WoW Woman in FemTech I Sabrina Badir, Biomechanics Engineer and CEO of Pregnolia AG
Sabrina Badir is a Biomechanics Engineer and the CEO of Pregnolia AG.
During her PhD at ETH Zürich, she and her colleagues developed a device that measures the stiffness of the uterine cervix in pregnancy. This device can assist gynecologists in providing better patient care by helping predict the risk of premature birth. After her PhD, Sabrina was awarded the Pioneer Fellowship to translate this academic research into a medical device product. In 2016, with Francisco Delgado, she co-founded Pregnolia – an ETH Zürich Spin-off – to bring the device to the market. Since then she has won several startup competitions, was named Falling Walls Youth Innovator 2015, and raised a total of CHF 10M in financing.
Pregnolia AG is a women’s health company in the field of preterm birth detection. The company has developed a CE-marked measurement method to accurately determine the stiffness of the cervix. This parameter is an important indicator for estimating the risk of preterm birth. Early diagnosis of preterm birth enables preventive interventions to prolong pregnancy and improve the health of newborns.
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
I am a biomechanical engineer from ETH. During my PhD my colleagues and I from ETH and University Hospital Zurich developed a device to measure cervical stiffness to predict the risk of premature birth. After my PhD, I decided to found Pregnolia.
How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
Captivated by the lack of innovation in women’s health, I’ve decided to tackle one of the biggest challenges in modern obstetrics: the diagnosis of preterm birth. The idea goes back to my doctoral work at ETH Zurich, when my research team started developing a device to assess cervical stiffness in pregnancy. I was driven by the clinicians wanting to improve the way to identify women at risk of delivering prematurely. The immense support of obstetricians in Switzerland and abroad convinced me that I was on the right track. In 2016, I teamed up with Francisco Delgado to found Pregnolia. Since then we have been working towards a new tool to analyze a pregnancy, and for a step-change in the gold standard for preterm birth risk detection.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle? What are the challenges of being in the industry you are in?
I did my PhD from 2011 to 2015. Then, I received a Pioneer Fellowship from ETH to transform the business idea into the startup Pregnolia. At a start-up speed dating event at ETH Zurich Francisco Delgado and I met and became business partners. Francisco Delgado became CTO and head of Research and Development, and he set about transforming the unwieldy prototype into a high-tech, marketable medical measuring device. I took on the role of CEO, focused on building the company, and became the face of the start-up. Together we successfully convinced investors, acquired money for the development of the device, established a network of doctors, clinics, midwives, health insurance companies and other stakeholders from the health sector, initiated clinical trials and recruited qualified staff. The team went through a very long build-up phase in which we developed the device into a medical product and fought our way through the jungle of regulatory processes. It took four years until the device was CE certified and brought to its first market in 2020 in Switzerland. This was happening exactly during Covid. This was a difficult time point, but it’s been improving a lot, especially since the beginning of the year.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
The biggest success is the entire Pregnolia story and all the people we’ve met and contributed to it: from forming a multidisciplinary medtech team and raising over CHF 10M of funds, to navigating the complex and highly regulated world of medical devices and selling our first devices. I have been working with gynecologists, midwives, development and production partners, of course, my dear colleagues on my team, the board of directors, and shareholders.
What are the projects you are currently working on? Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
Women’s health has been under-researched and underfunded for a long-time. With Pregnolia, I am committed to contributing to this movement. Because like many areas of female health, the basic understanding of pregnancy itself is full of gaping scientific holes and mysteries that include what controls the timing of birth. Preterm birth is defined as childbirth before 37 weeks of gestation. One in ten babies, or 15 million babies worldwide, are born preterm every year. It is a life-threatening event for the baby and a traumatic moment for families, with a multi-billion cost impact on our society. Even in western countries, the current diagnostic methods leave us unable to detect women at risk, let alone treat the problem. Pregnancy is one of the most impactful events in the life of a woman, and it is remarkable how much we still don’t know about the event that generates every single human life.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?
For over two decades, cervical length screening was THE method to detect the risk of premature birth. Over 10000 studies have been published about this method, but clinical care could not be improved by that scale. For a few years, and with the general awareness of the historical gap in women’s health, the preterm birth detection and prevention market is growing significantly! When I started my PhD, there was only one company active in this field. Long overlooked by science, pregnancy is finally getting the attention it deserves.
Today there are probably 20 or more startups dedicating their vision to improving pregnancy care and therefore reducing the number of premature babies worldwide.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
Talk to your target audience and customers and really find out where the pain point is. If you find it, they will support you and this will be the key to your success.
Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?
Prof. Kristin Myers from Columbia University in NY (the first researcher that dedicated her research to the mechanics of pregnancy, only!)
Kate Ryder, Founder & CEO of Maven
Tania Boler, Founders & CEO of Elvie
Find out more about Pregnolia AG on their website.
Follow Pregnolia AG on LinkedIn.
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. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.