As a women engineer ME grad student Elizabeth Reilly (right) wanted to use her technical talents to improve the lives of women. Last year, Reilly suggested that the group from her product design class create an at-home estrogen monitor. Her all-male group reacted with resistance, confusion and skepticism before they finally agreed.

“I guess the project went beyond the scope of what they were familiar with as men, so they weren’t eager to do it,” says Reilly.

Her idea for the “Estrosense” project came from watching her mother go through hormone replacement therapy. She realized that if her mom could track her monthly hormones fluctuations herself she could better control her daily dosage of hormones. After doing some research she found that at-home estrogen tracking could benefit women for many different reasons. The product could be used by athletes with nutritional issues, women with fertility problems, and religious women using the rhythm method of birth control.

“This product is useful for any woman. Tracking your long-term hormone levels can help prevent problems down the line, like osteoporosis and cervical cancer. It also helps female athletes know when their nutritional intake is dangerously low because of hormone drops,” explains Reilly.

The following semester Reilly decided to personally refine and revamp the group project and enter it into the Vertex technology competition at Stanford University. The competition, sponsored by Vertex, the Berkeley engineering entrepreneurship club, was attended and judged by industry and venture capitalists in the technology sector. Not only did her Estrosense project win first place for best class project, but it also garnered effusive enthusiasm from attendees.

“I was very surprised at how well the idea was received and how many offers I got from venture capitalists. There seems to be a lot of demand for this kind of product out there. Doctors came up to me wanting to know why someone hadn’t thought of this idea sooner,” recalls Reilly.

The use of sensor technology distinguishes Reilly’s estrogen monitor from the commercial ones currently under development. Women track their estrogen levels with a daily swab of saliva and the sensor automatically beams the results to a laptop computer to chart and track the data over time. The ability to graph and crunch daily levels will give women a better picture of their estrogen levels over time.

“Your daily estrogen reading doesn’t really tell you anything. It’s the trend that you need to see,” says Reilly.

Reilly declined venture capitalist offers to market her Estrosense device commercially due to schedule constraints. With the demands of graduate school she didn’t have the time to invest in developing and marketing her idea. When she began working on Estrosense, Reilly attempted to buy the technology, from a company developing a similar product, that she needed to turn her model into a working prototype.

“It turned out that we needed a lot of money to license the technology from that company, and as students we just didn’t have the resources,” she says.

She reflects on the Estrosense project as an education in the workings of the legal and business worlds, as well as a validating experience.

“The enthusiastic response I received at the Vertex competition was very reassuring,” says Reilly.

For more information e-mail Reilly at beth@kingkong.me.berkeley.edu

 

From Engineering News, November 17, 2003, Vol. 74, No. 13F