Emm is raising $9 million to create one of the world’s first “smart” menstrual cups

Jenny Paton first thought of Emm during the coronavirus lockdown. She was using the Oura Ring and the Whoop monitoring squad to get information about her body, but there was no device that could provide data about one of the most important aspects – her reproductive and menstrual health.

“It seemed crazy to me, because these are things that every woman wants to be able to track and understand better,” she told TechCrunch. She thought to herself: Why not make a wearable device that can tell a person more about their reproductive health? I wrote a letter to an engineer at Dyson, made contact and began testing the idea.

“Five years later, after thousands of designs, iterations and extensive user testing, we have unveiled the world’s first smart menstrual cup,” Patton said.

The UK-based company has also raised a $9m (£6.8m) seed round, led by Lunar Ventures as it prepares to officially launch its product next year.

The product works like a regular menstrual cup, and is designed to store menstrual blood rather than absorb it. But Emm’s medical grade silicone is “equipped with advanced, ultra-thin sensor technology.” This sensor collects data that will help users understand patterns related to their cycles. Patton hopes he can “transform research, diagnosis and treatment of menstrual and reproductive health conditions.”

She’s not the only one who thinks this way. Other femtech founders told The Guardian a few months ago that menstrual blood was a “neglected opportunity in women’s health” that could offer insights not available from health tests based on circulatory blood.

It can, for example, help diagnose painful and often misdiagnosed medical conditions such as endometriosis.

“One in ten women today suffer from endometriosis,” Patton said. “It is a condition that, like many other reproductive health conditions, takes an average of seven to ten years to be diagnosed.”

Patton believes this delay is “largely due to a lack of meaningful data and poor description of menstrual health in clinical settings.” “There have been no reliable tools to accurately and objectively track this aspect of health until now.”

Besides endometriosis, she added, one in three women suffers from “serious reproductive health problems” throughout her life.

Data collected from the Emm app is encrypted and stored securely, through two-factor authentication. “It’s always anonymized or pseudonymized,” which means personal identifiers are removed or replaced with tokens, “and only people at Emm who really need it will have access to it,” she said.

Patton used the word “strategic” to describe her funding round and said she connected with the lead investor through her network. Other companies in the round include Alumni Ventures (which backed Oura), Alumni Ventures, and BlueLion Global. The funds will be used to launch the product in the UK market next year, she said, adding that the waiting list has already exceeded 30,000 pre-orders.

The capital will also be used for research and development. Patton hopes to enter the US market in early 2027.

“Menstrual health is just the starting point for Im,” Patton said. “Ultimately, I think we will have a profound impact on women’s health more broadly,” she continued, adding that she hopes to one day expand the product, perhaps to include diagnostics, other digital care tools, and even treatments.

“Our mission is to accelerate diagnosis, provide people with data to advocate for themselves, and ultimately help them take control of their bodies and their health journeys,” she said.