Olivia Orchowski had been working as a personal trainer and coach for a decade, but was irked that she still wasn’t offered much real understanding of her own body.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, she looked to bring her business online and digitise her offerings. Combining this necessity with a desire to improve body literacy for women and girls, Orchowski embarked on the creation of the world’s first menstrual health-focused smart ring.
There are now 100 million women using period tracking apps, and many wearable devices offer cycle tracking as an in-built feature.
But none of these are focused on the menstrual cycle from the ground up, or provide the accuracy that FEMTEK Creative’s smart ring can.
Orchowski bootstrapped the research and development of the Basal Body Ring for three years, and raised $133,000 from 420 backers in a KickStarter campaign earlier this year.
FEMTEK Creative is a finalist in the InnovationAus 2023 Awards for Excellence in the Creative Technology and Translation Hero categories. You can secure your tickets to the black-tie event here.
The Basal Body Ring has a woman’s life stage, hormonal condition, goal and choice of contraceptive built into its user experience and recommendation engine.
A user simply wears the ring on their index finger when they go to bed, and it will collect information overnight such as body temperature, heart rate and heart rate variability while they are sleeping.
When they wake up, the ring can be put on to charge and the collected data will be ready in the accompanying smartphone app, which will also offer insights and suggestions based on the individual’s cycle.
The company owns all of its intellectual property and accessed the federal government’s research and development tax incentive in the 2022-23 financial year.
FEMTEK Creative is aiming to have 6000 smart ring devices in the market by the end of the year, and has two new products in the development stage to be launched in the next two years.
The technology is built around the concept of improving health literacy and access to health information for women and girls around the world, based around Orchowski’s own experiences with a range of health issues but little information.
The founder has been a long-time tech innovator after previously releasing a viral app that removed the like function on Instagram so users could browse back in time on someone’s profile safely without risking liking a post from two years ago.
The Basal Body Ring was built in partnership with mechatronic engineer Ben Klapaukh.
The InnovationAus 2023 Awards for Excellence are proudly supported by Investment NSW, AusIndustry, Australian Computer Society, Technology Council of Australia, Agile Digital, CSIRO, TechnologyOne, IP Australia, METS Ignited and Q-CTRL.
Protecting your great ideas with intellectual property (IP) rights can lead to lasting benefits for your growing business. IP refers to creations of the mind, such as a brand, logo, invention, design or artistic work. Head to the IP Australia website to find out more about IP, and how it might help your business.
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