Health tech company raises CAD$5m for saliva-based hormone monitoring technology

The Canadian health tech company Eli Health has raised CAD$5m to develop a “groundbreaking” saliva-based hormone monitoring technology.

Hormonal changes play a crucial role in women’s health, yet accessing this information remains out of reach for most women.

Eli aims to bridge this gap by providing daily hormonal data through saliva analysis, allowing women to track hormonal fluctuations throughout their lives to gain better insights into their health.

The at-home technology seeks to address key women’s health areas, including menopause, fertility, contraception, and endocrine conditions.

“Hormones have an enormous impact on women’s health from puberty to menopause. Yet they remain a black box,” says Marina Pavlovic Rivas, CEO and co-founder of Eli.

“We are unlocking that box so that women can have data at their fingertips to make informed decisions daily and own their overall health. Eli has the potential to revolutionise this market.”

The process of measuring hormones is usually incredibly complex, the CEO explains.

“Eli makes it accessible to users in three simple steps: collect a tiny amount of saliva, insert the test in the palm-sized reader, and get results in minutes on the app.

“We see this technology as the missing bridge between the biological and the digital. It will allow us to build a large-scale longitudinal dataset of daily hormone levels for the first time in history.”

Rachel Springate, founding partner at Muse Capital, which led the seed round, said: “As investors in women’s health, we are thrilled to support Eli Health, whose innovative technology enables continuous hormone testing from the comfort of home.

“We believe Eli’s groundbreaking approach will have a transformative impact on the lives of millions of women worldwide.

“This is a giant leap forward for women’s health, and we are proud to be part of this journey.”

Dr Alice Zheng, principal at RH Capital, added: “Having monitored the at-home testing space for years, we are super excited by the company’s novel technology to measure small amounts of hormones in saliva and also read results immediately at home, unlike the plethora of urine-based or send-out tests that exist today.

“This allows for daily testing with timely results that had never been possible before.”

Since its launch in 2019, Eli has raised a total of CAD$9m, including a pre-seed round of CAD$1.9m in 2020.