04.30.24-Startup-Ecosystem-Conference-Startups-Bloomer-Tech

ALICIA CHONG RODRIGUEZ: Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Alicia, founder and CEO at Bloomer Tech, a company tailoring cardiovascular care for women using a wearable bra and generating novel digital biomarkers. And the reason that we're doing this is because heart diseases and strokes are the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. And for 60 million women in the US, it is seven times harder to recognize, diagnose, and treat heart disease compared to men. And they're also facing worse outcomes.

When we were part of MIT'S computational cardiovascular research group, realizing that most medical devices and medications have been designed predominantly using data from male animals and men was eye opening. In fact, even today, only one in every four clinical trial participants in the cardiovascular field are women. And as artificial intelligence helps turbocharge digital health, there's a big danger that algorithms trained with mostly male data and biases will actually perpetuate or even make worse all of these problems.

This is why we've created the Bloomer TAG, our tech-augmented garment. It gives women the ability to continuously and remotely acquire physiological data. By wearing these bras, she can view insights and patterns and keep an automated journal in her phone, giving her a simple way to track symptoms to share with her doctor for early detection and targeted management. It can even track the safety and efficacy of certain therapies.

We've designed our patented textile grade sensors to be all around her torso to understand her heart, her hormones, her metabolism, and her lungs. It can connect to any type of bra depending on her lifestyle choices or stages in life, for example, a nursing bra, a sports bra, a tank top to sleep, or a surgical bra. And we've designed it so that we can acquire huge amounts of data and position ourselves to address some of the diseases and conditions that affect women uniquely or differently across the spectrum of care where today there are huge unmet needs.

And this is the amazing team making all of this happen. We have experts in medical devices, AI, intimate apparel design, and cardiology. And we've achieved a lot with limited funding, building the first of its kind medical device using the female model. We have several issued patents and patents pending.

We've collected data on over 116 women across seven cities in the world using 12 sizes. We have capabilities to manufacture over 50,000 garments per production batch. We've received grant funding from the NIH. And we've had a huge recognition from several media, including a TED talk and recognition by the World Economic Forum Tech Pioneers. We've also made early revenue with a pharma collaboration.

So, today, I am inviting you-- it is the moment to join this women's health revolution. There is no better time than now to impact society by actually bringing women's health care into the 21st century. If you want to collaborate with us, please look for my co-founder and I. We will be here today, and we have a booth. And my co-founder is in that image.

And we're looking for partners that want to sponsor women's health research, want to optimize your products using inclusive data to accelerate your discovery. We want people that want to offer these products to women at risk or already diagnosed with heart disease in your organization. And if you also have large access to this type of market that we can address together, please come talk to us. Thank you.