Valentina Milanova

Talking to Valentina Milanova, the still just 28-year-old founder of U.K. femtech Daye, is best described as an exhilarating experience. During our interview, she talks in and around her topic — building a startup supporting women’s sexual and reproductive health — non-stop for the best part of an hour, barely pausing for breath and without needing to be prompted to unpack the detail (although an engaged listener will be forced to interject with exclamations and follow-on questions as she lays out her sharp takes) — dispensing, at times, part-fascinating, part-horrifying insights from the coal-face of a field that’s suffered from a chronic lack of research and innovation for far too long. The thrill comes in knowing she’s intent on being the change — and bringing positive change — to gynaecological health by working with clinicians to do the research and build out a platform that’s designed to open up an overlooked and neglected ‘Pandora’s Box’ of intimate female health issues and put women in the driving seat over choices affecting their bodies and lives. Daye’s first product — a CBD-infused cramp-fighting tampon, which launched back in 2019 — was just the start (although the startup has built up a user-base of some 60,000 subscribers thus far for that direct-to-consumer play, selling “fully sustainable” organic tampons which are also proudly touted as produced to “medical device standards” and feature eco innovations like a flushable, biodegradable wrapper and a non-plastic (sugarcane) applicator); Milanova has always had a wider “gynae” health mission in mind for Daye and is now rolling out the next pieces of the plan with the launch of a tampon-based at-home vaginal microbiome screening kit that it’s billing as a “world first”. The at-home testing experience is more convenient, private and less intrusive for women than the traditional option of going to see their doctor or attending a dedicated sexual health clinic where a health worker would need to take a swab. Instead, they just insert a tampon into their vagina and remove it. The test tampon then goes in the specimen bag provided — and they post it back to Daye’s lab for analysis, with their results delivered back digitally. And of course they don’t just get a bunch of raw medical data; the product mission is to offer an informative, accessible informational experience, with analysis of the screening data presented in language (and with graphics) that make it easy for anyone to understand. The analysis comprises a breakdown of certain good and bad bacteria that were detected (or not detected) in the user’s sample, along with explanations and recommendations for how they might want to act on the information — such as downloading a PDF to take with them to a doctor; or by the platform pointing them to where they can locate a local sexual health clinic if an analysis suggests the user should get checked for infections. Image credits: Daye “This was actually always part of the original vision for Daye. From the earliest pitch decks I had ever created. The intention for us was always to deliver on a number of different areas of gynaecological health — not just changing the tampon so it serves people better and so it delivers pain relief. We always saw tampons as a potential tool for bridging the many gaps that exist in gynaecological health today. So tampons can be used to deliver all sorts of medications to the vaginal canal and tampons can also be used to really effectively screen vaginal health for a number of different diseases and infections,” Milanova tells ZebethMedia. “This isn’t a novel scientific discovery — it’s existing scientific knowledge that we’re building upon. Since the 1990s, when researchers from Westminster University first pioneered the method of menstrual tampon screening, we’ve known that tampons have greater levels of sensitivity and specificity, or diagnostic capacity, compared to vaginal swabs and cervical swabs and urinary swabs for the detection of vaginal infections and STIs [sexual transmitted infections]. So what we’re doing now with the introduction of the gynaecological health screen is we’re hoping to democratize access to insightful gynaecological health information that is not typically available through other providers or through the NHS [the UK’s National Health Service].” Daye’s first vaginal microbiome screening tests are focused on identifying two pathogens: mycoplasma and ureaplasma — which Milanova says are typically asymptomatic but associated with a negative impact on the reproductive function — putting carriers at a higher risk of miscarriage, pre-term labor or ectopic pregnancy. The vaginal microbiome screening test could therefore be of particular interest (initially) to women who are looking for explanations for fertility issues, though she also points to wider utility, noting: “The health of the vaginal microbiome in general not only has repercussions for your fertility, it also has an implication on your risk of contracting an STI and your risk of contracting a vaginal infection. And again this isn’t novel scientific discovery that we have made — we’re largely building on top of existing scientific knowledge.” Daye is also planning to introduce more types of tests as it continues to develop the screening product — including screening for STIs. It’s also currently conducting research in conjunction with Liverpool Women’s Hospital into pathogens with suspected links to certain conditions that can affect women (or people assigned female at birth), like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis, with the aim of further expanding the utility of the screening test by (it hopes) helping to verify those links. In addition to launching the vaginal microbiome screening kit — which will be offered to users in the UK in the coming days — Daye is busy building out a gynaecological health platform that will do more than just distribute individual screening results. The idea is to offer a place where women can get validated, accessible information about the full spectrum of gynaecological health — along with expert support and guidance to help them access appropriate treatments (or make helpful lifestyle changes) for any specific issues identified.