Women’s health is entering a new era. For decades, many critical decisions in fertility, reproductive health and later-life care have been made using only occasional datapoints of hormonal activity. Yet hormones are dynamic signals. They fluctuate over hours and days, respond to treatment and influence some of the most important clinical decisions women face.

The Tehnopol HealthTech community member Muun Health is an Estonian medtech company developing a minimally invasive wearable platform for frequent hormone monitoring. Kerli Luks, CEO and founder of Muun Health said that their long-term vision is simple: to make hormonal data as accessible and actionable as heart rate or glucose data.

She explained that today, hormone monitoring still relies largely on blood, urine or saliva tests taken at isolated time points. In fertility care, for example, women undergoing IVF, ovulation induction or fertility preservation may need repeated clinic visits and blood draws to understand how their bodies are responding to treatment. These measurements are clinically valuable, but they provide only limited visibility into a highly dynamic biological process.

Building the technology behind personalised women’s healthcare

Kerli Luks: “Our goal is to move from isolated measurements toward longitudinal hormonal data. The technology we are developing combines microneedles with aptamer-based electrochemical biosensors. Microneedles are designed to access interstitial fluid just beneath the skin in a minimally invasive way. Within the sensing system, target-specific aptamers bind to hormone molecules and translate these interactions into electrical signals. The intention is to generate multiple measurements throughout the day and turn these signals into meaningful hormone trends for both patients and healthcare professionals.”

Muun Health’s first focus is fertility care, initially targeting progesterone and luteinizing hormone. These hormones play important roles in ovulation and fertility treatment, yet their monitoring today is still episodic. More frequent measurements could provide clinicians with a better understanding of individual hormonal responses, help identify meaningful changes earlier and ultimately support more personalised treatment decisions.

Importantly, Muun Health is not being developed as simply another consumer cycle-tracking product. Their ambition is to build a regulated medical device that can integrate into clinical workflows. They see fertility clinics and reproductive healthcare providers as first customers, with patients using the wearable outside the clinic while clinicians gain access to longitudinal data through dedicated software.

Muun Health is still at an early stage, but they have already achieved laboratory proof of concept for aptamer-based electrochemical progesterone detection. They are now working on optimising the sensing chemistry, developing luteinizing hormone detection, improving sensor stability and biofouling resistance, and progressing toward integration with the microneedle and electronics components.

This work is supported by a strong research ecosystem. Muun Health collaborates with Tallinn University of Technology and Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain. Muun Health was also named Estonian HealthTech Startup of the Year 2025.

One of the biggest challenges in this field is that continuous hormone monitoring is technically much harder than it may initially appear. Hormones are present at very low concentrations, biological fluids are complex, wearable sensors must remain stable over time, and clinical usefulness depends not only on measuring a biomarker but on generating reliable and interpretable data. Solving these challenges requires collaboration between clinicians, chemists, biosensor researchers, engineers, regulatory experts and software teams. This multidisciplinary approach is central to the company.

Beyond measurement: turning data into better healthcare decisions

Kerli Luks commented: “ Our software strategy is also becoming increasingly important. The value of continuous monitoring does not come simply from generating more data. Raw sensor signals must be converted into trustworthy measurements, contextualised and ultimately presented in a way that helps clinicians and patients make better decisions. Over time, we expect this to include signal correction, personalised baselines, trend detection and treatment-relevant insights.

At the same time, continuous hormonal data introduces important questions around privacy and ethics. Hormonal patterns can reveal highly sensitive information, including ovulation timing and pregnancy-related changes. We therefore see privacy-first design, data minimisation and transparent patient consent as fundamental parts of the product, not features to be added later.”

Although fertility is the starting point, the opportunity is much broader. The same underlying platform could eventually be expanded to additional hormones and clinical applications, including menopause, hormone replacement therapy and other hormone-related conditions.

Creating a new layer of data for women’s healthcare

The wider shift Muun Health team see is toward healthcare that is more continuous, personalised and proactive. Glucose monitoring has already demonstrated how access to longitudinal biological data can transform disease management. They believe hormones represent another major category where the same transition is possible, but the technology and clinical evidence still need to be built carefully.

Their ambition is to help create that future: one where women no longer have to rely solely on occasional snapshots of their hormonal health, and where clinicians can make decisions based on richer, more individualised biological information.

For Muun Health, building a wearable hormone sensor is only the first step. The larger goal is to build a new layer of data for women’s healthcare.

Find out more about Munn Health on their website and their Linkedin profile.