The Challenge

As science has begun to understand the importance of gut health on overall health, the probiotics industry has flourished. Consumers are presented with pills, powders, liquids, gelcaps, and even gummies promising optimized health through intestinal flora. So when a group of female scientific researchers discovered dramatic, unique changes and characteristics of the female gut during menopause, they were driven to develop a product that could dramatically change the way women experience menopause. Their first line of products showed great results in the lab and passed the guidelines for commercialization. But these scientist entrepreneurs didn't create a product just to sell it, they wanted to be able to interact with the women taking the probiotic, answer questions, gather experiential and outcomes data from those women, and continue to optimize what they had created. 

The Opportunity

Although it was pretty unheard of to connect scientists directly to consumers, especially outside of a clinical study, the market was ripe and the idea brilliant. Consumers often feel lost and helpless trying to self-diagnose. They are forced to spend hours researching and performing trial-and-error medicine on themselves, especially during times of significant hormonal change like menopause. Traditional medical doctors are averse to advising patients on probiotics and nutritional supplements, and functional medicine providers often recommend the same products to every patient. If Menopause Microbiome could simply connect with the women taking their products, both consumers and science could win. Consumers would have a direct connection to validated scientific data, and could even provide provide feedback on their response to the supplements, which would provide the team of scientists a direct way to identify products that weren't having a consistent effect, gather & analyze data to find out why, and optimize products. If they did this right, they could not only create better products, they could eventually have enough data to personalize supplement formulations based on unique biological traits of each consumer.

The Alysida Health Solution

Using the MyCanna^TM consumer application, the scientists could connect directly to women who were using their products, relieving frustrations of both consumers and scientists. Immediately upon downloading the app, consumers would be able to access deeper clinical information about the supplements and ask direct questions to the scientists. The pilot was simple and cost-effective to implement. Menopause Microbiome had taken pre-sale orders for their first line of menopause probiotics, so they had access to a subset of highly interested consumers. They would reach out directly to these pre-sale customers and invite them to connect by downloading the MyCanna^TM consumer application (available for free on iPhone and Android) and entering a product code. It's not every day a consumer gets an email or a phone call from the scientist who developed the product, and it wouldn't take long for the team to develop an unprecedented following. Once products were actually in production, the process got even easier. Menopause Microbiome would simply apply a code on product packaging that consumers could scan to download the application and connect to the scientists. 

The Future

Because the MyCanna^TM platform gave them the flexibility to collect customized data sets at any time, the Menopause Microbiome scientists were eagerly planning ways to connect science to customers on an even deeper level.  They could collect subjective responses from consumers and analyze trends in the global dataset to identify biological trends. As they discovered trends and or had new information relating to patient response based on different biological inputs, they could share this directly with the women using their products. They could also request additional information from consumers if they wanted to dive deeper into how patients with unique biological traits respond to different formulations. Eventually they could have enough data to enable consumers to input unique health information and receive personalized insight into which products could work best for them. Both the scientists and the consumers loved that patients were in the drivers seat of their own health data, and that consumer privacy and data was protected within a highly secure, HIPAA-compliant application. Through the application, they had the option to participate or not participate in the scientists projects, and they could drive exactly how much and what health information they wanted to share. 

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Sector: Women's Health

Category: Nutritional Supplements

Stakeholder: Consumer Brand or Manufacturer

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Pilot Focus: FEEDBACK

1. Customer Intelligence

2. Product Optimization

3. healthcare Personalization