Bloomlife: How a D2C digital health company went B2B2C and why

Bloomlife was founded in 2014, making it one of the earliest FemTech companies on the market. Their direct-to-consumer wearable contraction tracker quickly attracted the attention of investors, raising a total of $6 million just two years after launch. The product included a sensor measuring uterine activity that affixed to the belly with adhesive patches and sent the data to a phone app. This enabled parents-to-be to establish a baseline of normal uterine movement and then visualize the changes that happened once they were in labor.  

Bloomlife was constantly receiving funding and awards in the early stages of business, and then it went quiet for years with almost no press coverage between 2017-2022. Fast forward to 2024, and Bloomlife is back. In January of 2024, the company announced that it received FDA clearance for a new product, Bloomlife-MFM Pro, and per the press release, it is now a “prescription based wearable device designed to help healthcare providers measure maternal and fetal heart rate in the patient’s home or in the clinic.” They also announced a partnership with Peri-Gen for real time alerts to physicians for high-risk patients. To top off the excitement, on September 10, Bloomlife announced that they had raised $12.2 million in Series A capital.  

There are some lessons to be learned for digital health companies navigating the waters of transitioning from direct-to-consumer (D2C) to business-to-business (B2B) sales models. Thank you to Eric Dy, CEO of Bloomlife for his time and willingness to share some wisdom with the rest of the health technology community. 

Eric, why did you initially want to create Bloomlife and what role did you think it would play in a pregnancy?  

Our mission and vision as a company has always been around improving birth outcomes. When we started many years ago, we saw two big issues that were ultimately holding back innovation in the maternal and fetal health space.  

The first issue: We felt that there was a gap in technology to screen the health of mom and baby. Everything was stuck in doctor’s offices and healthcare settings.  

The second issue: There was a gap in foundational data. Every other area of medicine has benefited from the generation of large research data sets. We’ve come to understand adverse risk factors that impact health that have led to better screening and diagnostic tools and ultimately interventions. We haven’t seen that happen in maternal health.  

I use the Framingham Heart Study as an example. That longitudinal study has gone on for decades and informed our understanding of heart disease risk factors and prevention interventions.  

When we started, our team thought we needed to build better technology first to ultimately get to better datasets and better health screening. We considered grant funding but realized it would take us decades to gather the amount of data we wanted. So we thought, what if we built and launched a consumer product that was medically accurate but was sold directly to moms?  

Our goal with the launch was to de-risk the device usability and functionality which was intended to be used by moms at home, and build unique foundational longitudinal datasets, and that’s what we did. 

Bloomlife successfully shipped our consumer device to 14,000+ moms around the US and built a dataset looking at physiological changes that occur in a mom’s body during the third trimester. Our plan was to use this information to understand new digital biomarkers and create new predictive models for maternal and fetal health.  

What happened next? What challenges did you face as a direct-to-consumer digital health company?  

By launching the product we planned, we were initially a success. Bloomlife created a D2C device that a mom could wear on their belly to track and time contractions. A challenge was that we were building an entirely new category of product– wearables specifically for pregnant women. It was a new form factor– we were the first to launch a consumer patch.  

On the marketing and business plan side we learned a lot about reaching a population of consumers with 100% guaranteed churn within three months. Pregnant parents were going to deliver a baby and our product wouldn’t be necessary anymore. We had to figure out pricing and lifetime value for something that was used for a short period of time.  

We had to consider – after conducting a regulatory assessment – how we could communicate what we could do without running afoul of the FDA. Measuring fetal heart rate was 100% regulated. Measuring contractions was a gray zone. Bloomlife wasn’t telling people that they were in labor and had to go to the hospital, the device was just collecting data that parents had been doing with a stopwatch for decades. We thought we were in the clear.  

We successfully built a large dataset on uterine and fetal activity, and developed an algorithm to identify labor onset with the same accuracy as a doctor doing a pelvic exam. Bloomlife began discussions with the FDA about how to start the De Novo process for the next iteration of product that could identify preterm birth. Once these discussions started we found out that the FDA wouldn’t support our current product claims and marketing. We agreed to cease what we were doing, basically closed the consumer service, and shifted our business entirely.  

What was that shift like? 

We started a total overall of the company– moving from B2C to B2B2C. We went back to our north star of making the pregnancy experience better for moms and healthcare providers while collecting better data. While contractions were interesting for moms, the providers cared more about improving management of high risk pregnancies. We shifted our device from a contraction monitor to a remote fetal monitor which allowed providers to run a non-stress test for pregnant people at home.  

Essentially I had to build a new business. Bloomlife had to change our product strategy and product focus. The entire tech stack had to be redone, we had to create provider technology that integrated with their workflow, and we had to bring in a regulatory expert in-house. We had to get ISO certification. We had to think about how to support moms in collaboration with their healthcare providers versus moms on their own, and we had to create a new financial model where instead of paying out of pocket, users were being reimbursed by insurance.  

We put up a placeholder website and stopped our consumer sales for years while we were doing this.  

How is Bloomlife doing now?  

We made it to the other side! Doctors prescribe our services. Our company manages logistics and fulfillment, but the care teams review and interpret the data. We integrate into the clinical workflow and make sure that there is automated triage of data which is customizable by practice. To handle liability for providers we provide feedback to the patient about what to do if anything concerning shows up. With the prescription model the provider can also limit how often and how long the patients can use the device and it has to be when there will be clinical oversight of the readings. We are excited about our new round of fundraising and how we can grow the company to improve maternal and child health.  

What lessons learned would you share with other digital health founders navigating B2C to B2B or B2B2C?  

Originally we thought we could run two arms of the company – one serving consumers and one serving providers — at the same time and realized that wasn’t going to be possible. It’s only possible to do that if you are a massive company with different business lines.  

Additionally, so much of how you think about how you do the work – like being a lean start up that iterates frequently – is harder to do in healthcare and you have to be thoughtful when it comes to documentation and reducing risk. You have to understand what you are jumping into once you go into the regulated side of things. You can’t just take your consumer product and expect it to meet FDA requirements as a medical device. You have to make product changes just to even be ready to submit for FDA review.  

B2C marketing is hard because you are at the whim of social media algorithms and ad platforms. It’s incredibly difficult to build something that is going to be viral. When you go B2B2C it is a much, much longer sales cycle, but if you are delivering value, it’s a much more durable sales offering.  

Stay true to vision and mission when times are difficult and make decisions that align with those.  

Thank you, Eric Dy, for sharing your story!  

The interview has been edited for brevity.  

Katie D. McMillan, MPH is the CEO of Well Made Health, LLC, a business strategy consulting firm for health technology companies. She is also a curious researcher and writer focusing on digital health evidence, healthcare innovation, and women’s health. Katie can be reached at katie@wellmadehealth.com or LinkedIn.