Ovuline, a company that helps women track their fertility and pregnancy online, has raised $1.4 million in seed financing led by Lightbank with participation from Launch Capital, LionBird and Techstars founder and CEO David Cohen.
As the notion of the quantified self in healthcare rises, we’re going to see more and more startups like Ovuline help consumers track and prevent health issues. In this case, Ovuline brings user data together to help women get pregnant and track their health.
Launched in June 2012, Ovuline uses technology and machine learning to help couples track their fertility. The company, which graduated from TechStars, offers an online platform that takes into account menstruation, basil temperature, medications a woman is taking, weight and others factors. The startup’s proprietary algorithms then make ovulation predictions and tells women how to maximize fertility.
According to Ovuline, the company’s users conceive two times faster than the national average. The company’s fertility product, Smart Fertility, has already helped 20,000 women conceive.
Additionally, Ovuline is currently developing a pregnancy-tracking product, which uses data from health tracking devices and mobile technology to continuously monitor a woman’s key pregnancy health indicators, including weight, nutrition, activity, blood pressure, sleep and physical/emotional symptoms. Ovuline then uses this data to alert women if they have an acute health risk (i.e. preeclampsyia) and gives them personalized advice on how to have a healthier pregnancy based on analysis of their unique data.
Ovuline co-founder and CEO Paris Wallace previously foundedBoston-based Good Start Genetics, a company that tests parents prior to a pregnancy to assess whether they are at risk of passing on a genetic disorder to their child.
The funding will be used to further develop its pregnancy tracker, which is currently being used by beta users across the country and will be commercially available later in 2013.