Idea Lab - Inaugural Class

Komal Shah earned a master's degree in product design with a women's health focus. Komal was part of clinical trials and had the opportunity to speak with a lot of women whose grandmothers and mothers had the issue; it also affects a lot of pregnant women. One in three women are affected by urinary incontinence at some point in their lifetime. So, these women just expected to experience it themselves someday and didn't know it could be treated. Komal found that existing electrical stimulation devices don't address different body postures or positions for optimal clinical outcome. She's devoted full time to this project, working on the preincubation phase at the Indian Institute of Science where she is an entrepreneur in residence with some funding and access to labs. However, she feels the team requires technical advice and mentorship during prototype development. Komal heard about Idea Lab through ISHOW alumni Deval Karia, ISHOW India 2021 winner. "Hardware centric innovations require significant guidance to translate into meaningful products and a tangible impact. Timely and relevant mentorship can often make or break such innovation journeys. The ASME Idea lab can help us navigate the challenges of product design/development and receive mentorship, tools, and guidance," says Komal. "We strongly believe that it is important for everyone to look for the area where their work can have the biggest impact, to understand that impact and then dig in. The potential for our work to impact the lives of women around the world has always been an important driving factor for our team. We hope to achieve it soon."

While studying at Columbia University, the friends who would become the FLOW team were interested in sustainable women’s health issues. They came up with the menstrual cup cleaner idea for their senior capstone project, but unfortunately didn't make it to the prototype stage due to the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown. Undaunted, they did some fundraising with Indiegogo and Square Space sharing and were able to buy equipment to develop UV circuitry. However, they still needed proof of concept for the rotating mechanism used to clean the cup, as well as lab space and tools to build internal components since they lost their access to university facilities after graduation. "The Idea Lab is a perfect match for early-stage startups like ours who have an idea, but need access to mentorship and resources to bring it to life. Our team also connected with the Idea Lab’s focus on sustainable and human-centered design, which we believe align with The Flow’s goals and design practices," says Taya Voronko, FLOW Period LLC co-founder. "Women’s health and period care are often neglected fields and design spaces. As a majority women team, we felt a need to channel our design and engineering skills to fill gaps for the betterment of ourselves, other menstruators, and our environment."