Medtech brings hormone monitoring home
For years, clinicians and researchers alike have been begging wellness enthusiasts to not believe everything they hear on social media.
Since 2023, one topic driving health experts up the wall is the idea of “hormone balancing,” a trend focused on regulating the body’s own hormone cascade to avoid symptoms ranging from fatigue to weight gain. If you believe the average hormone balancing influencer, simply eating a certain diet and timing your exercise right should balance out those pesky hormones.
Of course, the way hormones work is much more complicated than that. And in an effort to bring more evidence-based insights to this trendy field, medtech innovators are trying to quantify it for the average wellness consumer.
The story: A new home test from startup Eli Health, which allows you to check your cortisol and progesterone levels at home, is positioned to capitalize on this consumer desire for hormone monitoring.
- The product, which was showcased at CES 2025, is called the Hormometer. It is the first at-home device to offer both real-time and long-term health insights from hormones measured in the saliva.
How it works: Hormometer users can check their cortisol and progesterone levels with the devices simple testing process.
- The user places the test tip into their mouth—much like a stereotypical under-the-tongue thermometer—for one minute.
- They then scan the test’s visual window, which looks like a COVID or pregnancy test, using the Eli Health app. The app then gives the user the results almost instantly, along with personalized recommendations regarding sleep, stress, fitness, and fertility.
How actionable is this data?: Of course, how useful these results and personalized recommendations are depends on the accuracy of the data as well as the user’s own health history.
- The Hormometer is FDA registered, but that does not mean the same as approval or clearance. Users have to go off of Eli Health’s own claims of their research, which they say has yielded 97 and 94 percent agreement with FDA-approved lab tests for cortisol and progesterone, respectively.
- What this device really offers users is not necessarily a better test—time will tell—but definitely a more convenient, accessible test. Other hormone tests require waiting days or weeks for lab results, which may or may not be covered by insurance. In comparison, Eli Health’s product will start at an $8 per month subscription price point.
- While the jury may be out for hormone balancing practices as used by people without hormonal conditions, easy access to this kind of personal health data may be especially helpful for patients managing chronic hormonal conditions, such as infertility or perimenopause.