Ihydrate

Lisa Winn is the Founder of Ihydrate – a simple, cost-effective, saliva-based hydration test that replaces intrusive blood or urine testing.

We’ve all heard the advice, ‘drink plenty of fluids’. Eight glasses a day is a popular guide, and the internet is quick to proffer hydration status colour charts that interpret the fluid flowing out of us. But how do we really know how much is enough?

Lisa understands that for some, this question can be critical.

“For athletes, performance can start to be negatively impacted by as little as one per cent drop in hydration. What many don’t realise is that this starts to kick in before you even start to feel thirsty,” says Lisa.

“In the elderly, studies have shown chronic dehydration is as high as 30% among residents of aged facilities. With dehydration directly linked to increases in falls, confusion and exacerbation of underlying conditions such as dementia, it’s important to keep track of.”

As the former Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Coca-Cola South Pacific, Lisa is a beverage afficionado. Over her fifteen-year career she oversaw the research and development of countless products, spending time leading the company’s local start-up incubator.

Here, she sponsored a project that was attempting to solve a problem for her industry – the absence of a simple, non-intrusive way to measure hydration.

“We scoured the globe for experts in this field and eventually found them right under our nose in Sydney and started to develop our own solution,” Lisa says.

A prototype was developed with promising results in both lab tests and on humans, with more work needed to refine the concept.

“As we’ve discovered during our work, saliva is an incredibly noisy dataset, there’s a lot of information you need to filter out,” Lisa says.

After three short years the saliva hydration research was put on hold to make way for other priorities, yet was never far from Lisa’s mind.

“Over my career I witnessed a great deal of new product development, but had a really strong feeling that there was something in this, that there was a really hairy problem here that could be solved,” Lisa says.

Lisa established Ihydrate in July 2021, getting the original band back together as shareholders and advisors, including co-founders of the successful data analytics start-up Hivery - Jason Hosking and Frank Chamaki, and CEO of Global Surgical Innovations, Dr Philip Boughton.

Their solution uses micro fluidic paper-based technology to measure hydration properties of saliva. It’s non-intrusive, portable, low cost and simple. Using a smartphone application, the results are provided in real time for both the user and can be shared with those who have a 'duty of care', for example sports coaches, carers and OH&S teams.

With an interest in exploring her solution for use in the first instance with elite athletes, Lisa, who is based on the Central Coast, has found Newcastle to be the perfect test bed for her start-up.

“Newcastle is an incredible location for start-ups, there’s a really healthy ecosystem and a great university with powerful research capabilities. For my solution specifically, the Newcastle region has a really high representation of my primary segment. Who knew there were so many elite ultra-endurance athletes in this area!” says Lisa.

Through the Female Founders program Lisa also discovered two University of Newcastle medical engineering students to undertake work integrated learning opportunities with her.

“I was really impressed with the calibre of students who put themselves forward for the opportunity to come and work with me. I’m excited to see what they’ll achieve,” Lisa says.

Despite having risen to the top ranks of a globally innovative company, Lisa explains that pursuing your own idea and building your own company requires constant feedback and validation.

“It’s different when it’s your own endeavour, it’s harder to be objective, so you need to surround yourself with a network of people that understand where you’re at and where you’re going,” says Lisa.

“I’ve had so many ‘ah-ha’ moments throughout the program, things I may have encountered in my corporate career but have a completely different application in start-up. The advice I’ve had and connections I’ve made through this program have been incredible.”

Lisa hopes to have version 2.0 of Ihydrate ready for usability studies early next year, her ultimate goal being the development of a device that can be distributed globally.