Ava (company)

Ava is a medical technology company that developed the Ava bracelet, a wearable device that functions as a fertility tracker.

History
The company was founded in Zürich, Switzerland by Lea Von Bidder, Pascal Koenig, Philipp Tholen, and Peter Stein. In September 2015, the company took part in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield. In November 2015, Ava raised a $2.6 million funding round led by Swisscom and ZKB. The company began shipping the Ava bracelet to customers in July 2016. The company raised nearly $40 million in funding between 2017 and 2018.

Technology
The device is intended to allow wearers to estimate their fertile window by tracking their menstrual cycle and ovulation based on measurements of their skin temperature, heart rate, perfusion, breathing rate, and heart rate variability. Data collected from the bracelet is displayed on an app, so that the wearer can track their fertility or monitor their health during pregnancy. An independent study of the bracelet's validity found that it provided accurate assessments of sleep duration but that its estimates of other data such as heart rate were inaccurate in comparison to other monitoring methods such as actigraphy.