At-Home Breast Cancer Patch: 5-Minute Screening, No Mammogram, No Radiation | Femin AI

 Breast cancer affects 1 in 8 women, and most don't get screened regularly. Dr. Karney Ilan's company Femin AI built a wearable AI patch that screens from your couch in about five minutes — no mammogram, no radiation, no clinic visit. Early trials are promising, with FDA review expected in 2026. Share this with every woman you love. 

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Transcript

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 0:00

We want to create something that gives women the control on her own health in her own hands. So it's not just access, it's about being independent and controlling of yourself and you know your body the best way. And so we want to give her another cyber tool to be able to tail that.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 0:23

What if a patch could save your life from your living room couch? Stick to your boobies because your life depends on it. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, and it's the second leading cause of death. One in eight will face it. Most don't get screened. There is a patch coming along. It will stick on you. You open up the app, you will get answers. You don't have any excuse not to wear this amazing patch. Meet Dr. Carni Ilan, the Israeli scientist who turned basically a band-aid into a patch that is a lifeline for women all over the globe. Her company, Feminai, building a wearable breast cancer detection patch. This is medical care on your terms. Israel, smaller than New Jersey, is curing diseases, but you didn't know that because the media has a blind spot for Israel. We don't. Welcome to the Israeli Trailblazer Show. I am your host, Jennifer Weisman. Let's talk about Israeli innovation and this amazing breast cancer patch that could save millions of lives. Welcome, Doctor. How are you? Hi, I'm great. So happy to be here. You created a patch that is essentially a home breast cancer detection kit. She put the patch on your breast, take it from there. How does this work? So you we have an app and the patch itself.

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 1:50

The patch is disposable. It connects via Bluetooth to the app. You scan yourself. It takes about five minutes. And then the results are sent directly to your primary physician whom contacts you if there's any need to do further evaluation or other examinations. The idea is that each woman does it when it's time to get breast cancer screening done at her own time, at her own cost. What is the barrier for women getting screened for breast cancer regularly? So that's a really good question. And it kind of depends on the age group and the social economic standing as well. Specifically in the US, about 60 to 65% of women get screened for breast cancer. So when you look at that 40% that doesn't, it's usually either women that are super careeristic and don't have the time. It takes a lot of time to create the appointment, go to it. Usually it takes a few hours, if not a day, off of work. The other portion, which is people who are just not aware of it, it's not in the awareness in the community where they live in. And there's also the portion where it's not accessible at all. So there's a whole issue of health equity, and there's so many places where medical examinations are so far away. So mammography units are not necessarily spread across the entire United States in the same way. I mean, many, many women are just left out, and it really demands for them to drive over two hours just to get to a place to do the screening. Cost is the main thing we want to reduce. Accessibility is something that is the main thing on our agenda. We want to create something that gives women the control on her own health in her own hands. So it's not just access, it's about being independent and controlling of yourself and you know your body the best way. And so we want to give her another cyber tool to be able to tail that.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 3:32

It seems like there's a big movement to bring healthcare into the home. And I want to talk more about that. So exactly how does the patch work?

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 3:44

Cool. We combined wearable sensors to track a few physiological changes that occur in the breast tissue when there's a tumor or any type of abnormality. The whole hypothesis behind it was that the existing modalities today always track one parameter, right? So mammography is a type of x-ray. An ultrasound is based on sound waves, an MRI is a magnetic machine. And each one of them is really good for a specific type of woman, but we wanted to create something that would consider all women because women's breasts change throughout their lifetime. So examining a 25-year-old is not the same as examining a 75-year-old. And so the hypothesis was we have to combine a few types of parameters to track in order to be able to capture everybody in the same type of sensitivity. And so we're tracking density, conductivity in the tissue, and blood flow in the tissue. And then we train an algorithm to be able to classify all this data and give out a score that detects whether they're at risk of cancer.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 4:43

So this patch can detect something that a human hand might miss.

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 4:48

Yeah, definitely.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 4:49

So on a scale of hierarchy, MRI and ultrasound being the gold standard, where does the patch fall?

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 4:58

So in our clinical studies, we're comparable to all of the gold standards. We do want people to keep using the gold standards. At the beginning, we would be happy to be assisting these tools until we get more clinical validation and until women in the medical community trust our product and feel comfortable with it and they see proof of concept within the data itself. Is this an expensive patch? No, not at all. So the whole concept from the beginning, I always said it has to capture all four A's, which is autonomous, affordable, accurate. I wanted to make sure that anyone is able to do it from anywhere, and I wanted it to be affordable because the whole idea was I wanted this to be the cold guard of breast cancer. So cold guard is this blood occult blood in the stool exam that you do for colon cancer. And they were able to come in and spread apart the amount of colonoscopies a patient does. That was the vision. I wanted to create something super simple, super affordable that women would be able to do to themselves from home. And it would mainly in the future control how many times they have to come into medical centers to do the big, more expensive and more radiationful exams because our exam doesn't have any side effects.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 6:06

Amazing. Do you think the physicians are going to welcome this product with open arms?

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 6:12

From the feedback we've received, the answer is yes. Many physicians that just heard about it and didn't really understand it were a bit more spooky, but once they meet with us and understand what it is, everybody loves it. Same with women, we've gotten a lot of enthusiasm. I think from the beginning, what kind of pushed us forward is the fact that anybody that heard about the idea really fell in love with the vision. And so I think people became natural advocates, which is not always the case for startups. Many times startups have to fight in order to become something that people think is a good thing. And for us, from the beginning, almost anyone that heard the idea was like, wow, that's such a great vision. What's happening beneath the skin that makes this early detection possible? When there's a tumor, all sorts of things within the breast tissue change. Mainly the fact that there's a growth within the tissue changes, first of all, the blood flow because the body needs to take more nutrients to feed that tumor. And that impacts all sorts of things. It impacts the density of each tissue. There's different components within the breast. There's fat, there's a glandular tissue. And so each one of these components changes. Ions change within the cells, that changes the conductivity. And so all of these changes that are known across the body, by the way, not just with breasts, enable us to detect it. And breasts being such superficial organs make it easier for us to detect them with wearables because sensors are now able to detect very, very deep.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 7:37

Amazing. And do you have to put one patch on each breast? Yes. Okay. And how long do you wear it? Five minutes. Five minutes? And then you throw out this disposable patch. Yep. That's amazing. I don't understand why anybody wouldn't embrace this. This is incredible tech, really.

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 7:55

The funniest thing from the beginning is we at the beginning did usability trials across the US, where we met with women and we had them try out the product itself without the technology. Just use it to see if they're able to use it, if it's convenient. And so many of them kept saying it feels like sci-fi. I don't feel like anything. It's not squishing, it's not moving. People are expecting like to be hurt when they're doing medical exams. That's what people are used to. It's like a band-aid. You put a band-aid on your breast. Yeah, it just sits there. Doesn't hurt. You don't feel anything. And people are surprised. They're like, is it doing something? Is it working? So within that patch are sensors, and those sensors relay the data to the app on their phone. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you're sitting on your couch, you're watching Netflix, five minutes, it's already done. You throw out the patch, it's over. How often do you use this? Once a year, once every six months? So it depends on your risk group. In our app, we have a questionnaire that stratifies women into risk groups and dictates how often you have to do the exam. So the average woman would be recommended to do this every 12 months. High risk woman would be advised to do this every six months. Kind of depends. Where's the product in terms of FDA viability? So we did clinical trials across the seas in Israel and now across the United States. And we are now in steps of submitting to the FDA.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 9:18

So you're hoping for an FDA approval sometime in 2026-27? Exactly. This product will be on the shelves of pharmacies for women to buy, like when they buy uh tampons, they'll buy their breast cancer detection patch.

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 9:34

So we have a few go-to-market ethics. This would be one of them, but we would also be selling directly to businesses.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 9:42

What was the aha moment you had where you came up with this idea for a patch?

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 9:46

I was a medical student. I was on my general surgery rotation where they teach us how to palpate breasts, basically how to perform a clinical breast examination. And at the same time, as I was learning that, in my free time, I was taking an entrepreneurship course for women. And I kept this notebook with me and wrote down ideas. And once you're in this like entrepreneurship mode, you keep asking yourself why. That's what they teach you, kind of to look at the world and ask yourself anything you do, anything you wear, anything you eat, why? Why is it like this? And if you walk into a hospital and ask yourself why, there is so many questions to ask, right? Because it's such a complex system. Everything is a bit archaic and so chaotic. And so I was learning how to do this, and I was like, why? Why am I learning this? This is useless. My hands are not bionic. I can't feel anything. Kind of feels like guessing. And so that's when it came to mind. It's amazing. And you shared it with colleagues, and they got on board and said yes, definitely. No, not colleagues. So at that entrepreneurship course, I met two really smart women. Both of them are engineers. One is a biomedical engineer, the other is a data scientist. And I shared it with them. The three of us fit together and complete the puzzle, really, because each one of us is in charge of a very different sector within the company. What's the name of the product in America? Currently, we call it Femini. Femini. We do have a specific name for it. We're just going to wait for a big release for it.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 11:17

I do love stick to your boobies. I think that is an amazing tagline. That's great. Why do you think Israel is seen on their back heels in terms of advancements and things that the world can benefit from? That's a good question.

Dr. Karney Ilan, CEO Femin AI 11:33

I believe there's many political reasons for that. Many VCs across the US do acknowledge that Israel is way on top and that Israeli founders have a very good statistical chance of exiting and going to IPO. I just think it's a matter of awareness. Not everyone is aware. Just like I wasn't aware of the world of entrepreneurship until I joined it. I feel like it's the same. What is the statistical outcome that you've seen with the patch? We received a very high accuracy of 96%. Is there another product out there that is competitive to you? Not one that is on the market. There's a few in the pipeline. We just want to make it very, very easy for women to take care of themselves. And we're women building for women. So I think that's the best way to do it.

Jennifer Weissmann, Host 12:18

Early breast cancer detection only requires a patch. In five minutes, Femin AI just changed the odds. If this episode moved you, please hit subscribe. Because while the world reports on conflict, Israelis are quietly saving millions of lives. I'm Jennifer Weisman, and this is the Israeli Trailblazer Show. Stick to your boobies. A nation smaller than New Jersey is revolutionizing breast cancer. And this story is something the media won't share, but we will. Until next time.