pheal

Remember how Harry Potter had to catch the right winged key to open a door on his way to the Philosopher's Stone, back in part 1 of the series? Well… call me crazy, but that is exactly the scene I think of when I try to explain sensor selectivity. So, welcome to part 3 of Biosensors Decoded! Last time I wrote about the lock-and-key principle: a biosensor contains a biological recognition element that interacts with an intended target analyte. You could think of that recognition element as a very picky lock. But a lock is only as good as what it refuses to open for. Ideally, only the right key should make it turn. That ability is called selectivity. It is a big part of why you can trust a biosensor at all, and not at all easy to get right. Specificity would be the ideal case: no interference whatsoever. Real sensors are rarely that absolute. So here is what makes me think of Harry Potter. Every biological sample is a crowded room. Blood, sweat, saliva: all full of molecules and ions drifting past at the same time. Some resemble the target. Others look nothing like it, yet can still disturb the measurement. A bit like that swarm of winged keys, plus a few things trying to jam the lock itself. A good bioreceptor has to recognise the analyte it was built for without being too easily fooled by everything around it. And that “saying no” is the hard part. When it slips, we call it cross-reactivity: the sensor mistakes a look-alike analyte for the real one and gives you a signal that looks convincing, but is not telling you what you think it is. Other interferences can creep in elsewhere in the measurement chain, too. That's the part that can drive you MAD – you think you have found the ultimate lock, and then it gets picked by something else in your sample. So selectivity really comes down to two promises: 🔑 I will respond to the analyte you care about. 🧪 And I will hold that promise in the sample where I am actually used. Get this right, and you have met one essential condition for a result you can trust. Get it wrong, and the signal may still look convincing while being partly driven by something else. That is why selectivity might be one of the most underrated words in biosensing. So: the molecular lock matters, but it is only the beginning. Selectivity comes from the whole sensor system, and it has to be shown against real interferents in the actual sample, never assumed from target-only tests in the lab. This is one of the many reasons why translating biosensor science to real biosensor products is so hard. So, many more challenges to go - See you in part 4. — Hi, my name is Agnes - Biomedical Scientist, Founder of 💙pheal, and convinced that continuous monitoring will change how we think about staying healthy.

“Maybe you’re the one underestimating 𝘶𝘴.” I said that out loud — on stage, to a senior pharma executive. We were on a panel discussing the future of health tech when he made a point I heard many times: that startups underestimate how long and hard the road to real medical impact is. That we work under the illusion our invention will simply "work." And I understand where that comes from. From inside a large corporation, startup confidence can look overambitious, maybe even naïve. Partly because we see opportunity first and push for it. But we see the challenges too. We acknowledge them and then look for ways to tackle them, without letting them take over. Because honestly: if you only stare at the obstacles, you give up pretty quickly, especially in MedTech. To me, that is confidence rather than naïveté. But here is what it looks like from the other side. I spent ten years in clinical research. I watched brilliant people with brilliant ideas get told, over & over: “You won’t make it.”, “This won’t work.”, “Have you thought about this? And this?“ I left because I couldn’t watch it anymore. Rigorous criticism matters. But repeatedly identifying problems without helping to solve them does not move innovation forward. I wanted to hold out a hand instead. That, honestly, is how I became a founder. My co-founder needed help. I offered mine. And he said: “It would help me a lot if YOU did this WITH me.” Sometimes that is how innovation begins: someone has a vision, and someone else decides to help carry it. So no, I don’t think our startup community is naïve about the journey. I think it is far stronger than most people give it credit for. It is full of people who left comfortable careers because they couldn’t stand by and watch good ideas die. They do not need to be protected from difficult questions, but people who are willing to help answer them. When we encounter a bold vision for changing healthcare, many of us immediately see every challenge that might stop it. Very German, btw - and very much how scientists are trained to think. Then we have a choice. We can stop the idea in its tracks. Or we can hold out a hand. Another list of reasons it might fail is not enough. If that is all we contribute, this industry will never move forward. For me, a lot of this comes down to how we approach the world. Focus only on the negative, and you will mostly see ways to fail. Confidence does not mean ignoring the obstacles or assuming everything will work. It means believing that problems can be understood, tested and solved. So, to every founder who has been told “You won’t make it”: keep going. And to everyone standing on the sidelines with doubts: ask the difficult questions, then consider helping to answer them. I do not mind challenging a senior pharma executive on stage. Why should I? Respecting someone’s experience or position does not mean assuming their assessment is always right. Sometimes, they may be underestimating us.

Over the past weeks, a lot of smart people, including Amy Beckley PhD and Susanne Mitschke, have already pointed out that Clair Health’s wristband does not measure hormones. They are right, but I want to go further: explain what these devices actually do, and point to the bigger news from Germany almost no one is talking about. First, the difference the whole debate turns on. Estrogen, progesterone, LH and FSH circulate at very low concentrations and do not cross intact skin in a way a wrist sensor could read. So a wristband cannot read the molecules themselves. What it can read are downstream effects: skin temp, heart rate, HRV, sleep. The same signals ŌURA and WHOOP already read. Clair then runs an algorithm that estimates the hormones from those proxies. It never touches the hormone. The founders have a sharp defense for that. They redefine the terms. A CGM, they argue, does not measure glucose directly either. In their words, "neither measures the target analyte directly. Both infer it from correlated signals." So hormone inference, they say, is the same thing. Except that it is not. A CGM DOES measure glucose. An enzyme on the sensor reacts with the actual glucose molecules in your interstitial fluid, producing a current that tracks how much is there. Different fluid than blood, yes. The analyte itself is still measured. Clair never meets the hormone. It reads heart rate and temperature, different quantities, and a model fills in the rest. A different fluid is not the same as a different quantity. For me, calling that the world's first continuous hormone monitor is a deception of the women it is built for. We are at the very start of this field. If the loudest early product wears a label it has not earned, women lose trust before the real thing ever ships. One bad definition can set a whole industry back years. Which is why the real news matters. SPRIND - Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen, GER's Fed Agency for Breakthrough Innovation, has opened a 40 M € Continuous Hormone Monitoring Challenge, designed and led by Ida Tin, the founder of Clue. And it draws the line this field needed. To qualify, a device has to measure the hormone itself. Continuously, on-site, in a biological matrix like ISF, sweat or saliva. Surrogate signals like HR or temperature are explicitly not accepted as a stand-in for a hormone level. That one rule is the entire debate. It tells every team, including mine, what the bar actually is. I build biochemical sensors for a living. I'm a founder in this field, which is why I know how hard true molecular sensing is. That difficulty is the point. It separates a real measurement from a confident guess, exactly what women's health cannot afford to blur. Innovation here is welcome. So is ambition. But the bar is now written down. Measure the hormone, or do not call it a hormone monitor. Women deserve devices they can trust. And trust starts with describing accurately what our technology actually measures.

This year's Merck Future Insight e.V. Prize sent two encouraging signals about the future of healthcare. ➡️ First, Smart Health Sensors and non-invasive early disease detection were chosen as the focus of one of the world's most prestigious science awards. ➡️ Second, our Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Agnes Musiol, was invited to join the panel discussion alongside leading scientists, clinicians, industry experts, and policymakers to discuss the future of preventive healthcare. Together, these are strong signs that continuous health monitoring is no longer a niche topic. It is becoming part of the global conversation on the future of healthcare. For all of us at 💙pheal, this was especially meaningful. Since day one, pheal has been built around one conviction: healthcare still suffers from a data deficit. Most healthcare decisions are based on isolated snapshots, while our biology changes every second. Our mission is to expand continuous monitoring beyond glucose to include the many molecules that drive human health - and the many people who deserve access to better health insights. What made this event particularly encouraging was not only the technologies that were presented, but the conversation itself. Scientists, clinicians, industry leaders, policymakers, and the audience all discussed the same fundamental question: How can we detect disease earlier and keep people healthier for longer? That conversation is gaining momentum. Europe has no shortage of scientific excellence. The real challenge is translating scientific breakthroughs into technologies that improve people's lives. Events like the Future Insight Prize help bring researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, policymakers, and industry together to accelerate exactly that transition. We are proud that pheal can contribute to this conversation - and even prouder to help build the technologies that will make it possible. The future of healthcare will not be built by waiting for disease. It will be built by understanding health earlier. Thank you to Merck Gruppe, and especially Ulrich Betz, for creating a platform that brings together the people shaping the future of preventive healthcare, and for placing prevention and smart health sensing at the center of this year's discussion. Congratulations to this year's laureate, Vasilis Ntziachristos, whose pioneering scientific work continues to expand what is possible in biomedical sensing and early disease detection. #FutureInsightPrize #SmartHealth #DigitalHealth #HealthTech #Biosensing #ContinuousMonitoring #Prevention #Wearables

For years, those of us working in digital health, biosensing, and preventive medicine have been circling the same core truth: healthcare still runs on snapshots. A lab test, a yearly check-up, a doctor's appointment. Meanwhile, the body changes every second. The vision of moving beyond that, toward continuous, preventive, personalized health, has long felt like a future we were working toward but couldn't quite touch. But that has shifted. In the last year especially, it feels like prevention-based deeptech solutions are starting to arrive in reality — and that Germany and Europe are becoming increasingly determined to play an active role in shaping this change rather than watching it happen elsewhere. This week brought one of those signs. Merck Gruppe dedicated this year's Future Insight Prize to Smart Health Sensing and non-invasive early disease detection. Congratulations to Vasilis Ntziachristos - the work is extraordinary, and the recognition is well deserved! I had the honour of joining the panel discussion on preventive health alongside Can Dincer, Emre Ozcan, PhD, Karina Karolina De Santis, and Wolfgang Wick, moderated by Julien Saint-Andrieux. We took a full two hours to go into it - and honestly, it felt like we could have kept going. What made it so energizing was that the conversation didn't stay on stage. The audience pushed it further, with sharp questions, real experience, and genuine interest. To me, that was the strongest signal of the day. A few years ago, many of these topics still felt futuristic. Today, people are actively debating how to bring them into everyday healthcare. Europe's challenge has never been a lack of brilliant science. Our challenge is being bold enough to turn scientific breakthroughs into solutions that reach people. This year's Future Insight focus on Smart Health Sensors feels like another step in that direction: preventive and data-driven healthcare steadily moving from the margins toward the mainstream. The future of healthcare will not be built by waiting for disease. It will be built by understanding health earlier. Thank you to Merck Gruppe, and especially Ulrich Betz, for organizing this, to my fellow panelists for a thought-provoking discussion, and to everyone in the audience for making it so alive. Preventive healthcare is no longer a niche discussion. It is becoming a movement, and that is good news for patients. #FutureInsightPrize #SmartHealth #DigitalHealth #Prevention #HealthTech #Wearables #ContinuousMonitoring --- Hi, my name is Agnes - Biomedical Scientist, Founder of 💙pheal, and convinced that continuous monitoring will change how we think about staying healthy.