Flow of the Future

Monitoring your wellness could soon be as easy as mailing in a pad. WH spoke with the inventors hoping to disrupt health care with a potentially life-changing solve.

Around the globe, approximately 1.8 billion people menstruate every 28 days. That is a whole lot of blood (roughly 38 million gallons!) being flushed down the toilet or tossed-via pads, tampons, etc.-into a landfill each month. What if, instead, something worthwhile was done with even a fraction of that red "waste"?

That was the question on the mind of Danish medical student Sara Naseri more than a decade ago, when she took an interest in preventive medicine and women's health care. She began looking into existing research on what could be discovered through testing menstrual blood and was shocked by what she found-or, rather, by what she didn't. At the time, the only scientific paper that came up in her search was submitted by the forensics department in New York City and related to period blood in a murder case, recalls Dr. Naseri, who is an ob-gyn.

Yes, you read that right: The only study she could find on the properties of period blood was from a homicide investigation. This jaw-dropping dearth of data spurred Dr. Naseri to action and her resulting research may change the way women's health is tested and treated in the decades to come.

Up Close and (Too) Personal

Let's rewind a bit. For a quick snapshot of a person's health and well-being, the traditional blood draw has long been the gold standard. A vial or two can be tested for everything from a vitamin D deficiency to HIV. Of course, that entails rolling up your sleeve and enduring a painful prick in a collection process that hasn't changed much over the decades. (It's worth noting that attempts at advancing this technology haven't always gone well.