Rea’s Smart Pad for Preterm Birth diagnostics is on track

Rea’s Smart Pad resolves a global medical need; inefficient diagnostics of preterm birth. Today, 70% of pregnant women hospitalized for a risk of preterm birth end up delivering at-term. With its innovative technology, Rea is promising these troubled pregnant women a future of home monitoring, putting an end to unnecessary hospitalization and its related stress.

Rea has managed to engage the right collaborations early on, which allowed for rapid maturation of the venture. The project is a spinoff of two leading world-class institutes: the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) & the Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois (CHUV). Such a collaborative framework has helped lay the foundations for Rea’s vision and mission. The innovation of Rea’s technology is well balanced, technically and clinically; this is the main reason why the cofounders obtained support from both institutes at the same time, a first in history of the Canton Vaud ecosystem. 

According to Isabel Casado, program manager of the Technology Transfer Office of EPFL, while speaking about Rea, “This next year will be key in the journey of Rea. Loulia and Erick bring in highly complementary backgrounds in engineering and in pharmacology. Erick has been granted support for working on technology development at EPFL. Loulia has been granted support for the clinical validation at CHUV. This combination is a unique opportunity to truly accelerate the path to market of this promising MedTech innovation”. 

The two cofounders, Loulia Kassem & Erick Garcia Cordero have advanced and refined their initial business case with a limited amount of funds in a short period of time. Since September 2018, the project has raised almost half a million francs for R&D. The next planned milestone is adapting the technology to user’s needs, in parallel to the initiation and management of preclinical trials in the CHUV.

(Press release)