What to know
- Fibra underwear monitors signals including vaginal pH, vaginal discharge volume, skin temperature, heart rate and heart rate variability.
- Fibra says its machine-learning model learns each user’s individual baseline and uses changes in the data to provide insights into reproductive and vaginal health.
- The company’s founder says the data could be useful for understanding ovulation and cycle changes.
- The sensors are fabric-based, while the electronic component can be detached. The underwear is stretchable, machine washable and dryer-safe.
- Rather than relying primarily on manually entered information and generalized cycle predictions, the company says it collects continuous physiological data to build an individualized picture of each user.
A Toronto researcher has launched an underwear brand that can help women track their reproductive cycles.
Biomedical engineer Parnian Majd was diagnosed with Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS), formerly known as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), when she was a teenager.
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For years, she found herself taking guesses with her reproductive health, relying on symptoms or occasional medical appointments for insights about her body. Tired of relying on confusing symptoms or medical appointments to understand her body, she harnessed her skills as an engineer to create a product that would change that.
“Throughout my education, I worked on a lot of wearable [technology], tracking your heart health or your sleep quality. And I always thought, why not have a wearable for reproductive health?” she told Now Toronto.
After years of research and testing, Majd launched Fibra, a brand that offers wearable underwear capable of tracking reproductive health signals directly from the source.
How does the underwear work?
Fibra products look just like regular underwear, but they are capable of tracking key reproductive biomarkers like pH and volume of vaginal discharge, skin temperature, heart rate and heart rate variability.
These biomarkers are then available through an app that helps women understand the changes and offers useful insights into their reproductive health, including signs of vaginal infection, ovulation, cycle changes, and more.
“We combine that continuous outsourced data with our sophisticated machine learning model to learn each woman’s baseline and help them essentially understand the changes better, to be able to navigate their reproductive health from fertility to cycle health to vaginal wellness, postpartum, and menopause,” Majd explained.
Engineers and researchers have been working on the complex technology since 2022 to ensure that the underwear sensors work accurately while providing a level of comfort. The sensors are fabric-based, and the product is stretchable, machine washable and dryer-safe, users only need to remove a detachable electronic unit before popping it in the washing machine.
“The app shows the data to women that they need. If they’re going through menopause, they have access to menopausal data. If they’re going through postpartum, if they’re like me who have PCOS, the data is valuable for them for cycle irregularities and so on,” Majd said, adding that with the [Fibra] underwear, it’s as normal as any other underwear.”
Why is tracking reproductive cycles important?
Majd explained that women’s reproductive systems connect to different aspects of their health, including their mood, energy levels, and appetites, which can impact their daily routines. Reproductive cycles can be altered by a series of factors, including exercise, routine changes, food consumption, alcohol consumption, and more.
She explained that understanding what changes mean and where they might be coming from can help women adjust and find strategies to manage them.
“Our reproductive system and cycles are our body’s operating system,” Majd said. “We’re living in the 21st century. You can do the exact same thing for your performance, for your sleep, for your heart [rate]…Why not do that for your reproductive system?”
Underwear promises more accurate tracking than other apps
With so many period-tracking apps on the market, Fibra stands out as a solution that tracks data from the source for more accurate insights, while keeping the experience non-invasive.
“Period tracking apps only have a generic algorithm, and our bodies don’t follow that generic algorithm all the time. Our bodies are unique, and there are a lot of environmental factors affecting our reproductive health and cycle,” the founder explained.
“For me, I have PCOS, so stress can shift my cycles, my ovulation. Alcohol can affect our reproductive health and cycle. There are a lot of environmental factors, so apps are not accurate all the time, and it’s very manual,” she added.
At the same time, Majd said Fibra has taken several steps to ensure that the data it collects remains private. According to her, the data is stored anonymously and secured through a backend structure powered by Google. The company doesn’t sell this data, and users have the ability to delete it from their server at any point.
Fibra was officially launched earlier this year, and pre-sales of its products are now available on its website across Canada.
