"We were all talking, and someone brought up a pap test," says Jessica Ching of a conversation in her industrial design class at OCAD. "No really likes going, and it's a problem. This is something that's potentially life-saving, yet people hate it. That's a shame." That observation led Ching and her business partner Evan Moses to found
Eve Medical, a Toronto medical device startup that aims to improve health outcomes for women.
Since incorporating in 2010, the two-person company has attracted a series of small but significant sources of encouragement and funding, including grants and loans from the provincial Ministry of Innovation, winning the
MaRS Up-Start contest and the
Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technical Entrepreneurship.
Eve Medical's first product is HerSwab, a device that allows women to collect their own samples to test for vaginal infections such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and, especially, HPV (human papillomavirus). The last is important because the presence of certain strains of HPV can indicate a high-risk of cervical cancer, and diagnosing cases more easily could lead more women into screening for the life-threatening cancer. The device allows women to overcome the significant barrier of needing to visit a clinic for an intimate and sometimes invasive test administered by a doctor.
Ching says she hopes to have the device finalized by next month, after which a launch to market—likely in Europe first, partly because getting regulatory approvals there is easier—will follow.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jessica Ching, CEO, Eve Medical