2024-02-11 09:00:00
Getting pregnant more quickly or detecting cervical cancer using smart panties is the goal set by the Toronto company Fibra. With her underwear of the future, she wants to give women the reins of their reproductive and sexual health, at a time when research in this area still lags behind that on men.
In the laboratory of the company Fibra Inc., in downtown Toronto, a dozen scientists and engineers are busy around sewing patterns and thin electrical cables.
For two years, they have been developing reusable women’s underwear capable of collecting, thanks to sensors connected to a mobile application, all kinds of information on the reproductive system of the woman who wears it.
What we do is give power back to women by giving them access to data [concernant leur système reproducteur] simply by wearing our product, explains Fibra founder and CEO Parnian Majd.
According to her, her invention will soon offer a simple and effective alternative to the sometimes invasive and painful medical examinations that are necessary to assess the state of women’s intimate health.
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Fibra Inc. smart panties are equipped with sensors that collect data on fertility and the female reproductive system. They are washable and reusable.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Ken Townsend
For now, the company is mostly focused on fertility by developing a system that can detect ovulation, but the underwear could eventually help detect diseases such as sexually transmitted infections and even cervical cancer of the uterus.
A taboo topic
Ms. Majd says she embarked on this project to break the taboos surrounding women’s sexual and reproductive health.
Born in Iran in the late 1990s, this biomedical engineer says she never understood why the women around her, like those in many other countries, did not dare to talk about problems related to their reproductive system.
I always knew things shouldn’t be this way.
Convincing investors to participate in the project, however, was not easy.
Some male investors didn’t understand the problem we were trying to address, because they don’t face it themselves. It was a real challenge because we had to educate them about ovulation, the menstrual cycle, cervical cancer and its detection methods, she explains.
Sometimes at the end of our meeting they would say to me, “Let me talk to my wife about this to see if this is a real problem.” It was really frustrating.
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The Fibra Inc. reusable smart panties will be sold for $80, says the company’s founder.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Ken Townsend
20 years behind men
Majd’s report comes as no surprise to Dr. Rachel Rubin, chair of the education committee of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health. Women’s sexual health is really at the bottom of the scale. […] We don’t have a lot of funding or academic support, says the trained urologist. The company is based in Massachusetts.
According to her, the historical exclusion of women from medicine means that the study and understanding of female diseases, such as endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome, is decades behind male diseases. .
The field of men’s sexual health is 20 years ahead of women’s because of the development of Viagra. It happened by chance in 1998, but it brought in billions of dollars in the field of men’s health, reports the expert.
She also points out that in the United States, those responsible for research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health have only been required to include female subjects in their clinical trials since 1993.
In Canada, it was not until 1997 that Health Canada published a directive to encourage the inclusion of women, without requiring it.
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It takes on average five years in Canada before being diagnosed with endometriosis, according to the organization Endometriose Québec.
Photo : getty images/istockphoto / wildpixel
Ms. Majd witnesses the consequences of this delay on a daily basis in the design of her smart panties. Often when we create the algorithms to predict [l’apparition] diseases or the period of ovulation, we come up against incomplete or even non-existent data banks, she laments.
However, these diseases have very real consequences in the lives of the women who suffer from them.
Pelvic pain, sexual health issues affect women’s mental health, their relationships, their marriage, their ability to connect with others and even stay in the workforce.
Hope
Even though she recognizes that women and people from sexual and gender minorities often face a health system poorly equipped to give them answers, the executive director of the organization Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, Frédérique Chabot believes that Canada is moving in the right direction.
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Frédérique Chabot is the executive director of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.
Photo : Radio-Canada
The 20th edition of Reproductive and Sexual Health Awareness Week in Canada will take place from February 12 to 16.
This is an important anniversary, explains Ms. Chabot, since several countries such as the United States have suffered significant setbacks in terms of sexual and reproductive rights.
The conversation has evolved in Canada. It’s a situation that is much more visible, that we see in the media and on social networks. There is more interaction on the subject, which of course has an influence on the research that is done and the interest of students at universities, she explains.
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Parnian Majd claims that the Fibra Inc. smart panties will be as comfortable as any other panties on the market.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Ken Townsend
Dr. Rubin and Ms. Chabot believe, however, that medical and nursing schools must above all better train their students by including sexual health in their teaching programs.
Ms. Majd hopes to launch her smart panties on the market by the end of the year.
Around 3,000 women have already registered on the company’s website to obtain it.
Knowledge brings power. We therefore want to give them as much information as possible about their health, she says.
With information from Rozenn Nicolle
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