How a young Canadian entrepreneur is poised to improve the lives of women | 24CA News
Every month, for roughly 40 years of their lives, ladies will get their interval.
For nearly all of ladies, menstruation can imply a number of days of ache and discomfort, starting from easy annoyance to all-out debilitation.
The most typical symptom in accordance with the Cleveland Clinic is cramping, which is brought on by contractions because the uterus sheds its lining.
Nanette Sene, cofounder and CEO of Montreal startup Juno Technologies, is aware of a factor or two about interval ache.
“To me, it (feels) a bit like I was being stabbed,” she stated of her personal menstrual cramps. “It’s a sharp pain that continuously comes and goes, comes and goes.”
The ache is unpredictable, Sene stated, in that she doesn’t essentially know when it’s going to begin in her cycle and the way lengthy it should final from one time to the following.
With Juno, Sene has made it her mission to assist different ladies by making a wearable gadget to alleviate ache.
Sene stated the wi-fi gadget is rechargeable, simple to make use of and matches discreetly beneath clothes.
“Our product is (meant) to relieve menstrual pain without any medication, and without the side effects that come with medication, but still be very efficient,” Sene stated.
Nanette Sene is the CEO and co-founder of Juno Technologies. Sene has received the Mitacs prize for social innovation for her work to assist alleviate the ache of menstrual cramps.
Courtesy Nanette Sene
While Sene couldn’t reveal an excessive amount of technical info as a consequence of pending mental property rights, she stated it’s made to stick to the pelvic space and was developed by combining totally different applied sciences.
It works by “relaxing the muscles that create cramps and it also inhibits the feeling of pain,” Sene stated, including the reduction is sort of speedy.
Current strategies of treating menstrual ache, as described by the Mayo Clinic, embrace over-the-counter medicines similar to ibuprofen, hormonal contraception and typically surgical procedure when the cramps are brought on by a dysfunction.
The Mayo Clinic additionally suggests utilizing a heating pad, decreasing caffeine consumption and massaging the affected space, together with different strategies of self-care to alleviate ache.
Sene, nevertheless, guided by her entrepreneurial spirit, determined to take issues into her personal fingers.
She began researching the problem of menstrual ache two years in the past whereas enterprise her grasp’s diploma in industrial engineering at Polytechnique Montréal.
“I love the idea of entrepreneurship, but to create a great product or a great solution, you really need to find a problem that’s real, that’s big, that impacts a lot of people,” she stated.
“And to me, menstrual pain is something that obviously affects so many people. It’s 80 per cent of women that suffer from it.”
For some ladies with underlying circumstances, the ache could be insufferable, she says.
“About 10 per cent have extreme menstrual pain and the reason why I say 10 per cent have extreme menstrual pain is because 10 per cent of women have endometriosis.”
Pain ensuing from cramps can even have an effect on folks’s every day actions and may result in misplaced productiveness.
Sene stated there are occasions when she’s needed to take a morning off work but additionally many occasions when that wasn’t a luxurious she may afford.
“So once I was a pupil and you’ve got exams, it’s not an excuse that they think about.“
Pushing by ache and discomfort to hold on with college or work is a actuality for many individuals.
“In a lot of situations you can’t actually use it to take the day off or to take a sick day, ” she stated.
A Dutch examine from 2019, discovered that interval ache could make ladies lose practically 9 days of productiveness a 12 months.
So with an actual drawback on her fingers, Sene teamed up with electrical engineering pupil and Juno co-founder Lynn Doughane to invent an answer.
They constructed up a crew, labored carefully with gynecologists and numerous mentors and developed a prototype. And now that tough work is beginning to repay.
On Thursday, Sene was awarded the Mitacs Social Entrepreneur Award for her efforts to show her analysis right into a business with the potential to affect the lives of Canadians.
Mitacs is a not-for-profit nationwide analysis group whose aim is to foster innovation and drive business options, in partnership with universities, the personal sector and totally different ranges of presidency.
For Sene, the award affords validation.
“The Mitacs prize means that what we are creating is very innovative,” she stated. “But to get the Mitacs prize in social innovation also means that the problem we are treating is a social problem. So menstrual pain is a social problem.”
What shocked Sene probably the most when she started her analysis was how few tutorial papers centered on the problem of ache.
“It’s kind of ironic that there is not a lot of information on the subject, yet it affects so many women,” she stated.
With Juno, Sene is hoping to advance the trigger and break the stigma that usually accompanies menstrual ache.
The subsequent step she says is to seek out the appropriate companions to begin medical trials in a hospital setting.
A second prototype is at the moment in manufacturing for that precise goal.
“So that’s the real testing that we would love to start in early 2024.”
