Innovations in Digital Healthcare and Reproductive Wellness with Dr. Lynae Brayboy

My guest today is somebody who operates at the very forefront of women's digital health.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy, MD is a specialist in reproductive endocrinology, infertility, obstetrics, and gynecology.  She graduated from the Lewis Katz Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia in 2007, following which she worked as a Resident at the Abington Hospital Jefferson Health in Pennsylvania.

In 2020, she became Chief Medical Officer for Clue, a period-tracking app, a trusted menstrual health resource, and a thought leader in femtech. Since May 2023 she has been Chief Medical Officer at Ovom Care, which aims at redefining how reproductive care is brought to patients by combining modern in-person care with advanced AI-based technology.

With a biography like that, you know that she's going to have a lot to say about Femtech solutions! In fact, Dr. Brayboy was so generous with her time that she was still speaking to me as she was leaving to attend a consultation.

Topics include:

• Dr. Brayboy's early inspiration, subsequent education, and the incidents that drove her to concentrate on women's medicine
• How Digital Health / FemTech could cover a gap in education and help to start conversations 
• Dr. Brayboy's belief in the importance of period tracking in order to develop informed patients
• How digital health and AI can reduce reproductive injustice
• The exciting benefits that Dr. Brayboy sees in Women's Digital Health

Visit https://www.ovomcare.com/
Connect with Ovom on Instagram
Connect with Dr. Brayboy on LinkedIn

Listen to Women's Digital Health Ep.3: What is Digital Health?
Listen to Women's Digital Health Ep.7: Artificial Intelligence in Women’s Health

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Disclaimer
The information in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment.

The personal views expressed by guests on Women's Digital Health are their own. Their inclusion here does not constitute an endorsement from Dr. Brandi, Women's Digital Health, or associated organizations.

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Transcript

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Digital health allows people to get the information they need that, when I was in high school in 1990s, wasn't accessible. It wasn't available. People were using what their friends say, hear say, instead of going to the sources that they needed to go to, physicians, nurses, healthcare educators. And it's very difficult still, I think, because people are not aware of all the tools that exist. Digital health can empower you to have more agency, And I think more control over your reproductive life.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield Welcome to the Women's Digital Health Podcast, a podcast dedicated to learning more about new digital technologies in women's health. We discuss convenient and accessible solutions that support women with common health conditions. Join us as we explore innovations like mobile health applications, sensors, telehealth, and artificial intelligence, plus more. Learn from a board-certified anesthesiologist the best tips to fill in some of your health experience gaps throughout life's journey. Hey guys, welcome back to episode nine of Women's Digital Health. And if you noticed, maybe you didn't notice, but I was on a small little hiatus, not going to lie. The beginning of the school year, my clinical obligations, everything just kind of collided. And so I needed to take a moment to take it in. But in doing that, I also had the opportunity to interview probably one of the most inspirational persons, at least for me, in creating this podcast that helped me find the reason to keep going. I recognize that the digital health community is really small. You know, people are still wondering, like, what is digital health? And if you still have that question, please check out episode three of Women's Digital Health to get that answer. But in having the opportunity to interview my next guest, it reminds me how important it is for the work to be done, regardless of how much people know about digital health. Dr. Lynae    Brayboy is a physician scientist. She's well-versed in technology and in women's health. And she, she brings me so much joy and excitement because she's been doing this work before all the labels, before digital health and femtech got a larger name. She speaks at least three languages, at least three that I know of. She graduated from Florida A&M as the first Fulbright scholar. She then went to Molly to do bioscience work in malaria. She's developed her own health app called Girl Talk that focuses on menstrual and sexual education for teenage girls. She was the chief medical officer of CLUE, and that's how I found out about her. But now she's co-founded her own fertility business in Germany that has offices not only there but also in the UK and the US. Guys, it is a true honor to welcome Dr. Lene Brayboy to Women's Digital Health. You don't want to miss this interview. We asked Dr. Brayboy about her roots. How did a young girl who got a Fulbright Scholar from FEMU get all the way to Germany where she is at the intersection of digital health using not only health apps, telehealth and artificial intelligence. We ask her about some of the uncomfortable questions that often get missed and lead to poor outcomes in our young girls and in our young boys. How might we change the pediatric visit to inform our young people to have better outcomes? We also asked Dr. Brayboy about all of these biases that still exist in the fertility space. How do we increase access for all? So I just want to throw a few terms out there, no matter whether or not you're supporting someone on their fertility journey or you yourself are on this fertility journey. There's a few terms. I just want to make sure that we review that Dr. Brayboy is going to mention throughout this interview. The first is primary ovarian insufficiency. And this is a medical condition in which a person's ovaries stop functioning normally before the age of 40. It's not the same as menopause, but it can lead to menopause-like symptoms. And it can lead to decrease in production of hormones and cause irregular menstrual cycles and infertility. She's gonna talk about endometriosis, which is another common form of infertility. It's a chronic medical condition in which the tissue of the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, and it can be very painful, can lead to painful sex, and it's associated with generalized pain during menstruation, and it can require both medical and surgical intervention. Embryologists, so wherever you are on this fertility journey, again, if you're supporting someone or you are on this fertility journey, know that an embryologist is a highly trained scientist that works with your fertility doctor to make sure that the eggs that have been fertilized grow the best embryo that will ultimately be implanted into the uterus of the person who wishes to become pregnant. And so they are crucial to, you know, being able to choose the right embryo and make sure you have the highest success in your transfer, in your pregnancy journey. Lastly, we'll be talking about how ovum care uses artificial intelligence. And if you want a little bit more explanation about how artificial intelligence is used in the fertility space, check out episode seven, where I talk about computer vision and other forms of artificial intelligence and how those technologies are being used to give people the highest success rate, combining all technologies together for families who wish to grow their family. Hello, Dr. Brayboy. Welcome to Women's Digital Health.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Hi, thanks for having me. This is such an honor. It's been so long. We've been trying to do this for quite a while.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield Yes, I'm super excited to have you on. You're right. I've been actively trying to get you on the show like for a really long time, and I'm super honored to have you on. You are one of the jewels of digital health. You have so much expertise in women's health. Thank you. Thank you. And so, you know, I was willing to wait. I was like, it's fine. Whenever she gets a moment, we're going to take that moment. And so the timing, there has been so many, you know, just had so many accomplishments that, you know, we're going to explore. And to start with, we certainly have to talk about, you know, your days at Temple, right?

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Oh my goodness, you're taking it way back, way back to my days at Temple. I'm like, should we go all the way back to Florida A&M? Should we start there? Thank you for bringing that up. Yes, I'm a historically black college university educated individual.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield I love it. I love it. And so at FAMU, what was your inspiration? Were you like, I'm going to go pre-med all the way or like where?

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Yeah, so actually it was before then. I mean, my mom says that I want to be a doctor too. Of course, I don't remember this, but I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and my grandmother was a registered nurse and she was a registered nurse during the days of segregation. So she worked at the local black hospital And she would work there, her shifts, and then she would come home. And while she was making dinner, I was always there doing my homework, because she was also my babysitter. She picked me up from school. And then there would be a procession of people coming to the door, knocking, asking for advice. They had been to the doctor. They had been given a prescription, or they'd been given something they need to take, and they didn't understand. And so they're coming to her saying, you know, Miss Jones, Nurse Jones, what should I do? How do I do this? She had some friends who called her Brayboy. That was her my grandfather's name. And so or they would call her Jonesy. It was her name as well, her nickname. So she was always this advocate for people, especially people who were, you know, let's say marginalized. They didn't have necessarily the educational background. They didn't have the ability to advocate for themselves in front of a clinician. And she would just break it down for them. Or if they felt uncomfortable giving themselves a medication. she would just say, listen, I'll give it to you. And she was really that, she was a beacon for her community. And no one, she refused no one. And she was a nurse into her 70s. And I think actually when she retired was when her down, I would say her deconditioning happened, and she enjoyed interacting with people. And so this is what I saw growing up. And so then when I was decided I wanted to go to school and study and university, I was like, well, I'm going to do pre-med because I want to be a doctor. But I knew then I didn't want to work in a private practice. Right away, I was like, I don't want to work in a regular private practice. I had been like 16 or so, and I worked in a private practice. And I just thought, oh, the politics, the gossip, this is not for me. I want to work in a hospital. I want to work in an emergency room. So I thought I was going to be an emergency room doctor. Well, you always have to keep your options open because that's not exactly what I became. So I went to Florida and I was pre med. In retrospect, I wish I had been an animal science major, because I'm a physician scientist but I just, I was pre med. And what I realized then was I had to access the health care system on my own for the first time. And we had a really good clinic and we had a good physician, family medicine doctor, who understood my cultural background, understood me. I had my first asthma attack actually ever in life, in college, all by myself. And, you know, she put me on meds, she knew right away, and I felt comfortable with her, you know. I felt that I also had a couple other health issues that I had to go into the clinic for. And I felt like when I came in, I was treated as a human being. And I think that stuck with me. And then I went to med school. I did a year off. I was a Fulbright for a year. I worked at a malaria research training center in Bamako, Mali. And so I studied placental malaria. And it was there that I got bit by the OBGYN bug. So I realized that when you don't have resources, when you don't have education, when you don't have access to your records, it can be terrible. And actually, you know, compared to the US, even back then, 20 years ago, in Mali, women walked around with their reproductive passports, because many people were illiterate. So they needed to walk around with their records to present to anyone at any point, so they knew what was happening with them. And I'm talking to you from Germany, there's something similar here in Germany, it's called a Mutterpass. And what it is, is just a paper package, Germans love paper. So there's a paper package that people walk around with, so that if they go to this hospital or this hospital, they have their documents. Also the doctors who give them the care, you know, day to day, doing their pregnancy evaluations, versus those who actually deliver them, the laborers, are two different groups of people. So they have to be the carer and the transporter of their records. So I just, I found that fascinating. And when I went into medical school, I went to school at Temple in Philadelphia. So I went from West Africa to Philadelphia. And it was cool. It was cool. And, you know, my friends were in the class above me and Temple had a really great representation of minorities. Also, you know, not, I mean, the US is not great, right? I think Black women make up less than 1.2% of the professoriate. So, but Temple at least had some Black people. And in the OB-GYN department at that time, you know, there were lots of Black people. And one of my mentors, who's sadly passed away since then, Dr. Valerie Whiteman was a source of inspiration. She was a maternal fetal medicine doctor. And I'm in touch with some of the people still from Temple, my chief resident when I was a sub-I. So Temple was a good experience because they let medical students do things. We got to interact with patients. We really were student doctors. I started IVs. I transported patients. I translated. I was part of the team. And so that's when I really realized, yeah, women's health is for me. And then I went on to fellowship, and fellowship was very different. Actually, I went to residency, I'm forgetting a step. I went to residency, and residency was slightly different, but it was also still good because the residents got to do a lot at Abington Memorial Hospital when I was a resident. I started my first day and I was doing a C-section. We were really thrown into everything. And residency was really, it was hard. Of course, you remember those long hours, 80 hours. But that's when I actually realized that digital health had a role because I delivered a 12-year-old girl. And let me just break down the experience to you. I would like to say I remember every patient. I don't, I'm human. But I do remember every single thing about this patient experience. The TV was showing Jerry Springer. I remember where the mom of the patient was standing. I remember where the father of the baby was standing. And I was delivering her and I felt that I had failed her. I felt that we had failed her. We had failed her as a system, that she did not know her body. She got pregnant when she was 11. And, you know, what happens in those situations is that all the blame, all the finger pointing is on the individual, on the girl. Right. As if, oh, you should have known. Right. And I, and I was so devastated after that delivery. That was a healthy baby, no complications, but I was devastated and it bothered me. You know how something just continues to nag at you. And the next week I was seeing a 14 year old girl in clinic this time in a different situation. And while I was trying to, you know, introduce myself, hi, I'm Dr. Brayboy. What brings you in today? She was just like this. She never looked up at me, actually. She never stopped looking at her phone. And at first I was kind of put off because I was like, OK. Why are you here if you don't want to talk to me? And then it dawned on me that she doesn't want to talk to me. The phone is the way to communicate. I mean, APOC had a guideline at that time saying that, you know, you should have an anticipatory guidance visit with a teenager at that point and let them know about their body, let them know what's going to happen, the changes, talk to them about, you know, sexual intercourse, talk to them about STI screening and the importance of protecting. That never happens. It doesn't happen because a lot of OBGYNs are very uncomfortable with the pediatric gynecology population. And usually mothers don't want to expose their kids too much information or the parents don't want to expose their kids to too much information. So they don't come in for that anticipatory guidance visit. You only see them when there's an issue. Right.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield I have a question about that because I've had many people on the show who described this very experience. On the one hand, we want our we want to have this education about our body and we should know things by the time we're ready to start our family but there's this gap right there's a big gap there's a huge gap that's happening between your young child becoming a young woman and yes this gray area of conversation right i'm not sure the chicken and the egg i don't know if if it's the, to your point, the pediatric, if it's their job to inform or have dialogue between the obstetrician. But I also don't know about what's happening in these informal kind of conversations that parents are having with their children about their bodies that make them also uncomfortable talking about it. Can you tell me a little bit more about that sort of transition and what we might be able to do to offer something new to progress this conversation.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Absolutely. So, you know, when we were when I realized this was a problem, I said, I have to design an app to teach girls about specifically marketed towards girls of color. Right. And so Girl Talk was born. And I got funding from the American College of OBGYNs. And I also got funding from Bayer. So Bayer, we call it Bayer in the US, but it's Bayer in Germany. So we started, you know, creating Girl Talk, you know, very naively thinking, oh, wow, 20k, I have lots of money to create an app. And it was not enough. And we literally I had a team of undergraduates who were amazing, who helped me really get the project off the ground. And what we found was when we did our research about, you know, just understanding the background here is there's no uniform health education in the US. There's no guideline, there's no curriculum. The CDC has great information, but it's on a website somewhere. Parents are not looking at that website necessarily. Pediatricians also tend to be very reluctant to talk about sex ed. And I remember for my own in my own family, like I wanted to have my daughter vaccinated against human papillomavirus. And I remember taking her to the pediatrician saying, please, you know, vaccinate her. And she's oh, but she's only 10. Right. Like, OK. Yeah. And she's going to be 20 at some point, hopefully, you know, and she's like, oh, but she can wait. And I was like, but why wait for an exposure? I don't know. You know, obviously, I want to protect my child, but I don't know what's going to happen when she goes to university. I don't know what's going to happen when she goes to camp. And I don't want her to have to go through multiple cervical biopsies for no reason, right? And so there is this gray zone where the pediatrician doesn't want to address it. My parents, I came from a very religious upbringing. My parents did not want to talk about sex ed. There was a sex ed book written by a religious person, a non-clinical person, a non-scientific person that I was made to read that was actually supposed to be for the parents. And it was, as I remember it, not helpful at all. It was only about abstinence. You got no other information about anything else. And so, you know, there is this gray zone and I fell into that gray zone myself. I had an unintended pregnancy. Three days before med school, I realized I was pregnant. you know, and it could have completely derailed me. Fortunately, she was an easy baby, you know, baby for beginners, and I was able to, you know, continue on with my career activities. But that's not always the case. And so you people need to be informed. And this is really how Planned Parenthood is so important right in the US, it gives us information gives you services, but of course it's been villainized right and you walking into a Planned Parenthood, you might have to go through you know people who are picketing or not picketing but. Protesting right outside of a Planned Parenthood, and this is unfortunate right and so Planned Parenthood has tried to do a lot of things in terms of digital tools so you don't have to leave your couch, you can speak to a health care provider with Planned Parenthood direct and I love that because it gives you the anonymity. You don't have to displace yourself, you can feel free you're more comfortable maybe talking about things. There are other companies where you can go online and you can have asynchronous conversations with your health care provider, so that you don't have that embarrassment right again. digital health allows people to get the information they need that when I was in high school in 1990s, wasn't accessible. It wasn't available. And so people were using what their friends say, hear, say, instead of going to the sources that they needed to go to physicians, nurses, healthcare educators. And it's very difficult still, I think, because people are not aware of all the tools that exist. So that's my long answer to this gray zone.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Like, it's like, so you have these digital health tools, you know, you had Girl Talk, and you mentioned, you know, the Planned Parenthood digital health tools, but in between are these conversations that need to happen. And they need to happen, not just from the schools and from the pediatricians But it needs to be kind of a holistic approach to talking about your body and talking about it freely and openly so you can get ideas and exchange information. Right. Hey listeners, it's Dr. Brandi. Thanks for listening to this episode of Women's Digital Health. Subscribe to Women's Digital Health on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to know even more about how to use technology to improve your health, subscribe to our newsletter on womensdigitalhealth.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Enjoy the rest of this episode. Could you help me understand just from your own, you know, maybe personal experience or what you've learned from your patients about how those conversations might start that could possibly lead someone to use a digital health technology more so than if they didn't have those conversations at all?

Dr. Lynae Brayboy I think, you know, because now I have the ovum and I've started a business in health tech. But when I was, you know, before I was officially in femtech, you know, so femtech has everything to do with feminine technology. This coin was termed by Ida Tinn, who is the founder of Clue, where I worked as a chief medical officer. But even before then, so Girl Talk, when we started Girl Talk, there was no femtech, right? There was no name for that. And I think when I started to see apps like Clue, um, come about, it was a much more informed patient. So when you're taking a history, you could already see who was, I could already guess who was using an app because they knew I say, you know, how old were you when you got your periods? Um, yeah, I was 13. Um, okay. Well tell me about how often do your periods come? How long are your cycles? Oh yeah. Hold on. Pull out the app.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield Got it.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy You know 28 to 34 days. I noticed that when I bleed heavily the first three days and then it trails off, but sometimes I have more clotting, you know, and they start to see changes in their own data. and see if there's now a drift or a trend. And I think this is what apps like Clue really have to be able to deliver is personalized data information about your cycle and compare that to maybe general trends. That's difficult because again, that's maybe giving medical advice, that's maybe being a medical device that is diagnosing and we don't want that. But I think the clinician and the patient there's value in being able to say, you know, my periods were like clockwork, five days long. My menstrual cycles were 28 to 32 days. And then about six months ago, they got really light. And my period is only for one day. And I spot for the second day and that's it. And I noticed I have vaginal dryness. And I noticed that I don't have the same breast tenderness. This is the importance of tracking because you can see those drifts, you can see those trends. We used to tell people, I'm sure you remember in medical school, keep a menstrual diary and who has time. No one has time for that. So being able to track is super, super important. And same thing when you're going through fertility. you know, fertility is a diagnosis that is made after the fact, you know, infertility is. So if you are greater than the age of 35 and you've been trying to conceive for six months, you already meet the diagnosis. And so having the ability to say, wait a second, This is out of range. I need to now advocate for myself so that I can get an appointment. So maybe you see your nurse practitioner, maybe you see your nurse midwife, maybe you see your family doctor, but then you should say to them, I need an evaluation. I need a workup. And if they're not able to do it, then they should be able to refer you to a reproductive endocrinologist who could initiate that workup. And this is the problem, right? If you don't know that you have a problem, if you're not aware of your own data, then the clock is ticking. And I'm not saying the biological clock, but of course we have a reproductive lifespan, which is finite if you're a person with ovaries or a woman. And so from the time that you start your periods to the time that you finish your periods, from menarche to menopause, you have this finite lifespan. And it's not guaranteed that you're going to have this entire lifespan fertility. Our biological age and our chronological age are not always concordant. They can be discordant. And so you need the ability of time to have that evaluation earlier rather than later. Because if it's later, and we see this a lot with patients, they come when they're 40, they come when they're 41, 42, and of course the pregnancy rates decrease. The pregnancy rate has everything to do with the egg age. And there's no way of really knowing if your biological age is right on spot on again with your chronological age, you could be 25 and starting to see differences. You could have a primary ovarian insufficiency. And so again, having that early referral, that early evaluation gives you options. And that's what it's about. Digital health can empower you to have more agency and I think more control over your reproductive life.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield Yeah, thank you for saying that. I think You mentioned a really important component of digital health, which is being an informed patient, the ability to actually have information and track it and see the differences. The reality is that most, a lot of patients don't have access, accessibility, is a huge issue. I've certainly seen it. I saw your paper where you were exploring fertility access to Afro-Caribbean patients. I've noticed that the Native American population as well as the Pacific Islander population have next to none. I don't really see a lot of fertility access there. What has been your experience in trying to increase accessibility to increase the number of people that are informed about their reproductive and overall women's health.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Yeah, I think your observation is correct. First of all, there are higher rates of infertility, okay? And there's a lot of bias. So people are not getting these earlier evaluations because people think, ah, you don't have high rates of infertility. This is, you know, a middle-class older white woman's issue. And it's not. Infertility affects 17.5% of the global population. One in six couples around the world have infertility in the US it's one in eight, but it's still it's a huge it's a health crisis it's not like, oh, you can't have children no big deal we know that infertility is related to poor health sequelae in women. Evaluating fertility, knowing the source is important. And again, getting access to someone who can do that is hard. And you're right, there are, you know, when we think about, you know, who's accessing the Indian Health Service. Okay, we're talking about Native American individuals, right? There's only support for contraception. There's no support for fertility care. And when we think about reproductive justice, it is giving yourself the ability to choose when, how, when you want to have kids. That's what it's about. And and so it's not just contraception. So Title 10, I would say, is doing a good job because of the leadership of Title 10. They've recognized that they shouldn't just be offering contraception. They should also be doing an evaluation, which is good because disproportionately marginalized people do use Title X. But that's not it. Even when we control for socioeconomic status, we know that people of African descent, Native American descent still don't have access, even Asian descent. And so it's about educating people at the onset, that anticipatory guidance appointment that you should be having when you're 13, 14, 15. should be talking about your entire reproductive lifespan. How many kids? When do you want to have them? Do you want to have them at all? How do you want to prevent having them when you don't want them? And that's just not happening. And so what we have done at OVUM is try to create more visibility about being able to be in charge of your own fertility and providing access. So what we do is we offer a free overview of your reproductive lifespan. We explain that you're born as a fetus before you're even born. You have made all the eggs that you're going to make and then you start to lose them. OK, regardless of what you do, we show that egg quality is optimal between your 20s, mid 20s and early 30s. And from then on, we have changes that lead to what we call aneuploid eggs, and that can lead to aneuploidy, increasing the miscarriage rate, decreasing the pregnancy rate. So we're giving that information out for free. This is information that you should be discussing with your primary care doctor, your OBGYN, your nurse practitioner, your nurse midwife. But the reality is, Everybody is super busy. It doesn't matter what country you go to. Everybody's overbooked. You've got about 10, 15 minutes, and you don't have time because you have to get to the next room. But with digital health, as a clinician, I have the time to walk people through what is a typical menstrual cycle? What happens in your typical menstrual cycle versus what we do when we help you become pregnant? What happens if you want to freeze your eggs? What happens if you do IVF? And I have that luxury of time because I can book several people in an hour because that's, you know, a 15 to 30 minute conversation. And then I can go on to the next person. And the person hasn't had to take off work. Right. They haven't had to, you know, to tell their boss that they need to go see a doctor. It's it's discreet. And the other thing is that we use technology. We leverage A.I. tools to help decrease the cost, because the reality is despite the fact that we have infertility as a global public health crisis, it's expensive. We only have about 17 mandated states in the United States. So that means those are the states that actually have to provide some type of fertility care, but there's no standard. So fertility care could mean evaluation, but not actual treatment. It could mean intrauterine insemination, but not IVF or in vitro fertilization. It could mean that if you're a same-sex female female couple that you have to go through 12 inseminations to prove that you have infertility. That's traumatic. Right. And it's not meant to be inclusive. So in a state where I used to actively practice daily, you had to be married. So it's imposing many restrictions that leave out many people. And what we are trying to do at OVUM is to help people sidestep those restrictions. So something we talked about before we went on air is that there are a lot of clinic restrictions. Oh, we don't take patients over this weight. We don't take patients over this age. And it's really about personalized medicine that we try to really see everyone where they are and let them know their personal chances of becoming pregnant, their personal risk. And we have an AI tool that we can put in data that they've had from their previous diagnostics and let them know what their chances are of live birth. And we do this based on a publicly available database that we've made an algorithm. And then we use tech tools within the laboratory so that it really makes our embryologists our nurses, our physicians, more efficient at being able to do their job. And it also helps the patient understand what's happening. Just like I said, that Wuchipa, just like that reproductive passport in Mali, we want patients to have their data. So they have a patient app that they can go in at any point and know exactly what happened to them during their stimulation, during their diagnostics. They know it how their diagnosis was made, because oftentimes patients have, you know, they did a result here with Dr so and so they did a result over here at this hospital x, and they don't have a full picture of what's happening to them. So they can make an informed decision once you know where you are, where you stand, then you can say, well, you know, actually, I think I want to adopt, or actually, I want to use donor eggs, or actually, I think I want to, you know, maybe go ahead and continue to do the cycle because I have good chances. And it allows you to really use the resources that you have with information, with data, not just try and try again, because in the US, it costs 15 to 20K to have an IVF cycle, versus with us, it's closer to 5 to 7K, you know, British pounds, that is.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield Yeah, I love this idea because, I mean, you coming from the health app sort of beginning and then navigating into artificial intelligence. And actually, it sounds like it's not just health apps. You use telehealth to connect with these patients and then you're using health apps as well as artificial intelligence. I think it's this lovely, beautiful picture of how technologies can be used to improve someone's health, as well as to your point, contain the cause. But can you walk someone through, let's say someone is digital, they're not comfortable using these technologies and maybe this might be overwhelming to them.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Absolutely.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield As someone who's a creator and who's been in this space and who has innovated in both the health app and now the artificial intelligence, can you tell us a little bit more about the differences in in how health apps that are you know i'm assuming health apps that you're discussing are consumer facing like clue and the growth talk but now artificial intelligence is more on the clinical side can you tell me the differences between the two as yeah make sure

Dr. Lynae Brayboy So your first point about people being maybe unfamiliar and uncomfortable, actually, tech can can help make more clinical touch points. So, you know, a patient can write us through the app and say, I have a question about this or I don't understand this, you know, and it's just like WhatsApp. It's not super techie. You don't have to program. or write code to send me a message, you know, so they can just say, hey, I had a question about such and such. Okay, no problem. Do you want to hop on a 10 minute call? You know, I have 10 minutes today. So it really helps inform the patient. And then the AI is more for the clinician, but it's also for the patient. So we can give patient an assessment of their oocyte based on morphology. So oocytes are eggs. And you know, egg quality is everything. This is what ova means, ex ova omnia, all things come from the egg in Latin. And so we can actually say, according to computer vision, we look at your egg comparing to a million and a half other pictures of other eggs that are high quality, your eggs appear to be high quality because eggs that look like your eggs tend to become fertilized, tend to become embryos, okay? So if someone's freezing their eggs, they know, wow, okay, this is what I, this is what I have versus if your eggs look like they're low quality, you have, again, you have the ability to make an informed decision versus say, oh, I have 10 eggs frozen, yay. Right, and come back in five years and you can't use those eggs. So you can actually see your eggs and even as a clinician I never saw these pictures, you know, I would never go into the lab and look under the microscope at my patients with sites or their embryos. We can do the same assessment for embryos, so we can actually look at embryos and say, Is this embryo likely now that it's fertilized to make it to day five and be a blastocyst? So it's helping to manage the expectations of patients so they know, okay, I'm likely going to have a day five embryo transfer or likely it might have to be day three because the embryo looks like it's not going to make it to day five. So you're getting these predictions we like to do day five embryo transfers but it's not always possible. So, people can also see what is in their, in their inventory. So right now in most clinics you get a little paper print out you've got five embryos in your inventory and they're frozen at this stage and then hopefully you can find that paper in two years, right? But here you can log into your app and see a picture of your embryo and what it was frozen at. And if it was biopsy, what the biopsy results were in terms of, you know, what was the outcome in terms of, was it, you know, 46XX or 46XY? Did it have the mutation? Did it not have the mutation? So you're able to log in and see that information in real time. That's important. That provides transparency because usually in an IVF, you know, patient journey, you never see what's happening in the lab. You just get phone calls. And phone calls are very inefficient for the staff, for nurses to be on the phone for four and five hours a day, versus you can log into your app and see what your nurse left you in terms of a message. And then if you need to make an additional appointment because you want to clarify something, that's not a struggle. You don't have to get in your car. You don't have to get on public transportation. You just literally have a telemedicine consult or a telemedicine call.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield This is awesome. I love how you explain how, you know, the use of digital health technologies is shifting the focus on back to this patient doctor. That's right. Right. Because it's removing all of these redundant things that sometimes can cloud the picture of the patient's experience and really get to the fact that, you know, we are here to try to improve someone's health and start a family and do it in a in a way that allows the patient and the doctor to be a team. And I love that. I have a few, one more question more about endometriosis. I was telling you, you know, before we started recording, you know, I've interviewed people with uterine fibroids. I've interviewed people with polycystic ovarian syndrome, but endometriosis population does not seem to have a lot of supportive tools. And so I would love to just get your perspective on ways in which, you know, you discussed this. this population and some of their challenges in a meaningful way and things that they could do to take action and talk with you.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Absolutely. So I actually have two other co-founders. We're an all-female team. So I'm the physician and the scientist. I also have a clinical scientist who's an embryologist. So she's a clinical researcher and a PhD embryologist. And my third co-founder is actually 26, so quite young, but had a terrible experience. She was diagnosed with endometriosis and the experience was, oh, you're never going to be able to have kids, get a puppy, that type of like cold bedside manner. You know, the thing is, is that endometriosis takes a very long time, you know, an average of almost 10 years to diagnose. And it's very hard to diagnose. Like you said, you've seen images of it at laparoscopy, but most people don't make it there, right? They just live with this debilitating pain, you know, poor reproductive outcomes, potentially, you know, a sexual life that is maybe not what they want it to be because of pain. And of course it can influence one's ability to conceive. And so I think digital health tools can help people by tracking, right? You can't argue with data. You cannot argue with data. So if you have painful intercourse, if you have painful periods, if you are in bed when you start menstruating and you tell a clinician that, and they're like, they can't dismiss the data. They can't dismiss it, and if they do, it should empower you to go to another clinician and then have some answers. Because there are treatments, depending on what you want to do in your reproductive life plan, whether you want to become pregnant or not, to help you get to those reproductive goals. And so, again, it's about addressing it earlier. Why live with debilitating pain for 15 and 20 years if you know early on, right? And it helps you to manage also your activity, your diet, the things that can help maybe manage the pain and manage the consequences, the clinical consequences of having endometriosis. And it's a very, you know, it's a shame that we don't have a biomarker to diagnose it. That's problem number one, because we haven't put the resources in women's health. Let's be honest, if you look at federal funding, federal funding has not funded any of the breakthroughs and innovations in women's health, including IVF, including the birth control pill. And so, you know, we can't expect that things like endometriosis are going to be magically diagnosed. I mean, yes, we have some biomarkers, but nothing that is a reliable biomarker to say that, yes, you definitely have endometriosis. it's still very hard to diagnose. So having said all that, I think that digital health can help because it can help you pinpoint your symptoms, pinpoint when they're happening and give you data that you can track. And so when you know things are different, things are different and it helps you to really to be informed. So this is, unfortunately I have to go because I have to go see. I have actually a consultation that I have to run to. Brandy, this is, I mean, I should say, we should be very up Dr. Seinfeld. Thank you so much for letting me be on your show and yeah, you can, everyone can reach us at www.ovumcare.com and we are also on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Facebook and also on YouTube.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield So you guys are transatlantic. You're here in the US, but you're also in the UK, you're in Germany.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy Yeah, this is really to help anyone who needs care. So our clinical operations are in the UK right now, but I live in Germany. The company is in Germany and we want to help anybody to become a parent, everyone to become a parent who wants to. I love it.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield Thank you so much, Dr. Brayboy. We know you got to go. We appreciate your time. You are always, always welcome back to Women's Digital Health. We appreciate it.

Dr. Lynae Brayboy I would love to come back. Let's keep in touch.

Dr. Brandi Sinkfield Bye. We'll do. Bye-bye. And that concludes episode nine of Women's Digital Health, our interview with Dr. Brayboy. I hope you learned a lot about Dr. Brayboy's journey, not only into doctorhood, but also her journey into becoming a health technology innovator in the women's health space. That is a very rare air. I hope that this conversation helped you think about your next clinic visit. You know, whether you're on the fertility journey or you're not on the fertility journey. Future visits might look like using health apps, telehealth and artificial intelligence. And I think she provided a great scenario of how all these technologies could potentially be used in future fertility clinic visits. I cannot emphasize enough, you know, Dr. Brayboy said it, Dr. Samantha Butts  said it, we heard it from Adrianna Hopkins in our last episode, episode eight. Tracking, tracking, tracking, tracking is key. It's the key to getting the most out of your visit. So use these technologies. It can make it so much easier for you to get that information that you really want to make that next visit the most meaningful. You know, all of these technologies, they're being rolled out quickly is the reason I started Women's Digital Health. But for many of us, they are being rolled out quietly. And so I hope that you feel a lot more confident as we talk about various technologies, like what's happening at Ovumcare. And so with that, thank you. Thank you for tuning in to episode nine.
 
Although I'm a board-certified physician, I am not your physician. All content and information on this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice and it does not establish a doctor-patient relationship by listening to this podcast. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast. The personal views of our podcast guests on women's digital health are their own and do not replace medical professional advice.