WoW Woman in FemTech | Maria Berruezo, Co-founder of LactApp
Interview by MarijaButkovic
Maria Berruezo is Co-founder of LactApp Women Health based in Barcelona, Spain. She is a certified lactation consultant since 2012, her background is related to communication. She has a Master’s Degree in Knowledge Management & Bachelor’s Degree in Advertising & PR Communication.
What is the idea behind your project / product and how did you come up with it?
LactApp was born from a life changing experience that had a profound impact in my life. When my second baby was 5 weeks old, I was crossing the street with her in the pram and we were both run over by a car. Luckily she was only in the hospital for one night, but my health was much more affected and I was hospitalized for two months. My story is actually very positive because despite the circumstances, I had all the professional support, the love of my family and friends and the information to recover our breastfeeding journey, which was very important to me. I felt that every mother should also be able to achieve her personal desired goals of breastfeeding with as much help and support as possible. So LactApp was born out of this vision that every mother should have a breastfeeding and maternity expert in her pocket to accompany her with information, professional support and community.
When did all start and do you have other members in your team?
Throughout my recovery process there was one key person: the IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant) Alba Padró. She was an essential pillar in the recovery of mine and my daughter’s breastfeeding journey, she helped us to solve the main doubts I was having and she knew how to guide me to plan my next steps and shared my milestones. When I was nearly recovered I didn't hesitate to make her a proposal: I wanted to download her brain into an app so that all mothers in the world could feel equally accompanied and safe in their own decision making.
Alba and I started the project by creating a decision tree that currently has more than 76,000 possible paths to more than 2,500 personalized responses.
We launched our first MVP and the response was extraordinary, more than 9000 mothers downloaded this first version. We immediately knew that this project was really necessary and we needed to incorporate a person with a technological and economic vision, who would allow us to grow exponentially. That was when Enric Pallarés, our third Co-founder and CEO of the company came on board.
Soon our CTO, Rocío Tovar, joined us, she had been an early user of the app and helped us by taking over the technical reins of the app. As soon as it was possible we also incorporated Ignasi Gómez, PhD in artificial intelligence, who is working on making reality of my dream: for LactApp to become more and more like the best possible breastfeeding expert in your pocket.
How long did it take you to be where you are now?
Sometimes I think we've accomplished a lot in a very short time. The idea came up in 2014, at the end of 2015 we launched our MVP, in June 2016 we formed LactApp and today we are more than 10 employees and handle more than 80,000 queries per week automatically worldwide.
What was the biggest obstacle?
Probably our specific industry. Breastfeeding is a non-industry because money is made when breastfeeding fails. We aim to generate value when breastfeeding and motherhood are successful. When breastfeeding fails, companies who produce artificial formula milk make sales. When breastfeeding works, it seems that no one makes money. Evidence proves that breastfeeding is a key factor in economic and social evolution and we know that increases in breastfeeding rates would directly impact the entire economic structure. The savings made for the healthcare system would be millions. But that’s not the only aspect, even more we have to consider the emotional health aspect of mothers and their families. Good postpartum care can mean the difference for mothers when bonding well with their children and promote good mental health for the entire family.
Even so we now need to explain the problem we are solving less and less, because the numbers speak for themselves. In Spain LactApp is now used by 20% of new mothers thru completely organically growth and we have so far already solved more than 5 million consultations automatically.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
There have been many key moments at LactApp. We are very clear about the pillars of our work: medical, technological and academic.
Medical:
- We have a special version for health professionals, for them to create multiple personalized consultations and find support in caring for mothers. The endorsement of the large local maternity hospitals has also been important.
- At the end of 2019 we opened LactApp Clinic, a breastfeeding and women's health clinic in the centre of Barcelona.
Technological:
- Last year we were selected by Apple as one of 10 female-led companies in the world for their Apple Entrepreneur Camp.
- We currently have our own platform, where we attend mothers who write to us and which allows us to train our artificial intelligence.
- We have just been approved by ORCHA in the UK with a score of 77% which makes us the highest ranked app in the field of breastfeeding
Academic:
- We have launched and teach in a collaboration with the Universidad Ramon Lull a postgraduate university degree for experts in breastfeeding, which in its first edition has enrolled 100 students, all of them health professionals from different areas.
What are the challenges of being an entrepreneur in the niche you are in? How about being a female founder / entrepreneur?
I still find it incredible that women's topics are considered niche, when we represent 50% of the population. We started our project with a focus on breastfeeding, because it is our expertise, but soon we expanded our topics due to the demand of our users. Currently we inform about more than 50 topics related to maternity and women's health, from menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and pelvic floor to parenting. Recently there has been increased interest in female founders, many organizations promote them and the press favors our visibility. But still, from our experience of talking directly to investors, there is still a long way to go when it comes to gender issues. Just the fact that having a man representing LactApp in certain settings, helps us to be taken into account, says it all.
What are your projects you are currently working on?
Our main focus is on technology, which we believe can make a more noticeable impact on the lives of women around the world. Our core AI data set grows every day thanks to all the interactions with our users and we are learning more and how to better care for women, identify critical situations and offer early care that prevents unwanted early endings to a desired breastfeeding journey.
In addition, our work is more important today than ever before. With the COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness of mothers and lack of care in the immediate postpartum period have reached a new level. In the last few weeks users of LactApp have increased by 30% and we have seen almost 80% more women in our consultation chat. Women are more prepared than ever to find reliable resources and information, and they find us. Last month alone, the application handled 385,000 consultations.
Currently we also work on making the app available in other languages and countries and so we are focusing at the moment on our English version, which is ready, but needs to adapt better locally and attract more users.
Is #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
Yes, it is very important for me. I think that in technology the same thing happens as with breastfeeding: we need to see others doing it first. Sometimes, to do something yourself, you just need to have witnessed that someone else has done it before you. Thanks to the #WomenInTech movement we know that we are not alone and that there is a place for us in the process of change.
What is the most important piece of advice you can give to all female founders and female entrepreneurs out there?
Maybe I would tell them not to compare themselves to male founders, because they do things their own way and they have their own ways to win their battles. Those ways don’t have to be the same that work well for us women.
What will be the key trends in the health tech industry in the next 5 years and where do you see it heading?
Personalization is a key element in the AI environment of the future. Getting a customized answer adapted to my person, my environment and my moment will be a necessity that users will demand. Technology is already capable of offering solutions but companies will have to organize and obtain their data in a very segmented way in order to adapt to this new reality. It will no longer be a question of having data, but of having adequate data, of quality in terms of its origin and volume. And the segmentation of these data by gender will be very relevant because in many cases they have been ignored until now.
The impact of the coronavirus will mark a before and after in medical care, it will change many social rules and will accelerate services like telemedicine that surely did not fit in so far.
Who are your 3 inspirational women in health tech?
I really like this question.
The three people I highlight are:
Ida Tin, CEO and co-founder of Clue, she is a great role model for me for all the work she has done, not only with her app but also for all the outreach and awareness work regarding women's health.
Esther Hare, Senior Director of Global Developer Marketing at Apple and executive sponsor of Women@Apple, for her fight to empower women in the technology sector and for being a role model herself.
And the third woman would be Tania Boler, Elvie's CEO, for wanting to make an impact through technology in the breastfeeding segment, for helping to make it a market where money is made by really helping women.
Follow LactApp for their latest updates and news:
Website: www.lactapp.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lactapp/
Instagram: @infant.feeding (Eng) @lactapp_lactancia (ES)
This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship and diversity. Visit marijabutkovic.co.uk or follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic.