Alexandra “Ali” Haessler, MD, is the rare female medical device entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. In 2014 the San Francisco-based private-practice urogynecologist patented a wearable neuromodulation device to treat women with overactive bladder (OAB), after founding the neuromodulation company FemPulse LLC in 2011. Some 16 million women in the US and 300 million around the world are affected by OAB, according to Haessler. Yet treatments are onerous and comparatively few women opt for therapy.
Haessler, who is also an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, believes FemPulse’s device could help many of those women....