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MilkStrip is a biotech and wellness company that provides real-time breast-milk decision support at home, informing new mothers about the freshness and nutrition of human milk.
JUGGLING IT ALL MOTHERHOOD, DEGREES, HIGH-TECH STARTUPS |
BY ELIANA RUDEE | JNS.ORG
M
astercard’s Index of Women Entrepreneurs announced last month that Israel is ranked as the best country for female entrepreneurs in 2020, rising from fourth place in 2019, with the United States, Switzerland and New Zealand trailing the Jewish state. According to Mastercard, Israel jumped to first place this year due to its increase in support for small- and medium-sized businesses. The company also noted that women have been disproportionality impacted by the coronavirus pandemic with 87 percent of female business owners saying that they have been negatively affected. Drs. Avital Beck and Hadas Shatz-Azouly — scientists, mothers, entrepreneurs and founders of an Israeli startup — understand firsthand the challenges of owning a business while raising six and five children, respectively, and further stress the importance of their product given the unusual demands placed on women during this time. Their company, MilkStrip, is a biotech 26
L’CHAIM SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE • FEBRUARY 2021
and wellness company that provides realtime breast-milk decision support at home, informing new mothers about the freshness and nutrition of human milk. As fellow doctors and mothers, they saw the need for immediate breast-milk results firsthand themselves and among their friends, and so they developed their expiration and Vitamin C diagnostic kits to “bring decision support to mothers in a time of great uncertainty.” They note that modern mothers are empowered with vast general knowledge at their fingertips. However, when it comes to science and their baby’s health, there are many unanswered questions — for example, doubts about their breast milk that could not be answered by existing kits that needed to be sent to a lab, with results only after 10 days. “You can test the water of your aquarium, but until now, issues that concern mothers are not always addressed,” Shatz-Azouly told JNS. “We still live in a world that addresses men, so we established this company to give answers to women that they cannot get
elsewhere.” “When you have a crying baby, you want your answers now, not in 10 days,” Beck told JNS. “Because we can detect anything today, the idea is to empower women. Because of lifestyles changes, women pump more, and there are ways to optimize breast milk, induce immunity, cause better sleep and higher cognition,” she said. The aim of MilkStrip’s diagnostic kits and reports is to help ensure that children are getting optimal sustenance and nutrition, in addition to empowering mothers with the results from the reports. For women who pump and store their milk, Shatz-Azouly maintained, the kit determines whether the milk has expired or whether it can be safely given to a child, which “can be a big confusion and doubt for those giving milk to a baby, whether it is a mother, father, nanny, etc.” “Almost half of all women have doubted their breast milk at times, and 60 percent have thrown away pumped breast milk,” she
