health is a healthcare technology company designed to serve the unique needs of women on Medicare, age 65 and up. The company links women’s health goals with their life goals, taking into account a patient’s physical, mental, social, sexual, and spiritual needs and targeting common concerns like bone health, weight loss, and emotional well-being. The company hires top providers and trains them in the intricacies of person-centered geriatric and women’s care, delivering value-based care focused on patient outcomes. Herself Health’s first two clinics are now open in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN.
Meredith McAllister, Co-Founder and CEO, Marma:
Marma is a platform that addresses a critical gap in maternal health by
providing personalized nutritional guidance throughout fertility, pregnancy, and the years postpartum. Marma is the nutrition leader during the birthing years through their personalized nutrition advice, recipes, symptom tracking, and interactive community. Marma is changing the narrative on diet culture by providing birthing people with the nourishment they need when it matters the most. Marma works with you to understand your unique needs and provide individualized, holistic nutrition advice at every stage of motherhood.
Kristina Cahojova, Founder and CEO, Kegg:
Kegg believes in a world where women are empowered by knowledge they’ve been denied until now. Kegg provides women with *the most* accurate, personalized, and scientifically validated fertility tracking through cervical fluid in just 2 minutes a day. As the only product of its kind, Kegg tracks changes in cervical fluid, helping women to conceive who may have otherwise required medical intervention. Already in the
hands of 25,000 women in the United States, growth is accelerating and use cases are expanding beyond pregnancy into postpartum recovery, natural birth control, infections, pelvic floor disorders, polycystic ovaries, and perimenopause (conditions that affect ~100M women in the US and 3.2 billion women globally. Through Kegg’s
consumer base, the Company now has the world’s largest dataset on vaginal health and the unique ability to use machine learning to help drive predictive healthcare for women at scale.
Karen Brunet, Founder, Cntrl+ Inc:
Cntrl+ Inc. is a pioneering Canadian life science firm specializing in female wellness. Our company has innovatively crafted an over-the-counter reusable solution addressing female stress urinary incontinence. We are dedicated to exporting and distributing this product globally, offering an effective and environmentally friendly solution for women.
Casey Langwith, Founder, Multitude Health:
Multitude alleviates the pain of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) through an app-based clinical program that teaches members Cognitive Behavioral Therapy skills, plus a tightly integrated therapist-led peer community to restore a healthy brain-body connection. CBT has been proven highly effective for IBS, and even shown to induce changes in the microbiome. The technology we are building uses human-in-the-loop AI and targeted peer support to reduce symptoms and medical costs with a dramatically more scalable, engaging model than has existed before. Multitude launched in private beta in January 2024.
Dr. Pinky Patel, Founder and CEO, Myri Health:
The Myri Health App is a comprehensive, evidence based postpartum resource for families.
For stakeholders that lack adequate postpartum benefits for their new parent employees, Myri Health provides personalized rehab based on delivery type, evidence based resources, communities for parents to connect and tracking resources in a low cost, mobile app format.
Shannon Aylesworth, Founder and CEO, Ursamin:
Ursamin is a SaaS based care coordination platform that helps providers more effectively manage patients living with multiple chronic illnesses (PLWMCC). Due to fragmentation of the healthcare system, PLWMCC patients suffer worse outcomes, drive the highest costs and put the most burden on the healthcare workforce. By fostering a team based approach using a single care plan that moves with the patient throughout their journey, Ursamin is able to improve outcomes for patients while significantly reducing the administrative burden for providers patients and caregivers
