This Singapore femtech start-up created a home saliva test for women to track hormone changes in perimenopause

Perimenopause is not a disease, which means it’s hard to get a ‘diagnosis’. Most women only get confirmation that they have reached menopause once they hit the 12-month mark without a period – so it’s difficult for women to know if the symptoms they’re experiencing are related to perimenopause or some other health condition.

Plus, the fact that the perimenopause phase could last up to 10 years means there’s a lot of uncertainty and guesswork involved.

What if you could get a better idea of your hormonal fluctuations during perimenopause with a simple test you can do at home, and then get advice from medical experts to manage your symptoms?

This is what Singapore-based start-up Prelude Health is aiming to do, with its rapid at-home saliva test, Hormony. The test allows women to track their patterns by measuring, monitoring and managing the fluctuation of cortisol, a hormone.  

Combined with an AI-driven app, it gives women real-time insights based on their cortisol level and health history. They can choose to give their healthcare providers access to their profile to help with managing symptoms. It also links them with a community of women for support.

Mayra Hurtado, CEO and co-founder of Hormony (Prelude Health), came up with the idea three years ago when she started noticing health issues and couldn’t pinpoint what was causing them.

The Mexican citizen, who is based in Singapore, gained 10kg and had trouble sleeping. She started having migraines and even did an MRI scan to see if there was something wrong with her neck.  

“We’re very blessed in Singapore because we have many options for doctors so I saw all kinds – mainstream doctors as well as ayurvedic and TCM practitioners,” the 42-year-old said.

“I found a nutritionist in Singapore who sent my samples to a laboratory in the United States. I spent thousands of dollars on this whole process and at the end, I just got a piece of paper with a bunch of numbers that said ‘perimenopause’.

“Obviously, I freaked out as I had never heard of this word; I thought it was the end of the line,” she added.

Hurtado’s nutritionist built a plan for her, involving “nutrition, supplementation and exercise”. She lost 8kg in eight months and found the whole process an “eye-opener”. She also searched online for trends on the word ‘perimenopause’ and found that it wasn’t talked about much.

She had previously worked at Adidas APAC for a decade, where two of her key roles were process optimisation and looking at trends, so she immediately wondered what could be done to improve this scenario for women. One route was to dive into entrepreneurship and make a difference.

PROVIDING A BETTER PICTURE OF HORMONAL SHIFTS

Hurtado was working at a local women’s health startup at that point and she got connected with her now co-founder, Dr Sarita Kumble, a biochemist in her early fifties who had experienced her fair share of perimenopause woes. Dr Kumble hails from India and lives in the United States.

“She told me that she would be in the middle of her pitches and, all of a sudden, she’d get hot flushes and nobody would understand as she was the only woman in the room,” Hurtado said.

“She wanted to make it better for women and felt that, as older women, we should be able to help the next generation of women.”

The two women put together a list of medical experts they wanted to work with. Among them was Joe Dunbar, a scientist in London and former elite athlete who is a specialist in saliva testing, working mostly with high-performance athletes.

“His expertise is testing cortisol so all the pieces started to come together,” Hurtado told CNA Women. Dunbar now serves as Hormony’s advisor on the research and development of saliva testing.

Cortisol is known as the stress hormone and directly impacts key symptoms associated with perimenopause. Elevated or dysregulated cortisol can exacerbate these symptoms so identifying individual cortisol patterns can give women insights into their stress triggers and recovery.

Testing for cortisol in a laboratory is expensive so it’s unlikely that women would do more than one test. Plus, hormones fluctuate frequently so a single test would only provide a snapshot.

Women may want to use Hormony if they’re experiencing perimenopausal symptoms or simply to proactively monitor their health by understanding hormonal fluctuations and patterns, to guide their health decisions.

The product’s soft launch is planned for April 2025 in Singapore. Each kit contains 10 tests to last a month; the price is currently not confirmed. It is recommended to test over at least three months, to be able to capture more precise patterns. 

Users collect saliva via a tube, mix it with a liquid and add drops to the test strip, similar to a COVID-19 test. Two lines appear, indicating one’s cortisol levels based on position and intensity of the lines.

The user photographs the test, uploads it to the app, which analyses the image, and then provides a reading of the results in real time, along with insights and recommendations.

Each saliva test provides one data point in real time. Collecting multiple samples across days and weeks builds a personalised hormonal map, helping users understand how their cortisol levels align with their health and lifestyle.

Singapore will be the first market to access the product after launch, followed by the United States later in 2025, with more markets to be announced shortly. The company has other tests in development for testosterone, progesterone and oestrogen.

NORMALISING THE CONVERSATION AROUND PERIMENOPAUSE

Hurtado moved to Singapore in 2008 to pursue her Master in Business Administration at the Nanyang Technological University “and never left”. She registered Prelude Health in Singapore in 2023, and said the country offers “a fantastic platform for innovation” because although it’s very regulated, it’s also easy to set up shop here.

The company has been incubated at Singapore Management University since August 2024. The university’s Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship runs a flagship incubation programme, Business Innovations Generator, which takes in two cohorts of early-stage start-ups each year and supports them through an intensive four-month coaching programme.

“We have access to mentors, tools, even a co-working space,” Hurtado said. “They introduce us to potential investors as well, so they’re a good incubation resource. Before that, we did an accelerator programme in the United Kingdom and that’s how we built our network there.”

Another advantage Singapore has is the diversity of the population.

“When you go to a laboratory in the United States, they’re probably being benchmarked against a white population, which are not women like me,” Hurtado pointed out. “Being in Singapore gives us access to a much more diverse population that can help us teach the algorithm with many more parameters so it’s more fair, basically.”

Hurtado revealed that the biggest challenge, however, is the topic – “it’s hard to discuss, even for women, so it’s difficult to gauge the response”.

The start-up’s efforts have already been lauded. In October 2024, Hormony was the winner in the inaugural FemTech category at the Global Tech Awards 2024. The company was also a finalist at the Tech In Asia Conference and Women’s Health Innovation Summit Asia.

Hurtado confessed that although it’s great to receive these honours, it’s more crucial to recognise the importance of the topic as these accolades mean that people see the worth of focusing on this area.  

“It gives us the ability to talk about it, to normalise it and not make it seem like something shameful or a disease,” said Hurtado. “The conversation needs to shift from something scary, dirty or ugly into ‘it’s normal, it’s a beautiful stage of life’.

“We should celebrate it, just like going through adolescence. Like in Mexico, we have our quinceanera, which is like our sweet 16. We need to reframe this phase of our lives too,” she added.