For women, going to the emergency room for treatment often means enduring a pregnancy test, which could rule out certain medications if the results come back positive. The current process of collecting and testing a woman’s urine involves multiple steps, but a Chicago startup wants to speed up the process and make it more comfortable for patients.
Voyant, a medical startup based in health-tech incubator MATTER, has created a smart toilet that administers pregnancy tests in about 5 minutes. Following a clinical trial in early October at Northwestern University, the startup placed third in Insight Product Development’s 2018 HealthTECH contest Nov. 8, taking home $6,500 in funding. Now, the startup is raising another round and preparing for a hospital clinical pilot in summer 2019.
“That [urine testing] process—the cup is moving all across different parts of the ER. It’s a time-consuming process. It’s not a pleasant process,” said Claire Zhou, Voyant’s co-founder and COO. “For us, being able to speed up that process allows women, in particular, to get their test results faster, to get the treatment that they need faster, and to ultimately drive the most important metric in emergency departments, which is reducing the length of time that somebody is in the ER.”
The funding from the contest will go toward the startup developing the next version of its prototype, but the startup is aiming to raise at least $1 million, said Michael Tu, co-founder and CEO. The funds raised from other investors will help the company bring members of its four-person, part-time team on full-time, as well as cover the cost of the clinical trials and product development, he said.
The device originated from a project Tu was working on during graduate school. At the time, he and his teammates developed a cat litter box that analyzed urine for kidney disease, Tu said. After researching smart-toilet capabilities for humans, he decided to start a company to create the technology, he said.
For now, the device only conducts pregnancy tests, but the company foresees expanding to conduct other medical tests, said Claire Zhou, Voyant’s co-founder and COO. An obstacle to bring the device to market has been finding investors who are willing to support a medical hardware company, rather than a typical software startup, Tu said.
“We’re a hardware startup, but we also have a regulatory aspect to what we’re building, so that adds to risk to venture investment,” Tu said.
Starting out with a common test like pregnancy testing has a clear pathway toward monetization, Zhou added. If adopted by hospitals, the hospitals would buy the tests from Voyant and insurance companies would reimburse the pregnancy test costs, she said.
If the clinical pilot goes well next year, the company plans to submit the device and its urine collection and testing capabilities for FDA approval in 2020, Tu said.
