058 - Dr Jenny Kruger - Can Incontinence Be Improved Using a Device Like femfit®?

This is the episode that has been 6 years in the making! We are thrilled to be able to chat to Dr Jennifer Kruger, who is the CEO and co-founder of JUNOFEM, a medtech company spun out of the University of Auckland.  Jennifer's background is clinical, but has been an academic for most of her career, so her name is probably familiar to most who are listening!  She still heads the pelvic floor research group at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, but is now commercialising her research for greater reach, to more women who need it!

Here are some of the things we discussed:

• Dr Kruger’s clinical background as a midwife, and how her interest in birth outcomes and postnatal recovery led her to doing extensive research into pelvic floor function during and after childbirth. She pursued graduate degrees to study pelvic floor muscle function using ultrasound, MRI and computational modeling, with a long term goal of improving birth outcomes and helping with postnatal recovery. She completed her PhD looking at pelvic floor morphology and function in elite athletes.
• Over the past 8 years, she has been working with the team at University of Auckland, including some very clever bioengineers to develop the femfit®, which is a flexible vaginal pressure sensor array that measures pelvic floor muscle activation and intra-abdominal pressure during functional activities
• Initial prototypes used a single pressure sensor, but the final version has 8 pressure sensors along the vaginal length. Therefore it can produce a pressure profile showing pelvic floor vs. intra-abdominal pressure and ensure clients are doing a correct pelvic floor contraction, rather than bearing down
• The tool has been validated against trans-perineal ultrasound and manometry to ensure that the information regarding movement of the pelvic floor muscles is correct.

Dr Kruger is passionate about removing some of the stigma associated with urinary incontinence and help provide practical options for women wanting to improve their pelvic floor strength and function. Her team are performing ongoing research with the femfit® device, which includes looking at PFM function during functional activities.

To learn more about the femfit® or to become a registered affiliate for the device, please go to the website for details.

To support The Women’s Health Podcast, please use the code “femfit+WHP” to get 10% off the femfit® and in doing so, you will help keep The Women’s Health Podcast on air!. Follow this URL https://shop.junofem.com/discount/femfit+WHP or use the QR Code below!

https://www.junofem.com/

Or contact Jenny at [e-mail]

You can follow Jenny and JUNOFEM on social media:

https://www.instagram.com/junofemhealth 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/junofemhealth