Oxford startup secures Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award

Oxford-based Peripear has secured an Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award and a £74,974 grant for its development of a wearable device designed to prevent perineal trauma during labour.

The funding will support continued product development ahead of the company’s planned first-in-human study.

Nina van Schaick, co-founder and COO of Peripear as well as a midwife who trained at Oxford Brookes, said: “I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to see this gap.

“I was incredibly lucky to meet my co-founder, Eviatar Natan, right as my frustration about the lack of translation of evidence into practice had peaked.

“There was a proven mechanism that could reduce injuries occurring in up to 90 per cent of vaginal births, and it was being left out of clinical pathways simply because no standardised tool existed to deliver it.”

Peripear is developing what it describes as the world’s first automated perineal thermotherapy wearable, designed to prevent perineal trauma during childbirth.

A perineal thermotherapy wearable is an emerging medical device.

It is a hands‑free warm compress device used on the perineum during the second stage of labour to reduce severe tearing and episiotomies while improving maternal comfort.

Ms van Schaick added: “I’m a farmer’s granddaughter, and when I started practising over 14 years ago, I asked: where is the tool I need to implement this evidence? I looked around and realised we were still asking clinicians to improvise.

“Peripear is what happens when the person who has lived the problem, both personally and professionally, meets the person who can help her build the solution.”