Female-founded AI tool aims to transform women's health
More than half of Australian women live with a chronic health condition and wait years to be diagnosed, often as a result of being dismissed by health professionals.
Mary Spanos first started experiencing painful symptoms of endometriosis when she was 12 years old but was not officially diagnosed until she was in her 20s.
"It's a ridiculously long time to be experiencing those debilitating symptoms and there were countless emergency room visits and specialist appointments where I was completely dismissed," she tells AAP.
Ms Spanos is one of countless women who have suffered in silence.
"I honestly thought it was all in my head and had so many negative thoughts because the people who were supposed to know what was going on medically were telling me it was fine," she says.
It's a similar story for Grace Lam, who started to experience debilitating health symptoms as she approached 50.
A former senior fashion editor of Vogue China, Ms Lam was used to thriving in fast-paced, high-powered environments.
Yet seemingly overnight, she began to experience insomnia, low libido, extreme brain fog and driving anxiety.
"My symptoms hit me like a rocket overnight ... it felt like every day my brain was outside my body and I would wake up feeling so strange," Ms Lam says.
"The rage was also something else. I am a feisty Asian woman, so that's nothing new, but this type of rage was just very different."
When she raised these symptoms with her GP, the doctor prescribed her sleeping pills but would not discuss any management plans for perimenopause.
"I didn't want to rely on the sleeping pills, so that's when I went down the rabbit hole of perimenopause symptoms online," Ms Lam says.
"I learnt more about perimenopause online than from my doctor."
A newly launched AI health partner Ovum wants to disrupt the health landscape and end gender health inequity across Australia.
The app has been four years in the making, with two clinical trials at The Royal Hospital for Women and St George Hospital.
It was founded by Ariella Heffernan-Marks, who had the idea while training as a doctor and witnessing the healthcare issues facing women.
"I observed the structural barriers in our health care and realised we needed to look at integrated data rather than having it spread across multiple physicians and specialists," she says.
"Women are feeling the bias in the healthcare system ... they have not been included in clinical trials for decades and this is impacting diagnostics and treatment."
After suffering chronic migraines during medical school, Dr Heffernan-Marks personally experienced being dismissed by specialists and decided something needed to change.
"We need to redefine women's health to not just be about reproductive health because there are so many chronic conditions facing women," she says.
"All the fem-tech tools on the market are not catering to what women actually need."
The AI behind Ovum draws from female-centric medical literature to understand and learn from a wide range of health factors.
It helps identify patterns, log symptoms, collate reports and create questions for women to raise with their doctors at their next appointment.
It is not a diagnostic tool but rather provides a starting point for discussion with a medical professional.
Users can opt to share their information anonymously as part of a wider database researchers can use to develop new medications and treatments or better understand conditions.
With access to sensitive personal data, Dr Heffernan-Marks says Ovum is nationally and globally compliant with stringent standards to protect users.
"Ovum is really about addressing the structural, integrated and research barriers ... we have decades (of medical research) to catch up on and AI will help us do that," she says.
"We are creating a safe space for women and solving the health data gap by feeding information back into the research."
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"We currently have limited knowledge on why cardiotoxicity occurs and which women will be most impacted," lead researcher Professor Julie McMullen said. "This research has the opportunity to identify women at risk of cardiotoxicity before symptoms are present, so we can develop drugs to protect the heart during and after cancer treatment." A protective drug would have been vital for Lee Hunt, who has experienced long-term heart damage from rounds of chemotherapy and Herceptin, a targeted therapy medication. "You never recover after cancer, but I was doing well until about five years after my treatment finished and I started experiencing dizzy spells," Ms Hunt told AAP. "It turned out the chemotherapy had affected my heart and I have permanent heart weakness. It won't kill me but it does need to be managed carefully. "Cancer treatment may save your life but that needs to be a good quality of life." The heart damage could sometimes be worse than the cancer itself, HRI research officer Dr Clara Liu Chung Ming said. "We want to give patients a therapy that can be safely delivered with their cancer treatment, to protect the heart before any damage occurs," she said. "It's about saving hearts as well as lives." While the research project is still in the pre-clinical stage, its potential is significant. The microscopic 3D "mini heart" models mimic aspects of how the human heart functions. "Our mini hearts replicate how a real heart contracts and responds to stress," Dr Liu Chung Ming said. "We expose them to chemotherapy and see how they react, then introduce our drug and see if it helps." The next step in the project will be to use breast cancer patient blood samples to generate personalised mini hearts. Breast cancer survivors at risk of severe heart disease due to chemotherapy and other treatments could benefit from a new drug to protect them from cardiovascular illness. In Australia, more than 21,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer and about 3300 die from the disease each year. But the treatments helping patients survive chemotherapy and antibody-based therapies are also putting them at risk of heart failure, arrhythmias or other cardiovascular conditions years later. Heart disease related to cancer treatment is emerging as a significant threat to breast cancer survivors, with 30 per cent going on to develop potentially life-threatening heart complications. A team of scientists at the Heart Research Institute are using lab-grown "mini hearts" - the size of a grain of sand created from patient blood samples - to test drugs that could one day be given alongside chemotherapy. "We currently have limited knowledge on why cardiotoxicity occurs and which women will be most impacted," lead researcher Professor Julie McMullen said. "This research has the opportunity to identify women at risk of cardiotoxicity before symptoms are present, so we can develop drugs to protect the heart during and after cancer treatment." A protective drug would have been vital for Lee Hunt, who has experienced long-term heart damage from rounds of chemotherapy and Herceptin, a targeted therapy medication. "You never recover after cancer, but I was doing well until about five years after my treatment finished and I started experiencing dizzy spells," Ms Hunt told AAP. "It turned out the chemotherapy had affected my heart and I have permanent heart weakness. It won't kill me but it does need to be managed carefully. "Cancer treatment may save your life but that needs to be a good quality of life." The heart damage could sometimes be worse than the cancer itself, HRI research officer Dr Clara Liu Chung Ming said. "We want to give patients a therapy that can be safely delivered with their cancer treatment, to protect the heart before any damage occurs," she said. "It's about saving hearts as well as lives." While the research project is still in the pre-clinical stage, its potential is significant. The microscopic 3D "mini heart" models mimic aspects of how the human heart functions. "Our mini hearts replicate how a real heart contracts and responds to stress," Dr Liu Chung Ming said. "We expose them to chemotherapy and see how they react, then introduce our drug and see if it helps." The next step in the project will be to use breast cancer patient blood samples to generate personalised mini hearts. Breast cancer survivors at risk of severe heart disease due to chemotherapy and other treatments could benefit from a new drug to protect them from cardiovascular illness. In Australia, more than 21,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer and about 3300 die from the disease each year. But the treatments helping patients survive chemotherapy and antibody-based therapies are also putting them at risk of heart failure, arrhythmias or other cardiovascular conditions years later. Heart disease related to cancer treatment is emerging as a significant threat to breast cancer survivors, with 30 per cent going on to develop potentially life-threatening heart complications. A team of scientists at the Heart Research Institute are using lab-grown "mini hearts" - the size of a grain of sand created from patient blood samples - to test drugs that could one day be given alongside chemotherapy. "We currently have limited knowledge on why cardiotoxicity occurs and which women will be most impacted," lead researcher Professor Julie McMullen said. "This research has the opportunity to identify women at risk of cardiotoxicity before symptoms are present, so we can develop drugs to protect the heart during and after cancer treatment." A protective drug would have been vital for Lee Hunt, who has experienced long-term heart damage from rounds of chemotherapy and Herceptin, a targeted therapy medication. "You never recover after cancer, but I was doing well until about five years after my treatment finished and I started experiencing dizzy spells," Ms Hunt told AAP. "It turned out the chemotherapy had affected my heart and I have permanent heart weakness. It won't kill me but it does need to be managed carefully. "Cancer treatment may save your life but that needs to be a good quality of life." The heart damage could sometimes be worse than the cancer itself, HRI research officer Dr Clara Liu Chung Ming said. "We want to give patients a therapy that can be safely delivered with their cancer treatment, to protect the heart before any damage occurs," she said. "It's about saving hearts as well as lives." While the research project is still in the pre-clinical stage, its potential is significant. The microscopic 3D "mini heart" models mimic aspects of how the human heart functions. "Our mini hearts replicate how a real heart contracts and responds to stress," Dr Liu Chung Ming said. "We expose them to chemotherapy and see how they react, then introduce our drug and see if it helps." The next step in the project will be to use breast cancer patient blood samples to generate personalised mini hearts. Breast cancer survivors at risk of severe heart disease due to chemotherapy and other treatments could benefit from a new drug to protect them from cardiovascular illness. In Australia, more than 21,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer and about 3300 die from the disease each year. But the treatments helping patients survive chemotherapy and antibody-based therapies are also putting them at risk of heart failure, arrhythmias or other cardiovascular conditions years later. Heart disease related to cancer treatment is emerging as a significant threat to breast cancer survivors, with 30 per cent going on to develop potentially life-threatening heart complications. A team of scientists at the Heart Research Institute are using lab-grown "mini hearts" - the size of a grain of sand created from patient blood samples - to test drugs that could one day be given alongside chemotherapy. "We currently have limited knowledge on why cardiotoxicity occurs and which women will be most impacted," lead researcher Professor Julie McMullen said. "This research has the opportunity to identify women at risk of cardiotoxicity before symptoms are present, so we can develop drugs to protect the heart during and after cancer treatment." A protective drug would have been vital for Lee Hunt, who has experienced long-term heart damage from rounds of chemotherapy and Herceptin, a targeted therapy medication. "You never recover after cancer, but I was doing well until about five years after my treatment finished and I started experiencing dizzy spells," Ms Hunt told AAP. "It turned out the chemotherapy had affected my heart and I have permanent heart weakness. It won't kill me but it does need to be managed carefully. "Cancer treatment may save your life but that needs to be a good quality of life." The heart damage could sometimes be worse than the cancer itself, HRI research officer Dr Clara Liu Chung Ming said. "We want to give patients a therapy that can be safely delivered with their cancer treatment, to protect the heart before any damage occurs," she said. "It's about saving hearts as well as lives." While the research project is still in the pre-clinical stage, its potential is significant. The microscopic 3D "mini heart" models mimic aspects of how the human heart functions. "Our mini hearts replicate how a real heart contracts and responds to stress," Dr Liu Chung Ming said. "We expose them to chemotherapy and see how they react, then introduce our drug and see if it helps." The next step in the project will be to use breast cancer patient blood samples to generate personalised mini hearts.
The Advertiser
18 hours ago
- The Advertiser
Female-founded AI tool aims to transform women's health
Women are taking control of their health with a game-changing artificial intelligence tool to help navigate a medical system that has historically gaslit, dismissed and ignored their symptoms. More than half of Australian women live with a chronic health condition and wait years to be diagnosed, often as a result of being dismissed by health professionals. Mary Spanos first started experiencing painful symptoms of endometriosis when she was 12 years old but was not officially diagnosed until she was in her 20s. "It's a ridiculously long time to be experiencing those debilitating symptoms and there were countless emergency room visits and specialist appointments where I was completely dismissed," she tells AAP. Ms Spanos is one of countless women who have suffered in silence. "I honestly thought it was all in my head and had so many negative thoughts because the people who were supposed to know what was going on medically were telling me it was fine," she says. It's a similar story for Grace Lam, who started to experience debilitating health symptoms as she approached 50. A former senior fashion editor of Vogue China, Ms Lam was used to thriving in fast-paced, high-powered environments. Yet seemingly overnight, she began to experience insomnia, low libido, extreme brain fog and driving anxiety. "My symptoms hit me like a rocket overnight ... it felt like every day my brain was outside my body and I would wake up feeling so strange," Ms Lam says. "The rage was also something else. I am a feisty Asian woman, so that's nothing new, but this type of rage was just very different." When she raised these symptoms with her GP, the doctor prescribed her sleeping pills but would not discuss any management plans for perimenopause. "I didn't want to rely on the sleeping pills, so that's when I went down the rabbit hole of perimenopause symptoms online," Ms Lam says. "I learnt more about perimenopause online than from my doctor." A newly launched AI health partner Ovum wants to disrupt the health landscape and end gender health inequity across Australia. The app has been four years in the making, with two clinical trials at The Royal Hospital for Women and St George Hospital. It was founded by Ariella Heffernan-Marks, who had the idea while training as a doctor and witnessing the healthcare issues facing women. "I observed the structural barriers in our health care and realised we needed to look at integrated data rather than having it spread across multiple physicians and specialists," she says. "Women are feeling the bias in the healthcare system ... they have not been included in clinical trials for decades and this is impacting diagnostics and treatment." After suffering chronic migraines during medical school, Dr Heffernan-Marks personally experienced being dismissed by specialists and decided something needed to change. "We need to redefine women's health to not just be about reproductive health because there are so many chronic conditions facing women," she says. "All the fem-tech tools on the market are not catering to what women actually need." The AI behind Ovum draws from female-centric medical literature to understand and learn from a wide range of health factors. It helps identify patterns, log symptoms, collate reports and create questions for women to raise with their doctors at their next appointment. It is not a diagnostic tool but rather provides a starting point for discussion with a medical professional. Users can opt to share their information anonymously as part of a wider database researchers can use to develop new medications and treatments or better understand conditions. With access to sensitive personal data, Dr Heffernan-Marks says Ovum is nationally and globally compliant with stringent standards to protect users. "Ovum is really about addressing the structural, integrated and research barriers ... we have decades (of medical research) to catch up on and AI will help us do that," she says. "We are creating a safe space for women and solving the health data gap by feeding information back into the research." Women are taking control of their health with a game-changing artificial intelligence tool to help navigate a medical system that has historically gaslit, dismissed and ignored their symptoms. More than half of Australian women live with a chronic health condition and wait years to be diagnosed, often as a result of being dismissed by health professionals. Mary Spanos first started experiencing painful symptoms of endometriosis when she was 12 years old but was not officially diagnosed until she was in her 20s. "It's a ridiculously long time to be experiencing those debilitating symptoms and there were countless emergency room visits and specialist appointments where I was completely dismissed," she tells AAP. Ms Spanos is one of countless women who have suffered in silence. "I honestly thought it was all in my head and had so many negative thoughts because the people who were supposed to know what was going on medically were telling me it was fine," she says. It's a similar story for Grace Lam, who started to experience debilitating health symptoms as she approached 50. A former senior fashion editor of Vogue China, Ms Lam was used to thriving in fast-paced, high-powered environments. Yet seemingly overnight, she began to experience insomnia, low libido, extreme brain fog and driving anxiety. "My symptoms hit me like a rocket overnight ... it felt like every day my brain was outside my body and I would wake up feeling so strange," Ms Lam says. "The rage was also something else. I am a feisty Asian woman, so that's nothing new, but this type of rage was just very different." When she raised these symptoms with her GP, the doctor prescribed her sleeping pills but would not discuss any management plans for perimenopause. "I didn't want to rely on the sleeping pills, so that's when I went down the rabbit hole of perimenopause symptoms online," Ms Lam says. "I learnt more about perimenopause online than from my doctor." A newly launched AI health partner Ovum wants to disrupt the health landscape and end gender health inequity across Australia. The app has been four years in the making, with two clinical trials at The Royal Hospital for Women and St George Hospital. It was founded by Ariella Heffernan-Marks, who had the idea while training as a doctor and witnessing the healthcare issues facing women. "I observed the structural barriers in our health care and realised we needed to look at integrated data rather than having it spread across multiple physicians and specialists," she says. "Women are feeling the bias in the healthcare system ... they have not been included in clinical trials for decades and this is impacting diagnostics and treatment." After suffering chronic migraines during medical school, Dr Heffernan-Marks personally experienced being dismissed by specialists and decided something needed to change. "We need to redefine women's health to not just be about reproductive health because there are so many chronic conditions facing women," she says. "All the fem-tech tools on the market are not catering to what women actually need." The AI behind Ovum draws from female-centric medical literature to understand and learn from a wide range of health factors. It helps identify patterns, log symptoms, collate reports and create questions for women to raise with their doctors at their next appointment. It is not a diagnostic tool but rather provides a starting point for discussion with a medical professional. Users can opt to share their information anonymously as part of a wider database researchers can use to develop new medications and treatments or better understand conditions. With access to sensitive personal data, Dr Heffernan-Marks says Ovum is nationally and globally compliant with stringent standards to protect users. "Ovum is really about addressing the structural, integrated and research barriers ... we have decades (of medical research) to catch up on and AI will help us do that," she says. "We are creating a safe space for women and solving the health data gap by feeding information back into the research." Women are taking control of their health with a game-changing artificial intelligence tool to help navigate a medical system that has historically gaslit, dismissed and ignored their symptoms. More than half of Australian women live with a chronic health condition and wait years to be diagnosed, often as a result of being dismissed by health professionals. Mary Spanos first started experiencing painful symptoms of endometriosis when she was 12 years old but was not officially diagnosed until she was in her 20s. "It's a ridiculously long time to be experiencing those debilitating symptoms and there were countless emergency room visits and specialist appointments where I was completely dismissed," she tells AAP. Ms Spanos is one of countless women who have suffered in silence. "I honestly thought it was all in my head and had so many negative thoughts because the people who were supposed to know what was going on medically were telling me it was fine," she says. It's a similar story for Grace Lam, who started to experience debilitating health symptoms as she approached 50. A former senior fashion editor of Vogue China, Ms Lam was used to thriving in fast-paced, high-powered environments. Yet seemingly overnight, she began to experience insomnia, low libido, extreme brain fog and driving anxiety. "My symptoms hit me like a rocket overnight ... it felt like every day my brain was outside my body and I would wake up feeling so strange," Ms Lam says. "The rage was also something else. I am a feisty Asian woman, so that's nothing new, but this type of rage was just very different." When she raised these symptoms with her GP, the doctor prescribed her sleeping pills but would not discuss any management plans for perimenopause. "I didn't want to rely on the sleeping pills, so that's when I went down the rabbit hole of perimenopause symptoms online," Ms Lam says. "I learnt more about perimenopause online than from my doctor." A newly launched AI health partner Ovum wants to disrupt the health landscape and end gender health inequity across Australia. The app has been four years in the making, with two clinical trials at The Royal Hospital for Women and St George Hospital. It was founded by Ariella Heffernan-Marks, who had the idea while training as a doctor and witnessing the healthcare issues facing women. "I observed the structural barriers in our health care and realised we needed to look at integrated data rather than having it spread across multiple physicians and specialists," she says. "Women are feeling the bias in the healthcare system ... they have not been included in clinical trials for decades and this is impacting diagnostics and treatment." After suffering chronic migraines during medical school, Dr Heffernan-Marks personally experienced being dismissed by specialists and decided something needed to change. "We need to redefine women's health to not just be about reproductive health because there are so many chronic conditions facing women," she says. "All the fem-tech tools on the market are not catering to what women actually need." The AI behind Ovum draws from female-centric medical literature to understand and learn from a wide range of health factors. It helps identify patterns, log symptoms, collate reports and create questions for women to raise with their doctors at their next appointment. It is not a diagnostic tool but rather provides a starting point for discussion with a medical professional. Users can opt to share their information anonymously as part of a wider database researchers can use to develop new medications and treatments or better understand conditions. With access to sensitive personal data, Dr Heffernan-Marks says Ovum is nationally and globally compliant with stringent standards to protect users. "Ovum is really about addressing the structural, integrated and research barriers ... we have decades (of medical research) to catch up on and AI will help us do that," she says. "We are creating a safe space for women and solving the health data gap by feeding information back into the research." Women are taking control of their health with a game-changing artificial intelligence tool to help navigate a medical system that has historically gaslit, dismissed and ignored their symptoms. More than half of Australian women live with a chronic health condition and wait years to be diagnosed, often as a result of being dismissed by health professionals. Mary Spanos first started experiencing painful symptoms of endometriosis when she was 12 years old but was not officially diagnosed until she was in her 20s. "It's a ridiculously long time to be experiencing those debilitating symptoms and there were countless emergency room visits and specialist appointments where I was completely dismissed," she tells AAP. Ms Spanos is one of countless women who have suffered in silence. "I honestly thought it was all in my head and had so many negative thoughts because the people who were supposed to know what was going on medically were telling me it was fine," she says. It's a similar story for Grace Lam, who started to experience debilitating health symptoms as she approached 50. A former senior fashion editor of Vogue China, Ms Lam was used to thriving in fast-paced, high-powered environments. Yet seemingly overnight, she began to experience insomnia, low libido, extreme brain fog and driving anxiety. "My symptoms hit me like a rocket overnight ... it felt like every day my brain was outside my body and I would wake up feeling so strange," Ms Lam says. "The rage was also something else. I am a feisty Asian woman, so that's nothing new, but this type of rage was just very different." When she raised these symptoms with her GP, the doctor prescribed her sleeping pills but would not discuss any management plans for perimenopause. "I didn't want to rely on the sleeping pills, so that's when I went down the rabbit hole of perimenopause symptoms online," Ms Lam says. "I learnt more about perimenopause online than from my doctor." A newly launched AI health partner Ovum wants to disrupt the health landscape and end gender health inequity across Australia. The app has been four years in the making, with two clinical trials at The Royal Hospital for Women and St George Hospital. It was founded by Ariella Heffernan-Marks, who had the idea while training as a doctor and witnessing the healthcare issues facing women. "I observed the structural barriers in our health care and realised we needed to look at integrated data rather than having it spread across multiple physicians and specialists," she says. "Women are feeling the bias in the healthcare system ... they have not been included in clinical trials for decades and this is impacting diagnostics and treatment." After suffering chronic migraines during medical school, Dr Heffernan-Marks personally experienced being dismissed by specialists and decided something needed to change. "We need to redefine women's health to not just be about reproductive health because there are so many chronic conditions facing women," she says. "All the fem-tech tools on the market are not catering to what women actually need." The AI behind Ovum draws from female-centric medical literature to understand and learn from a wide range of health factors. It helps identify patterns, log symptoms, collate reports and create questions for women to raise with their doctors at their next appointment. It is not a diagnostic tool but rather provides a starting point for discussion with a medical professional. Users can opt to share their information anonymously as part of a wider database researchers can use to develop new medications and treatments or better understand conditions. With access to sensitive personal data, Dr Heffernan-Marks says Ovum is nationally and globally compliant with stringent standards to protect users. "Ovum is really about addressing the structural, integrated and research barriers ... we have decades (of medical research) to catch up on and AI will help us do that," she says. "We are creating a safe space for women and solving the health data gap by feeding information back into the research."
West Australian
20 hours ago
- West Australian
Mini hearts to save cancer survivors from heart disease
Breast cancer survivors at risk of severe heart disease due to chemotherapy and other treatments could benefit from a new drug to protect them from cardiovascular illness. In Australia, more than 21,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer and about 3300 die from the disease each year. But the treatments helping patients survive chemotherapy and antibody-based therapies are also putting them at risk of heart failure, arrhythmias or other cardiovascular conditions years later. Heart disease related to cancer treatment is emerging as a significant threat to breast cancer survivors, with 30 per cent going on to develop potentially life-threatening heart complications. A team of scientists at the Heart Research Institute are using lab-grown "mini hearts" - the size of a grain of sand created from patient blood samples - to test drugs that could one day be given alongside chemotherapy. "We currently have limited knowledge on why cardiotoxicity occurs and which women will be most impacted," lead researcher Professor Julie McMullen said. "This research has the opportunity to identify women at risk of cardiotoxicity before symptoms are present, so we can develop drugs to protect the heart during and after cancer treatment." A protective drug would have been vital for Lee Hunt, who has experienced long-term heart damage from rounds of chemotherapy and Herceptin, a targeted therapy medication. "You never recover after cancer, but I was doing well until about five years after my treatment finished and I started experiencing dizzy spells," Ms Hunt told AAP. "It turned out the chemotherapy had affected my heart and I have permanent heart weakness. It won't kill me but it does need to be managed carefully. "Cancer treatment may save your life but that needs to be a good quality of life." The heart damage could sometimes be worse than the cancer itself, HRI research officer Dr Clara Liu Chung Ming said. "We want to give patients a therapy that can be safely delivered with their cancer treatment, to protect the heart before any damage occurs," she said. "It's about saving hearts as well as lives." While the research project is still in the pre-clinical stage, its potential is significant. The microscopic 3D "mini heart" models mimic aspects of how the human heart functions. "Our mini hearts replicate how a real heart contracts and responds to stress," Dr Liu Chung Ming said. "We expose them to chemotherapy and see how they react, then introduce our drug and see if it helps." The next step in the project will be to use breast cancer patient blood samples to generate personalised mini hearts.
