Accurate, real-time data on hormone levels – without the need for blood samples or labs – has huge potential for advancing female health and athletic performance
The English Institute of Sport (EIS) and Mint Diagnostics have developed a new, first of a kind technology – Hormonix – that will provide clear, rapid and accurate information on hormone levels through a saliva sample.
Regular and easy to access data on hormones has enormous potential to unlock a wide variety of opportunities to progress female health, performance and wellbeing – not just for athletes but society as a whole.
Currently, to gain similar information on hormones, invasive blood sampling and laboratories are required, meaning it can take several days or weeks to receive data. Hormonix enables point of care monitoring of female hormone levels – and no other valid or commercially available system can do this.
Hormonix is currently in the final stages of development and will be available to support athletes in the Autumn.
Dr Matt Parker, Director of EIS Performance Innovation, said:
“The EIS Performance Innovation Team aims to fast-track new ideas from industries outside of sport that have the potential to positively impact British athletes’ health and performance. By working in partnership with Mint Diagnostics, we are redefining the role hormone data can have in these areas.
“The Hormonix technology allows us to continue supporting athlete health and performance remotely, away from centralised locations and in the athlete’s own environment – responding to the way technology and healthcare is heading.”
Dr Rich Burden, Bioscience Lead at the EIS, said:
“Access to real-time hormone information via a simple saliva sample is a game changer – for sport and more broadly, for female health.
“Currently, this type of hormone analysis is just not available in an easy or timely manner but Hormonix changes this completely. Having the ability to accurately measure hormone levels in real-time will give us so much valuable insight into female health and provide a step-change in our understanding of female physiology.”
Stefano Borini, Co-Founder and CEO of Mint Diagnostics, said:
“We’ve been collaborating with the EIS on this technology for the past three years, and we’re truly excited about its potential.
“Hormonix is a major development in female health, enabling us to monitor and apply hormone data in ways we’ve never been able to do before. Whilst the development of Hormonix technology is being focused on elite athletes, the technology has the potential to cross over to enhancing female health in society.”
The EIS and Mint Diagnostics expect final testing of Hormonix to be completed in October.
The development of Hormonix, and the hugely valuable data it will provide on female hormones, has the potential to play a significant role in advancing the EIS SmartHER campaign and furthering understanding of female athlete health and performance.
The SmartHER campaign, which launched in 2019, is a wide-ranging approach to female athlete health, aimed at being smarter in how female athletes are supported from a performance perspective as well as general health and wellbeing.
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About the English Institute of Sport
The English Institute of Sport (EIS) provides outstanding support services to improve sporting performance. A network of over 300 world-leading experts and practitioners in science, medicine, technology and engineering enables athletes to excel and realise their potential.
Established in 2002 and grant funded by UK Sport, the EIS works in partnership with Olympic and Paralympic sports to put people at the heart of extraordinary performance. At the Rio 2016 Olympic & Paralympic Games, the EIS worked with 93% of the athletes and 31 of the 34 sports that won a medal for Team GB and Paralympics GB.
About Mint Diagnostics
Founded in 2016 in the tech cluster of Cambridge (UK) and now based at Kent Science Park, Mint Diagnostics is re-defining how hormone level data can be collected and used to improve Human Performance. Combining our proprietary salivary biosensing technology with measurement protocols and data interpretation, we enable a precise and individualised approach to health and wellness management within a variety of contexts, from elite sports to female healthcare.
