JStories ー In Japan, practically 80% of working ladies expertise menstrual signs that have an effect on their job efficiency, but most workplaces lack methods to assist them bodily or emotionally. Whereas AI is reworking industries like finance and logistics, its software in ladies’s well being stays restricted, notably throughout Asia. Now, a startup based mostly in Japan and based by a Ukrainian entrepreneur, Anna Kreshchenko, is utilizing AI, medical partnerships, and actual office information to deal with a long-ignored difficulty: the right way to assist ladies by way of menstruation, fertility, and menopause, each at residence and on the job.
Flora: bringing AI to ladies’s well being
“We’re not simply telling customers when their interval would possibly begin, we assist them perceive how issues like poor sleep or stress would possibly set off signs like PMS or temper adjustments,” Anna defined.
Addressing an information hole in ladies’s well being with Flora’s modern resolution
The central difficulty Flora is attempting to resolve is the shortage of medical information and systemic understanding of girls’s well being, particularly round menstruation, fertility, and menopause. “The principle downside with this space, even now, is that there’s not sufficient information. No one actually is aware of which difficulty can connect with which dysfunction,” Anna explains to JStories. “So it’s one thing that we wish to deal with. We wish to collect this information concerning each life stage of a feminine’s life, to see how totally different signs are linked with totally different circumstances, and the way they affect.”
In a crowded femtech market, Flora has carved out a novel place by combining shopper well being instruments like Moonly and office schooling and coverage reform, with the purpose to enhance not simply private wellbeing, but in addition company tradition and productiveness.
Flora emphasizes the significance of addressing menstrual well being points for feminine employees, arguing that supporting worker well-being by way of satisfactory breaks and a cushty atmosphere not solely reduces absenteeism but in addition boosts morale, fosters a optimistic work tradition, and finally enhances productiveness. By investing in staff’ well being, corporations can obtain long-term advantages, bettering each employee satisfaction and total efficiency
Hormonal fluctuations: Not only a ladies’s difficulty
Hormonal fluctuations ー usually linked to ladies’s life levels like menstruation, being pregnant, and menopause — can considerably have an effect on focus, power, and stress tolerance within the office. However these adjustments aren’t unique to ladies; males additionally expertise hormonal shifts, although the causes and results differ. “What we’re doing proper now’s — we’re specializing in what we name gender-specific points, principally ladies. Currently, we’ve been performing some male menopause or male infertility, however primarily we’re specializing in ladies. And now we have just a few providers,” Anna defined. “As an alternative of being only a interval monitoring app, Moonly acts extra like a sensible AI assistant that helps your each day well being.”
Not like rivals who focus solely on fertility or telehealth, Flora takes a holistic method by combining AI-based symptom prediction with entry to docs, hygiene merchandise, and office coaching.“We began with postpartum, however we realized it’s all linked: PMS, sleep, productiveness, menopause, even infertility,” Anna mentioned. “You may’t simply separate them. That’s why we’re attempting to take a whole-life perspective.”
Flora’s providers span each business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) markets. Along with its core choices, the corporate can also be leveraging its rising well being information to discover collaborations with pharmaceutical and sweetness manufacturers. These partnerships purpose to co-create modern merchandise that deal with well being and wellness challenges the place no efficient options presently exist.
Wellflow: Remodeling workplaces by way of AI
In a single case, Wellflow helped a manufacturing facility uncover that its fastened 10-minute lavatory breaks had been too quick for menstruating employees to handle hygiene comfortably. “By barely rising the break time, productiveness truly improved as a result of employees felt extra snug and will deal with themselves correctly.”
Flora tackles cultural taboos round menstruation and fertility in Japanese workplaces by way of two fundamental approaches. First, its e-learning modules educate each staff and managers on the right way to assist ladies’s well being wants sensitively and successfully, serving to to construct consciousness and cut back stigma.
Second, Flora’s AI-powered platform provides nameless entry to advantages and medical assets, permitting employees to hunt assist with out the discomfort of instantly approaching managers, particularly male supervisors. As Anna places it, “Our purpose is to create a protected atmosphere for open communication. These points shouldn’t be shameful or awkward—they’re pure, and we wish to normalize speaking about them.”
Born in Ukraine, Anna is without doubt one of the few international feminine founders in Japan’s tech ecosystem. On the age of 16, she represented Ukraine within the World Karate Championship and determined to review overseas in Japan, the birthplace of karate, aiming to compete within the Olympics. Though she was unable to compete, she continued her research at Kyoto College, pursuing her educational targets.“I wished to discover one thing utterly totally different, and Japan actually fascinated me,” she mentioned.
In 2019, private tragedies led to the belief of the numerous psychological well being challenges ladies face within the subject of gynecology. Her cousin, who was pregnant on the time, developed pregnancy-related problems and suffered from prenatal despair. Tragically, her second youngster handed away after delivery. This expertise sparked an consciousness of the psychological well being points many ladies wrestle with, notably within the realm of girls’s well being. Motivated by a want to handle these challenges, she turned inquisitive about “femtech” as a possible resolution. With a long-standing curiosity in social entrepreneurship, she believes that having a significant downside to resolve can present the required motivation to maintain shifting ahead.
Wanting forward: Normalizing ladies’s well being conversations
Wanting forward, Flora’s mission extends past enterprise enlargement. Whereas the corporate plans to develop its home shopper base to 500–1000 corporations and adapt its platform for worldwide markets, its broader imaginative and prescient is to vary how society approaches ladies’s well being.
As Anna explains, “We’re simply attempting to assist all people take management of their well being and really feel snug of their our bodies. We wish to resolve gender-specific points within the office and enhance ladies’s well being worldwide.”
In the end, Flora hopes to make subjects like menstruation and feminine well being a traditional a part of public discourse — enabling open, stigma-free conversations between men and women alike.
Written by Anita De Michele | JStories
Edited by Takanori Isshiki, Desiderio Luna | JStories
High photograph: Picture courtesy of Flora (Collage by JStories)
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