Eli Health Editorial

Breaking a new frontier in personalized diagnostics, Eli Health has developed and recently released the world’s first instant hormone monitoring system. From its base in Montreal, the company has built the Hormometer™: an award-winning product that can measure key hormones cortisol and progesterone - not in a lab weeks later, but in real time, with a saliva sample and a smartphone camera that delivers results in minutes. Helping drive the mission is Lena Kozarov, Product Manager at Eli Health and one of the architects behind this technology from the technical design to how it reaches people and ultimately helps users understand and act on the signals from their bodies.

After investing six years in R&D to build the Hormometer™ and accompanying digital platform, Eli Health finally released the beta product in April, and officially launched their product in September. Along with a $17 million series A funding round this summer capped off by winning a world-renowned CES award for best digital health innovation in 2025, the company has deservedly garnered significant attention in the last year. This novel innovation that took years to develop with dozens of patents-pending is surprisingly simple for the user. The test is a single-use lateral flow assay (LFA) - similar to a COVID test - but instead of a binary yes/no line, the concentration is determined from a saliva sample. This is achieved by scanning the intensity of the lines using a smartphone camera on the Eli App, which uses an extensive saliva-hormone database and artificial intelligence to return the concentration and give insights into the trends and meaning of readings. With close to 100% accuracy for cortisol and progesterone and tests for numerous other hormones currently being developed like testosterone and estradiol, Eli Health is poised to allow everyday hormone monitoring to become mainstream.

Lena first started as an R&D intern at Eli, before starting full-time after graduating with a bachelor's degree in Bioengineering from McGill University where she co-founded CUBEC, this very organization! She recalls that in 2020, “it was COVID and we were all really bored with less networking opportunities since everything had shifted online,” so when connections at UBC reached out, “we said okay, let's do a conference, and use the fact that everything is online.” Lena created the acronym CUBEC and designed the logo, then with the help of four other co-founders, saw 300 online attendees of the first CUBEC conference. The next year, she worked tirelessly to help set up the executive structure, open our organization's bank account, and “getting the ball rolling for bigger picture things, like laying down roots” that has allowed the organization to grow to what it is today. What started as a single-day online event drawing hundreds of attendees has since grown into a standing organization that now connects engineering students, industry, and clinicians across Canada. Lena still sits on its board, helping secure speakers, advising leadership, and ensuring CUBEC continues to grow.

At Eli Health, Lena’s affinity for bringing people together has found good use, as she works to coordinate a diverse array of professionals to bring a shared vision to life. “Every day I’m meeting with engineers - software, hardware, and biomedical engineers,” she explained, as well as meetings with industrial designers for hardware modifications, medical clinicians to validate clinical fit, marketing to ensure clear external communications, and regulatory to ensure  compliance. This dynamic and diverse role suits Lena’s “jack of all trades” background, with past experiences spanning biosensor research, software, and business strategy to name a few. But importantly, Lena meets with the users of Eli every day to get a feel of what is and isn’t working, and what they hope to see next. “You can't just make tech for the sake of making tech, there needs to be a need and people need to actually use it.” By taking the time to listen and implement the needs of users, Lena helps turn the complex technology behind Eli into a clear and usable product that seamlessly fits into people’s lives.

As with the release of any new technology that breaks the status quo, Eli’s platform raises interesting ethical questions. Lena explained that in the US, a single cortisol test ordered through the healthcare system can cost around a thousand dollars, take two to three weeks to come back, and often requires either a blood draw at a clinic or mailing saliva to a lab. Eli has compressed this into an affordable, rapid at-home ritual with only a small saliva pad and phone camera. Yet in an age of information overload, it's important for Eli to frame and contextualize their readings properly to ensure that users are informed and make the right decisions. “One point is not enough,” as Lena puts it; the app is built to teach people what their metrics mean over time, with in-app education and explanations to enhance the user’s understanding, carefully crafted by a team of experienced medical advisors and doctors on Eli’s team.

With the launch of the Hormometer™,  Eli Health has a powerful proof-of-concept platform for instant hormone testing and is already developing assays for other key hormones. By delivering lab-grade accuracy into the palm of the hand, the launch of the Hormometer™ revolutionizes the field of hormone monitoring, made possible through a multidisciplinary team of experts. Reflecting on her journey, Lena offers simple advice to today’s students entering the biomedical field: “try as many different things as you can.” It is the same curiosity that fuels her own dynamic role at Eli, and as the company looks to expand its menu of hormone tests, the future is bright for personalized health and the new generation of innovators driving this vision.