Breaking Down Barriers in Women's Health

Key Learnings From Claire's Experience

• Choose the regulatory pathway that maximizes patient access rather than following conventional wisdom. Sometimes the traditional approach isn't optimal, particularly for conditions with high rates of underdiagnosis. By pursuing an over-the-counter strategy for LoOop — despite pushback from traditional medtech stakeholders — Claire prioritized reaching the 75% of women with PCOS who lack formal diagnosis.

  
  

• Design products with continuous user feedback, particularly for underserved conditions, by assembling end-user advisory boards and adopting agile methodologies even for hardware development.

• Build strategic partnerships with complementary companies serving the same patient population to increase market reach, reduce customer acquisition costs, and create a more comprehensive solution for patients.

For nearly one in five women worldwide, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) casts a shadow far beyond reproductive health. It increases diabetes risk fourfold and doubles dementia risk. Yet despite this prevalence, medical innovation for PCOS has remained virtually stagnant since the 1960s.

As co-founder and CEO of Neuraura, Claire Dixon is steering the development of LoOop, an over-the-counter wearable that targets PCOS through low-frequency electrical stimulation.

"The standard of care today is to use hormonal contraceptives, so a pill," Claire explains. "It's entirely fake. It has no relation to your real menstrual cycle. It doesn't do anything to help with fertility. It actually confounds fertility, makes it even worse."

Claire's journey to women's health innovation wasn't direct. Neuraura began in 2017 as a brain-machine interface startup, developing neural electrodes for reading electrical signals directly from the brain. The pivot to women's health came just over two years ago, after recognizing both the massive unmet need and their technology's potential to make a difference.

LoOop delivers gentle electrical stimulation based on protocols developed through decades of Swedish research, translating techniques from acupuncture needles to a more accessible delivery mechanism. Unlike traditional medical devices reliant on physician prescriptions, Neuraura is pursuing a direct-to-consumer strategy to make its solution more readily accessible. This strategy reflects their commitment to accessibility and their mission to address the significant diagnostic and care gap for individuals with PCOS.