Amissa, a startup backed by the National Institutes of Health, launched Wednesday to improve menopause care with its AI-powered platform.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company received the NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant. Amissa uses data from multiple sources to generate insights that help doctors track changes in menopause symptoms over time and make more informed care decisions. It uses three main pillars of data, according to Samantha Smith, co-founder and CEO of Amissa:
- The Menopause Rating Scale: a questionnaire that assesses the severity of common menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes, sleeping problems, and mood changes. This includes patient onboarding and pre-appointment intake.
- Symptom tracking: Women are asked to constantly track their symptoms.
- Wearable data: Amissa has integrations with wearable devices like Apple Watch, Oura, Garmin, and Whoop. This provides information on sleep, fatigue, and more.
This information is aggregated into a single, reviewable clinical record in the provider’s EHR. It allows providers to understand a patient’s symptoms before, during and between visits and make changes to their care if necessary. It makes it easier for patients to track and share symptoms and reduces the burden of remembering details during appointments.
The company’s services are necessary because women can enter perimenopause (the transition period leading to menopause) as early as age 30, and there are dozens of symptoms that are not always obvious. People often associate menopause with hot flashes, but these tend to occur much later, Smith said. Instead, early symptoms are more likely to include anxiety, mood swings or other “things that you might not even associate with a hormonal change,” he said.
“You can experience symptoms for up to 10 years throughout this entire journey… If you look at the studies that are out there on EHRs, they don’t even have the fields available to track these symptoms over time, and that’s necessary to understand exactly what’s going on with that patient to be able to help. So really, the solution, whenever I’m pitching investors, isn’t very attractive, but its simplicity is what makes it so great. It’s just organizing the data in a way that can allow doctors to act more intelligently,” Smith declared.
The company is already working with 10 clinical practices across the United States, including Helia Health. Providers pay a per-doctor fee for Amissa’s platform, according to Smith.
“Menopause symptoms do not progress in a straight line,” said Dr. Ariel Haddad, an obstetrician-gynecologist and founder of Helia Health, in a statement. “When I can see what gets better, what gets worse, and what stays the same between visits, I can confidently adjust care and show patients that you’re taking their experience seriously.”
Menopause and perimenopause are receiving increasing attention across the healthcare industry, as more companies emerge and gain traction in this space. This includes virtual menopause providers Midi Health, Evernow and Gennev. However, Amissa is the “only platform focused on that connectivity piece for physicians,” Smith says.
“We’re B2B. We’re not a wearable. We’re not a supplement. We’re not providing medications or we’re not providing real advice. So we’re really playing in what I like to call a safe space when it comes to regulation, but also providing maximum value to the data available,” he added.
Ultimately, the company aims to “redefine” menopausal care.
“My big goal is to make sure that we support doctors in a way that not only improves care for women who find themselves in these situations now, but also for women of the future like me, in hopes of creating a better future, overall, where we can turn the tide around menopause,” Smith said.
Photo: Amissa