Rea Diagnostics

Preterm birth is defined as giving birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy. 10% of pregnant women worldwide give birth prematurely and half of them have no risk factors or early labor symptoms. Premature babies born without preventive medical procedures have higher chances of neonatal morbidity and mortality. In fact, preterm birth is the number one cause of death for children under the age of five.

Today, to test for preterm labor, doctors perform invasive procedures in the hospital. The lack of remote monitoring tools for preterm birth makes it impossible for doctors to identify, early on, all their patients at risk of preterm birth. The only solution to address this problem is to provide pregnant women with a self-test.

Rea Diagnostics is a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, that is developing diagnostic technology for women’s healthcare. The company’s first product is a self-test that identifies clinically proven biomarkers of preterm labor in vaginal discharge. A negative test result excludes the risk of childbirth within the next seven days, while a positive test result indicates a high risk of childbirth. The self-test allows pregnant women to detect any risk of preterm birth and gives doctors the chance to better design an antenatal management plan.