Podcast episode #6 – Diagnosing pregnancy complications with Mathias Wipf from MOMM Diagnostics

Mathias Wipf the co-founder of MOMM Diagnostics presents his startup which develops a product to help doctors diagnosing pre-eclampsia early and reliably. “Pre-eclampsia” (PE) is a pregnancy complication, which affects 5-8% of all pregnant women and may lead to maternal and infant illness and in the worst cases even to death. Therefore, it’s early and reliable diagnosis is essential to ensure that women get optimal treatment. This in turn reduces complications and costs, but most importantly it saves lives.

How is MOMM Diagnostics test different than conventional tests?

Conventional PE diagnosis relies on measuring blood pressure and proteins in urine. However, these can be caused by other complications as well, making the diagnosis of PE very difficult. More accurate blood tests are slowly becoming available, yet the blood needs to be analyzed in centralized laboratories. Needless to say, this costs time and money. Furthermore, the waiting time and reoccurring doctors visits are stressful for the pregnant women as well.

The test developed by MOMM Diagnostics requires a single drop of blood and the results are known immediately. Because of its reliability, the test can be taken at the doctor’s office during a regular visit.
This way, MOMM Diagnostics not only diagnoses PE, while decreasing time and costs needed to do so, but also reduces the number of falsely categorized high-risk pregnancies and increases the overall comfort of pregnant women.

Future prospect

MOMM Diagnostics is in its early stage and will require additional funding. However, Mathias already partners with the University FHNW Muttenz, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology EMPA and his co-founders are from a Silicon Valley startup Avails Medical. With such a setup MOMM Diagnostics should have their product in your doctor’s office very soon.

Next steps

If you want to reach out to Mathias, you can do so via:
E-mail: mathias.wipf@mommdiagnostics.com

Join us and listen to the 6th episode of the Help’n’Trade podcast on diagnosing pregnancy complications with MOMM Diagnostics and don’t forget to share with us your ideas in the comment section below.

…And if you are curious as what is Help’n’Trade, read our blog post, where we introduced Help’n’Trade.

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00:00 – Introduction
00:48 – Background of Mathias Wipf
02:39 – Why Basel over Silicon Valley
03:49 – What is pre-eclampsia and what MOMM diagnostics is trying to achieve
07:07 – How will it help pregnant women
08:32 – Expected success rate of the newly developed test
10:04 – Current status of the startup and expected time to market
12:25 – Collaborating partners
12:51 – The challenge of acquiring funding in the Life Science field
15:00 – The benefit of founding a startup in Switzerland
16:06 – Distribution plan
16:56 – Future of MOMM Diagnostics 
19:33 – Managing work-life as a startup founder
23:09 – Wrap up and parting remarks

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