Building Predictive Hormone Health Tools with SymptoLab
Team: Tamar Zelovich-Hod (CAS ‘22), Alon Zelovich
About the Venture: SymptoLab is a digital health platform that helps women with hormone-related conditions track and predict symptom fluctuations over time. It converts daily health inputs into actionable patterns and forecasts that can support more personalized care decisions.
Tell us about SymptoLab and the problem it aims to solve.
SymptoLab is a science-based digital health platform designed to help physicians and patients better manage complex, hormone-driven conditions like endometriosis, fibroids, perimenopause, and fertility treatments.
These conditions don’t look the same in every woman. They can cause dozens of symptoms, pain, fatigue, migraines, digestive issues, mood changes, that fluctuate across hormonal cycles and affect multiple body systems. But care still relies on short appointments and patients trying to remember weeks or months of symptoms.
As a result, many women feel dismissed or unheard, not because doctors don’t care, but because they simply don’t have the time or tools to see the full picture.
SymptoLab changes that.
We use mathematical modeling and machine learning to transform daily symptom tracking into clear, structured, clinician-ready reports. Physicians can identify patterns, understand what’s driving symptoms, evaluate whether treatments are working, and personalize care based on objective data.
For doctors, it’s a decision-support tool that makes visits more focused and more effective. For patients, it means being heard, and seeing their pain translated into a clear, actionable plan. We’re starting with endometriosis, which affects 1 in 10 women in the U.S., but the vision is much broader: to bring precision medicine to the millions of women living with hormone-driven conditions.
How did the team come together?
SymptoLab actually began with my own health journey. For years, I struggled with complex symptoms that no one could fully explain. As a scientist, I did what I knew how to do, I started analyzing my own data. I looked for patterns, correlations, anything that could help me understand what was happening in my body.
That process eventually helped me get diagnosed with endometriosis and other related conditions. But more importantly, it helped me manage the diseases by identifying what treatments and adjustments worked for me, based on my personal symptom patterns. At some point I realized, if this helped me, maybe it could help others. So I went to my brother Alon and asked him if he think we could build this for other patients.
He immediately got excited, not just about the technology, but about the impact. We’re very different in how we work. I come from academia, I validate every assumption and move carefully. Alon is a builder. He moves fast, thinks about scale, and turns ideas into real systems. He takes my scientific frameworks and transforms them into scalable technology. That combination, lived experience, research, and engineering, is really the foundation of SymptoLab.
What sets SymptoLab apart?
Most women’s health apps focus on education, community, or basic symptom tracking. And that’s important. Awareness matters. But SymptoLab goes much deeper. We don’t just track symptoms. We analyze them.
Our platform applies structured, longitudinal analysis to complex hormone-driven conditions. That means we look at how symptoms evolve over time, how they interact across organ systems, and how they respond to specific treatments. We use personalized pain calibration, standardized medical terminology, statistical modeling, and machine learning to transform daily symptom data into structured clinical insights.
The goal isn’t just to collect data, but to make that data actionable. We work directly with physicians and integrate into clinical workflows, so doctors can actually use the insights to adjust treatment and make more precise decisions. What really sets us apart is that we’re building a bridge between patient experience and clinical decision-making.
SymptoLab isn’t just another app. It’s a clinical decision-support platform grounded in science.
What motivated you to apply to the Challenge?
I spent six years as a postdoc at NYU in theoretical chemistry, and during that time I really came to appreciate the NYU ecosystem, the intellectual rigor, the interdisciplinary mindset, and the openness to turning research into real-world impact. So applying to the Entrepreneurs Challenge felt very natural.
SymptoLab sits at the intersection of medicine, technology, and data science, and NYU uniquely brings those communities together in a collaborative way. What we’re hoping to gain is mentorship from experienced founders and clinicians, exposure to diverse perspectives, and connections that can help us scale thoughtfully and responsibly.
Competitions like this also push you to sharpen your strategy and communicate your vision clearly. That’s incredibly valuable as we move from research into real-world clinical implementation.
What has been the biggest turning point for you in your startup journey?
The biggest turning point wasn’t a funding milestone or a product launch. It was hearing from patients after our first clinical study ended. When we completed our initial validation study, several participants asked if they could keep using the platform. That surprised me. They told us it helped them regain a sense of control over their disease. For the first time, they could actually see patterns in their symptoms, and understand that their flares weren’t “just stress,” but linked to real hormonal changes. They said having structured data helped them communicate more clearly with their physicians and validate the severity of their pain. For some, it was the first time their pain felt both seen and measurable, and that was incredibly empowering.
Watching data give patients confidence instead of doubt, that’s when I realized this was more than a research project. There are many hard moments in a founder’s journey. But whenever I reach a breaking point, I remember a patient telling me how the platform helped her in ways I hadn’t even anticipated. And that’s what keeps me building.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far?
One of my biggest challenges has been shifting from a purely scientific mindset to an entrepreneurial one. As a researcher, I was trained to believe that if the science is rigorous enough, the results will speak for themselves. In the beginning, I assumed that if we built something scientifically strong, the market would naturally follow.
I quickly learned that innovation alone isn’t enough.
You also need strategy, positioning, partnerships, and a clear path to implementation. To bridge that gap, I actively sought mentors outside of academia – in business strategy, healthcare systems, marketing, and sales. Through those conversations, I started to understand that academia and entrepreneurship operate on completely different timelines and incentives. I had to learn a new language.
That shift has been transformative. It hasn’t meant compromising scientific rigor, it’s meant learning how to turn rigorous science into a product that’s truly scalable and accessible. Because if we truly want this tool to reach women everywhere, we have to build not just the science, but the business, partnerships, and infrastructure that allow us to scale.
What are some recent milestones?
One major milestone was completing our year-long clinical validation study. That laid the scientific foundation for the platform and led to the development of our MVP. Moving from research to a functional product was a huge step for us.
At the same time, we were accepted into the Cornell Tech Runway Startup Postdoc Program, which has been instrumental in helping us transition from academia into venture building and establish strategic collaborations.
Now, we’re launching pilot deployments at Weill Cornell Medicine and NYU Langone to evaluate real-world clinical integration, physician adoption, and patient impact. Seeing the platform move from validation into real clinical settings has been incredibly meaningful. We’ve established a strong scientific foundation. Now we’re focused on integrating into clinical care and scaling responsibly
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs, especially those just starting out?
Entrepreneurship is a tough journey. Many people told me I wasn’t the “right” person to build this, that I was too emotionally attached to the problem, or that as a scientist I wouldn’t understand the business world.
What I’ve come to understand is that proximity to the problem can actually be a strength. Seeing this challenge as both a patient and a scientist gives me clarity, depth, and resilience that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Because I believe in the problem so deeply, I keep going, even when things get difficult. I also learned quickly that most people won’t immediately see your vision. They’ll question the market, the timing, or whether it’s worth pursuing at all. And that’s part of the journey.
Not everyone will believe in your idea, and that’s okay. You don’t need everyone. You need the right people who see what you see and are willing to build alongside you. My advice is simple: work on a problem you genuinely care about. When belief is real, resilience becomes natural.
