Ovum
Dr. Ariella Heffernan-Marks
Ovum is an intelligent health journal for women. Using AI to encourage consistent logging of symptoms, tracking of biometric data and medical record integration, the app is able to create a comprehensive health profile at any time throughout the user's history. The mission of Ovum’s founder, Dr. Ariella Heffernan-Marks, is to provide a platform where women can understand, manage, and take control of their health, guided by intelligent, personalised insights — ultimately giving them agency over their bodies, for life.
Learn more about OvumServices
- Product Strategy and Development
- UI/UX Design
- Testing Validation
- Commercial Advice
- Creative Direction
- AI Design and Development
- Market Testing and Validation
- Commercial Modelling
- Venture Building
- Growth Strategy
Problem to solve
Women’s health is fragmented, poorly understood, and often reduced to cycle tracking by most existing tools. The challenge was to create something clinically aware yet emotionally intelligent — useful for everyday self-management but also powerful enough to support real-world research.
Bold idea
Reimagining women’s health on their terms, shaped by how they actually live with and talk about their bodies. With a custom overview that adapts in real time to symptoms, goals, and life stages, while allowing users to look back through their history.
“Nakatomi brought with them an incredibly thorough and motivated team of product designers, business strategists, engineers, software developers, and marketing gurus. Without their expertise and unconditional willingness to make sure every deliverable was perfect – Ovum would not have had the success it has.”
Founder
How we got there
A strategy for a new start-up.
Ovum’s initial ambition was multifaceted. The goal was to create a central hub for women’s health — a place to store blood tests, doctor’s reports, track and visualise reproductive hormones, pelvic pain symptoms, cardiovascular advice, and even personalised contraception recommendations. For women without a regular GP, it would be a way to take control of their health and keep everything in one place.
But during our Discovery Phase, something became clear: we needed to align with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians’ model of continuity of care, which emphasises the importance of relationships, information, and ongoing management across providers.
So, we refined the vision. Ovum wasn’t here to replace your GP, it needed to work with them. And instead of trying to solve everything at once, we went back to what mattered most: the founder’s mission to fundamentally change women’s healthcare, for good.
We carved our own space in the market.
There is a myriad of tools that help with women’s reproductive health. Apps for period tracking, fertility, pregnancy, menopause, and pelvic pain do an incredible job of educating women about their body’s hormonal needs and symptoms.
But while reproductive health frequently serves as the foundation for many concerns, there are other issues that remain unaddressed simply because they don’t fall into the women's health category. From chronic illnesses to bone diseases, there are plenty of conditions that need to be monitored and reported.
Medication dosages, side effects, and symptoms have historically been linked to the male body, leading to a shortage of women-specific health data. As a result, many treatments and protocols are not designed for women, often resulting in less effective care. By giving them the ability to monitor their health journey and submit their data to research, Ovum gives women more agency in hospitals, where experiences by women are frequently overlooked.
So instead of focusing solely on reproductive health and cardiovascular health, we decided that the best strategy was to target the whole body — creating a holistic picture of health that’s indisputable in any clinical setting.
This meant that in a mature reproductive health market, we didn't have to struggle to distinguish ourselves. Our audience could keep their beloved apps and still find value in Ovum.
Designing and building the app.
Ovum sets a new benchmark in digital health design by reimagining what a health app can be — not just a tracker, but a personalised, emotionally intelligent health companion built around how women actually experience their bodies. Where most apps track single-use events like periods or steps, Ovum creates a longitudinal health timeline across six key Health Factors: symptoms, medication, lifestyle, nutrition, reproductive health, and appointments. Each Factor works together seamlessly to deliver personalised insights and spot patterns unique to each user.
Under the hood, Ovum uses powerful technology to give women more agency over their health. Vector memory resurfaces past symptoms or lab results when they become relevant again, while users decide what stays or goes. Users can also opt in to contribute their anonymised data to ethically governed women’s health research — a true pay-it-forward model built on consent and trust.
Ovum is calm, intelligent, and deeply intuitive. Helping users feel seen, not processed. It challenges the femtech category to evolve, offering a new value proposition: that meaningful design can improve outcomes, not just interfaces.
The impact on women.
In its pilot phase, Ovum achieved an NPS of 62 — early proof that the design isn’t just functional, it’s meaningful. Even pre-launch, it has earned the trust of advisors across medicine, research, and insurance, and is already sparking conversation in Forbes and The Australian.
Ovum’s impact goes beyond awareness. It’s creating real, long-term change. By giving women ownership of their health data and the option to anonymously contribute to ethically governed research, it opens the door to better care not just for women today, but for future generations.
Ovum’s success proves the commercial power of meaningful, movement-led design. It’s a signal to the market that when you build around the real needs of people, not product categories, you don’t just make a better app. You make better healthcare.
