Episode 15
Breaking the Silence: Gloria Kolb's Journey to Revolutionize Women's Health
Gloria Kolb, the brilliant CEO and co-founder of Elida, joins us to chat about her groundbreaking work in women's health, specifically tackling incontinence with her innovative Elitone device. Her personal journey with incontinence spurred her to create a solution that’s not just effective but also non-intrusive, breaking the mold of traditional treatments that often leave women feeling sidelined. We dive deep into the unique challenges female founders face in the notoriously male-dominated medical device industry, especially when it comes to securing funding and societal support. Gloria sheds light on the staggering statistics that show only a fraction of healthcare funding goes towards women's health innovations, and how this impacts early treatment options. With a dash of humor and a whole lot of heart, we explore the importance of open conversations about pelvic floor health and the mission to provide accessible solutions for all women, especially those in underserved communities.
Gloria Kolb's journey to creating Elida is nothing short of inspiring. As a biomedical engineer and a mother of three, she found herself grappling with incontinence after childbirth—something that many women face but often feel too embarrassed to discuss. Gloria shares her personal story of struggle and resilience, which led her to develop the Elitone device, a groundbreaking solution that offers a non-intrusive way to improve pelvic floor health. This conversation dives deep into the challenges faced by female founders in the medical device industry, where funding disparities are stark. Did you know that only 2% of venture capital goes to female founders? Gloria sheds light on the uphill battle for funding and the societal stigma surrounding women’s health issues, emphasizing the need for more awareness and support in this area. The episode also addresses the broader implications of incontinence on women’s lives, from social interactions to mental health, highlighting the importance of early treatment and open conversations about these taboo topics. Through her work, Gloria is not only changing lives but also paving the way for a future where women’s health is prioritized and normalized in society.
Takeaways:
- Gloria Kolb's personal battle with incontinence drove her to create Elitone, a groundbreaking external pelvic floor health device.
- Female founders face a daunting funding landscape, with only 2% of venture capital directed towards women's health innovations.
- Awareness is key; many women suffer in silence for years due to societal stigma surrounding incontinence and pelvic floor health.
- The healthcare system often prioritizes pads over effective treatments, perpetuating a cycle of dependency and embarrassment for women.
- Elitone's approach allows women to regain control of their pelvic health without invasive procedures, promoting early treatment and preventative care.
- Gloria emphasizes the importance of normalizing conversations around women's health issues, encouraging openness and support among communities.
Transcript
Hi, everybody.
Speaker A:I am Lucinda Koza, and this is how I.
Speaker A:Ally, if you don't mind, would you introduce yourself and give us a little bit of a backstory?
Speaker B:Yeah, sure.
Speaker B:My name is Gloria Kolb, and I'm the CEO and co founder of Alida, which makes the ELO tone device.
Speaker B:I am an engineer, a biomedical engineer, and I design medical devices.
Speaker B:My backstory is I've had large babies, you know, nine and a half pound baby girl and twins, and I was just looking for a solution to treat my incontinence and was surprised by a whole lot of things as I went into this journey.
Speaker B:But basically that's kind of how I started this company.
Speaker A:I love female founders, first of all, and I'm fascinated by female founders who actually know what they're talking about and what they're designing because they've experienced it.
Speaker A:I know that the majority of devices have been designed by men.
Speaker A:So tell me about being a female founder.
Speaker A:Have you worked on other medical devices?
Speaker B:I started my career at Johnson and Johnson, which large company, great training grounds for how to do everything.
Speaker B:And then I had a startup prior to this in the urology space for kidney stone removal.
Speaker B:But this one is definitely closer to my heart.
Speaker B:But it's hard being a female founder.
Speaker B:Probably the hardest part is the.
Speaker B:Just the fundraising.
Speaker B:Only 2% of the venture funding goes to female founders, and then only 2% of all healthcare funding goes to women's health.
Speaker B:So it's kind of a double whammy.
Speaker B:And it blows my mind to see some of my competitors run by men, and they easily raise like $40 million.
Speaker B:And I'm like, for what?
Speaker B:You know, for that.
Speaker B:So anyway, that's outrageous.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The statistics are so devastating.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:But that's okay because we push through and there's more awareness and more female founder venture funds or women's health venture funds.
Speaker B:And the statistics are also out that female founders return higher to their investors.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:What exactly is a unicorn?
Speaker A:That they reach a billion dollars or something like that?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:A billion dollars in their company valuation.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker B:Although I.
Speaker B:I still think good exits is what's required for more investors to get into this space.
Speaker B:We haven't seen a ton.
Speaker B:I mean, we haven't seen a ton of really great exits where the women just.
Speaker B:They crush it, they exit, and that's what we need.
Speaker A:Wow, that is so interesting.
Speaker A:I had never thought of that.
Speaker A:Do you feel like female founders, successful female founders, tend to crash and burn or.
Speaker B:No, because I think to crash and burn, you need like, the the zillions of dollars of funding, and then you don't.
Speaker B:You're spending it kind of wildly, and then you, like, you know, ramp up really quickly and not really have the good groundwork.
Speaker B:I think women founders tend to do it the opposite way.
Speaker B:We don't raise enough money, and so we.
Speaker B:We go slower.
Speaker B:Um, I think a lot of females, you know, because of the lack of funding, a lot of female founders run out of money, unfortunately.
Speaker B:So, you know, I remember so many pitch events where I'm pitching to, like, 50 men, and they would say, incontinence.
Speaker B:Oh, you know, it's not a problem.
Speaker B:If I haven't heard of it, it's not a problem.
Speaker B:And the entire time I'm telling them, one out of three women has this issue, and it becomes one out of two women over the age of 50, and they're like, I've never heard of it, so it must not really be a problem.
Speaker B:On other pitches, I've heard, oh, it's so simple.
Speaker B:If it was that simple and that good, it would have already been done.
Speaker B:And I'm like, well, maybe it took a female engineer to have the issue to then design a device the way women want, you know, but, yeah, you just have to fight through all that.
Speaker A:Well, it's amazing that you have fought through all of that and that you're able to, because, I mean, it's hard, but like you said, it's hard.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:But, you know, so let me tell you a little bit more about, like, the background and when I was going through searching for incontinence solutions and knowing that, like, most women just started wearing pads and wasn't really looking for a solution until it started to affect my playing with the kids, I didn't.
Speaker B:I stopped wanting to run around and, you know, and interact.
Speaker B:And so I knew that I had to do something.
Speaker B:And everything I saw out on the market was vaginal devices, which was very intrusive.
Speaker B:But these vaginal devices also meant you had to lock yourself in a bedroom for 20 minutes a day, and no busy mom has time for that.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:I just felt that there had to be a better way.
Speaker B:Found some research.
Speaker B:So our device, the Elitone, does those Kegel exercises for you, but it does it completely external.
Speaker B:You just place this kind of gel pad on your perennial area where a regular pad would go, and it does the contractions for you.
Speaker B:But the best part is you could get dressed, walk around, and it doesn't take up your time, which is key.
Speaker B:So when I talk about some of these competitive Devices, most of them are vaginal.
Speaker B:But I have an example of one that is a vaginal device.
Speaker B:E.
Speaker B:Stim.
Speaker B:Electrical stimulation.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker B:It was invented by this guy named Buzz that's 80 years old, and he just thought if you make it purple or pink, then women will want it.
Speaker B:It's like, huge, too.
Speaker A:Oh, no.
Speaker B:So that's part of why we're coming out with products like this is to fit women's lifestyles, to actually have a product that she can use and would continue to use and not, you know, sit in a drawer somewhere and that they would get treated earlier.
Speaker B:So many women, you know, they wait 10 years.
Speaker B:When we did our clinical study, the average age of incontinence before they sought any treatment was 11 years.
Speaker B:And they wait so long.
Speaker B:And we're just trying to get them to, you know, understand that you don't have to have surgery.
Speaker B:There are easy, conservative treatments to get you back to living full lives that are easy to do and do with them earlier because they're not so.
Speaker B:So invasive.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:When it.
Speaker A:It seems scary because there's no friendly female face.
Speaker A:There's no, like, friendly woman image that comes to your mind.
Speaker A:You think of, like, scary, like medical clamps or something.
Speaker A:Putting your feet in stirrups.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, what you hear in the media is the pads, the diapers on for incontinence, because that's.
Speaker B:The big companies have the money to push that stuff.
Speaker B:And it makes women feel old, you know, to think about.
Speaker B:We have even learned not to say the word incontinence.
Speaker B:We have learned that that's kind of a bad word.
Speaker B:And so if we say pelvic floor health, even bladder leakage, it's just.
Speaker B:It opens up the conversation as opposed to shuts down the conversation a little bit more.
Speaker A:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it's one of those taboo things that people don't talk about.
Speaker B:Women don't talk about it.
Speaker B:Two thirds of women won't talk about it, even with their doctor, because they're embarrassed, which is a shame, because that means that they're not getting the help.
Speaker B:And then they often feel like, oh, this is just unfortunate, part of aging, but, you know, it doesn't have to be.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:So for early treatment.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Opening up that discussion.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Because it seems like a way to actually address the issue or.
Speaker A:Or the root cause.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Instead of just the symptoms.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker A:Which is what a diaper does.
Speaker B:If you go down the route of the pads diaper, not only will your symptoms progress and just get Worse.
Speaker B:Cause you're not strengthening the muscles.
Speaker B:But it's costly.
Speaker B:I mean, I know women are used to pads, but they get thicker and thicker and bigger, and it really gets very expensive.
Speaker B:Um, I think the NIH did a study that showed women, like, I think the average age was 51, and they were on average spending $750 a year on pads and extra laundry.
Speaker B:And just for maintaining that, which, you know, most women don't have that extra money to waste either.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And that's the pink tax.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:If you're a woman, you are going to pay more for basic needs, because men don't also have those issues.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, exactly.
Speaker B:And you know what?
Speaker B:I also think women are more hesitant to spend money on themselves.
Speaker B:They're much easier to spend money on everyone else in their family.
Speaker B:And we even had one woman because, you know, I'll say this, this treatment, this dev, this elatone is $399.
Speaker B:And to a lot of women, it is a little bit more expensive.
Speaker B:Oh, I remember one woman came up to me and she's like, oh, my gosh, I just dropped $500 on my dog and didn't think twice, you know, for my dog's health care.
Speaker B:And, you know, and it made me think, oh, I.
Speaker B:I'm worth it.
Speaker B:I should, you know, to treat myself.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I'm worth it to spend money on what a health item I need.
Speaker B:And I think that's very interesting that women are the healthcare providers of the family, but they are more hesitant to spend on themselves.
Speaker A:That's so interesting.
Speaker A:And there's this idea of, mom knows what to do.
Speaker A:Mom will know.
Speaker A:She'll solve this problem.
Speaker A:But a bigger scale.
Speaker A:Mom is not trusted to found a company and invent a new device.
Speaker A:It's just weird, man.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So it's an investment in yourself.
Speaker B:I think it's interesting that we do.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:In all our clinical studies, and we've done a bunch, you know, we ask questions before and after, and these women improve a lot.
Speaker B:Our studies show that in this short six week, 70, 95% improve.
Speaker B:Average of 78%, 75% statistically significant.
Speaker B:But even then, before and after, the biggest fear that they have is the future.
Speaker B:Like, everyone is worried about wearing the pads in the future and being that grandma that wears diapers.
Speaker B:Even before and after this, the study.
Speaker B:I think that's interesting.
Speaker A:I wonder.
Speaker B:It's just.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:This constant worry of the next accident or the worry of doing something that creates a leak.
Speaker B:And even after they are treated and they're fine.
Speaker B:They're always worrying about.
Speaker B:But in a year, but in five years, you know, but in like, how can I not be that old person with diaper on?
Speaker A:So what would you say in response to that?
Speaker B:I do think Elitone is a really easy treatment.
Speaker B:It's an investment, but it's cheaper than a year's of pads and it's definitely something that you need to maintain.
Speaker B:Then you have the device to do touch ups.
Speaker B:And if you leak again, then you just have.
Speaker B:You already have the device, then you could still do a couple more sessions.
Speaker B:I know that a lot of the doctors push Botox for overactive bladder or there's something called magnetic chair that you sit on that you can pay $2,000 and get successions, but still there's maintenance.
Speaker B:There will always be maintenance.
Speaker B:And you can't.
Speaker B:Well, I guess you could if you want to pay that every year, but that's a lot of money.
Speaker B:Um, the other nice thing too is I've had women come up to me that said, oh, I bought your device, but I don't need it anymore because it taught me how to do Kegel exercises.
Speaker B:That's great.
Speaker B:Doing Kegel exercises is one way to prevent future leakage.
Speaker B:It's a way to keep those pelvic floor muscles tight.
Speaker B:It's just that, you know, a quarter of women don't do them correctly.
Speaker B:So if this teaches you how and that's all you use it for, that's fine too.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And also the thought of, I mean, it's a whole thing.
Speaker A:Just recently found out that like everything we know about physical fitness and all these modalities, they're all invented by men and all for men's bodies.
Speaker A:So like when in terms of pelvic floor strength and you know, I mean, that is like we, like women need to, we need to create what that is for ourselves because everything's just.
Speaker A:We haven't been considered.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think that's why there really hasn't been anything new in this area for a while.
Speaker B:Because it's not as much of an issue for men.
Speaker B:It's an issue for men, like after certain prostate surgeries and stuff like that.
Speaker B:But that's why sometimes it takes women to create and design and to serve women.
Speaker B:Because honestly, it's an issue that men don't really care about.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And they gaslight you and say it's not a problem.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:So as a company, we've raised very little money.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I'm very thankful that early on we got some grant funding because the government knows what a big issue it is.
Speaker B:It's a 20 billion issue that the healthcare pays for because it's the number one reason for entering nursing homes.
Speaker B:It's a high correlation to depression.
Speaker B:It affects as if you are incontinent all the time and you're wet all the time.
Speaker B:It affects skin conditions down there, urinary tract infections.
Speaker B:So it has a huge impact on mental health, physical health.
Speaker B:So the government knows and I'm very, very thankful for government grants.
Speaker B:I guess maybe that's my own shout out to why we shouldn't react reduce federal funding for healthcare research overall.
Speaker B:You know, we've learned to be very lean and I, I think that's a good thing because we're profitable already.
Speaker B:Whereas I, a competitor of ours had raised and granted she is a female founder, but she raised $140 million for her product and they're not profitable.
Speaker B:And I'm just like, how can, how can you not be 140 million?
Speaker B:Wow, that can go a long ways.
Speaker A:Yeah, you could do so much with that.
Speaker B:There's so many different avenues we can take this conversation, you know, and I don't want to complain because I think I have the best job in the world where get to see these emails coming in and these reviews and these testimonials of, of women who say that it's changed their life.
Speaker B:And that's exactly why we do what, why we work so hard.
Speaker B:And while I'm still working like crazy hours, like yesterday, one woman said that she had some kind of rare condition where her muscles and joints just kind of overextend.
Speaker B:And in any case, she used our device.
Speaker B:It totally helped her incontinence.
Speaker B:And even her doctor was amazed.
Speaker B:And now the doctor is recommending Elitone to his other patients.
Speaker B:And she just emailed us cause she was so happy.
Speaker B:And I was like, wow, I didn't even know about this condition.
Speaker B:So there's so many side effects like surrounding areas that we didn't know we were touching.
Speaker B:So on that same note, we started a nonprofit as well.
Speaker B:It's kind of our sister arm because it is a different organization, but it is a nonprofit because there's so many women who cannot afford it.
Speaker B:But then there are.
Speaker B:We've Ulatone's been sold to over 30,000 women and we've treated that many women.
Speaker B:But a lot of them have said, oh well, I don't need it anymore because it's taught me, you know, how to do those Kegel exercises.
Speaker B:And so we're getting donations back from the women who don't need their device anymore, repurposing for women who are poverty level but still really need a device.
Speaker B:You know, it's.
Speaker B:When I think of some, the healthcare system, it's interesting because Medicare will pay for the device, but when you get to Medicaid, Medicaid will not pay for the device, but they'll pay for pads and they will give the pad incontinence pads away to Medicaid patients, which kind of perpetuates this dependence on pads in a way.
Speaker B:And okay, this is a whole totally different topic, but some nursing homes want their patients to be incontinent because they get more money for them.
Speaker B:And so they are not incentivized to treat them and to offer something like this to them.
Speaker B:So it's, it's backwards.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But they're in, they're incentivized to keep their patients incontinent.
Speaker A:That's just tragic.
Speaker B:I don't know how to change the healthcare system so that it doesn't incentivize the wrong thing.
Speaker B:Um, you know, on the same note, if this is a necessity, if incontinence pads is a necessity, these people cannot afford them.
Speaker B:How do we incentivize so that they get treatment instead of just pads?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And I know healthcare systems in other countries are different and so I do, you know, it needs to be a mix of things.
Speaker B:You know, I understand that in that we have approached a number of nursing homes, assisted living places to see if we could get introduced elatone into them.
Speaker B:They're system and they, they're already overwhelmed.
Speaker B:And they said, you don't understand.
Speaker B:We're just trying to keep them fed and mobile.
Speaker B:We, we just, our whole goal is to get them to walk a little.
Speaker B:Like to treat their incontinence is like a whole nother level.
Speaker B:We don't, you know.
Speaker A:I see.
Speaker B:So we're kind of like, okay, okay, well true, it's, you know, it's not a life and death situation.
Speaker B:But although I've been to incontinence seminars or not seminars, but conferences where they talk about end of life and people in hospitals and a number of, you know, they did surveys and these people would rather die than have incontinence because at that stage that means somebody else is changing their diaper and having to change them all the time.
Speaker B:And, and it's, it's just hum.
Speaker B:Humbling thing where they're, it's more than embarrassment.
Speaker A:I, it's humiliation, you could say.
Speaker B:Yeah, dignity.
Speaker B:They've lost all Their dignity when someone has to strip them and change their undergarments.
Speaker B:That got soiled.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:I think it would make a huge difference.
Speaker A:Even when, if someone is practicing walking.
Speaker A:It must be more comfortable to walk if you're not wearing a diaper.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The quality of life, even you don't have to be that bad for it to really start to affect your quality of life.
Speaker B:I've had so many people say I don't travel because I need to be close to the bathroom all the time, or I don't.
Speaker B:I've had a grandma say I don't hug my grandkids because I don't want them to smell the urine on me, which is so, so sad.
Speaker B:And then, of course, one of the first things that goes is women stop exercising because any run jump creates, you know, accidents.
Speaker B:But if you don't exercise, then that affects your whole health.
Speaker B:Then everything else, it's just a snowball effect of downhill health.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It's like a fast track to.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's a very interesting topic because it's so huge, affects so many different things, so many people, and yet people don't talk about it.
Speaker A:I mean, this whole thing, I mean, birth.
Speaker A:I mean, I just.
Speaker A:Having just given birth less than two years ago, everything was like, shocking because no one told me.
Speaker A:Like, mama didn't tell me that it was like this or that this might happen.
Speaker A:And even my doctor didn't tell me that this might happen.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:My mom had two pelvic floor mesh surgeries.
Speaker B:And even when I gave birth, she didn't warn me that I should be doing these exercises.
Speaker B:Nobody told me.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:Not even my doctors told me that I needed to do these kegu exercises or, or warn me that any of this would happen.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:It wasn't until later, when I actually started the company, that I found out about my mom's surgeries.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:So I, I'm definitely making a point because I have an older daughter to tell her, do those Kegel exercises preventative.
Speaker B:You know, just make sure that that's a part of your exercise regime because it's, it's.
Speaker B:They're muscles and they need to be.
Speaker B:If you don't use em, you will lose them.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And because so much of our idea of exercise is all invented by men, none of it touches the pelvic floor.
Speaker A:And, you know, the aftermath or postpartum.
Speaker A:How to, you know, I mean, after I.
Speaker A:I had a C section for my twins and I just felt like my core was just like jelly and I really had no idea what to do because no one talks about it ever.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, I know that in.
Speaker B:We get that one six week appointment, you know, when.
Speaker B:After we deliver.
Speaker B:And in other countries like France, they have a lower incontinence problem because they have such good pelvic floor healthcare for six months after they, the women deliver, they're just, you know, constantly going to pelvic floor physical therapy to rehab.
Speaker B:And it helps that conversation about it too.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:That has to be why there are so many women with postpartum depression, trauma, anxiety, rage.
Speaker A:Cause we're, we.
Speaker A:We don't have any of that care.
Speaker B:Um, this is.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:With all the postpartum depression and just the difficulties of raising kids and understanding what to do, like, incontinence is definitely not one of those things that you need to worry or should be worrying about.
Speaker B:Like, luckily, because Elitone's external, it can be used pretty soon after you deliver as opposed to the vaginal devices.
Speaker B:You can't use those for like six months.
Speaker B:But luckily it, you know, we were able to see the, you know, quick usage of, to rehab that pelvic floor.
Speaker B:And even if after you deliver, you may not, you may not have bladder leakage, but you feel like, oh, every, especially after vaginal delivery, everything's loose down there.
Speaker B:Everything.
Speaker B:You just want to tighten everything up and get back to normal.
Speaker B:You know, most women just, they're like, I.
Speaker B:I just, okay, that was traumatic.
Speaker B:I just want to get back to normal now, get my body back to.
Speaker A:Normal, like, feel like myself again.
Speaker B:But thank you for doing this podcast to bring awareness to, to the health needs and the things that everyone's going through that don't talk about.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's very needed.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Thank you for being here.
Speaker A:And I mean, what you do is very needed.
Speaker B:Well, thank you.
Speaker A:Yes.
