Introducing Romi
Our Story: The Gaps That Shape Our Mission
Four women. Four mothers. One pattern we couldn't ignore.
We're all close to our moms — the kind of close where you notice things. You notice when she seems more tired than usual. When she's quieter at dinner. When she snaps at something small and then apologizes in a way that feels like she's apologizing for herself, not just the moment. When she stops sleeping through the night but tells you she's fine. When she starts forgetting things — words, names, where she put her keys — and laughs it off, but you can see it scares her a little.
We watched our moms push through hot flashes at work, lose sleep for months without answers, and chalk mood changes up to stress because no one had ever offered them another explanation. We watched them go to appointments and come home with nothing — or worse, come home with prescriptions for things that weren't quite right, because no one had asked the right questions. We watched capable, intelligent, deeply self-aware women get completely sidelined by something their own doctors couldn't name.
And here's what breaks our hearts: none of them knew they weren't alone. They each thought this was just their experience — their body being difficult, their hormones being unpredictable, their age catching up with them. The isolation of that is something we felt as daughters, watching from the outside and not knowing how to help.
What we've learned since — through research, through interviews with over 100 women, through conversations with clinicians and specialists — is that our moms' experiences aren't unusual. They're the norm. Most women enter the menopause transition without any framework for what's happening to their bodies, without tools that track what actually matters, and without a healthcare system prepared to meet them where they are.
We started Romi because we kept asking the same question: why didn't our moms have better answers? And then we started asking a different one: what would it have looked like if they did?
That's what we're building. Not for some abstract user — for the women who raised us, and for every woman navigating this without the support she deserves.
The Quiet Crisis in Menopause
They call it a quiet crisis. For midlife women, it's loud, ignored, and massively underdiagnosed.
In 2025, menopause research funding remains a fraction of what's needed. Here's the reality:
Just 14–15% of women aged 45–64 receive a formal menopause diagnosis each year — even though nearly all experience the transition, and the majority experience significant symptoms.
70–80% of symptomatic women receive zero treatment and never discuss their options with a clinician — leaving hot flashes, sleep loss, and mood disruption completely unaddressed.
3 in 4 women report menopause symptoms as moderately or extremely problematic at work. 44% take undisclosed sick leave, costing tens of millions in lost productivity annually.
40% of perimenopausal women seeking care report feeling misdiagnosed, and fewer than 7% of primary care providers feel adequately prepared to treat menopause.
And the consequences don't stop at discomfort. Undiagnosed menopause accelerates osteoporosis risk and cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in postmenopausal women — driven by unmanaged estrogen decline and its cascading effects on the body.
The chain reaction looks like this:
No tracking → No pattern recognition → No diagnosis → No treatment → Chronic sleep loss, brain fog, bone density loss, heart disease.
Menopause StatReal-World Impact70–80% of symptomatic women go untreatedNo relief, no care pathwayOnly 14–15% receive a formal diagnosis annuallyMass underdiagnosis across the lifespan44% hide sick days due to symptoms$27M+ in annual productivity losses40% feel misdiagnosed when they seek careClinician knowledge gap at every level
This isn't just a patient awareness problem — it's a systemic failure at every level of care. The consequences reach every system in the body: cardiovascular, skeletal, neurological, metabolic. This is about understanding the whole picture, and building a future where midlife women are no longer the afterthought.
Romi fixes the tracking gap first.
What Romi Stands For
Romi is built on three pillars:
Conversation. We're bringing science into everyday life — the kind of conversations that should have happened at the doctor's office, at the kitchen table, between mothers and daughters. We're contextualizing research and making it something you can actually use.
Design. Health tools should feel human. A bracelet you want to wear. An app that speaks to you, not at you. We believe the best health technology disappears into your life rather than demanding you change it.
Body literacy. Understanding your body isn't a luxury — it's self-trust, self-advocacy, and a lifelong tool for navigating your health. From the first signs of perimenopause to postmenopause and everything in between, you deserve to know what's happening and why.
We believe in intuition and evidence. Access and empathy. No jargon. No gatekeeping. Just real insights that help you make informed choices — and help your doctor do the same.
What to Expect from This Blog
This blog is our public notebook. We research, converse, and share what we're learning — starting with our own mothers' experiences and expanding outward to every woman we talk to along the way. We're building in the open and learning out loud.
Here's what you'll find:
Clear, accessible breakdowns of emerging menopause research
Interviews with founders, researchers, OB-GYNs, and menopause specialists
Stories from real women navigating the transition
Our behind-the-scenes journey as first-time founders
Spotlights on tools, ideas, and startups pushing this space forward
Follow Along
We're building a community and launching a product to close the menopause diagnosis gap — one data point, one conversation, one woman at a time.
We know everyone has stories. We want to hear them — because we have exciting things coming soon: pop-up events, media campaigns, podcasts, blog series, and more. Stay tuned.
Website: romi.care
Instagram: theromiproject
Email: hello@romi.care
