Founded by Dianne Ly and Jessica Simonis, who are also the CEO and chief scientific officer, respectively, H.E.R Code launched its first product, known as H.E.R. Code Prenatal + Postnatal, in August.
The product is an oral-melt powder developed based on personal experience and feedback from healthcare practitioners.
One of the main challenges that the product seeks to address is that of low user compliance amongst pregnant women when it comes to taking health supplements.
For instance, obstetricians, GPs and naturopaths have spoken about how patients have struggled with taking supplements, especially during periods of nausea. Yet, healthcare practitioners have limited alternatives to recommend to patients.
“In more than a decade of practice, I prescribed nutritional supplements and phytomedicines to women and their families. One of the most persistent barriers to adherence was simple but significant: whether the patient found the product palatable,” Simonis told NutraIngredients. “That experience reinforced my holistic approach to patient care. It is not enough to consider the intended clinical outcome; we must also consider the experience of taking the product itself.”
Nausea, gag reflex triggers, taste and smell aversion are some of the barriers hindering consistent supplement use among pregnant women.
“Like many women, I had my own struggles with supplementation during pregnancy and postpartum. Across all three of my pregnancies, I struggled to take standard prenatal tablets – gagging on the size of the pills and finding taking simple nutrients was something to dread,” said Ly.
The dual, who used to work for fellow Australian nutraceutical brands Life-Space and Pentavite, hopes to tap into their industry expertise to design products that can improve user compliance and serve as an alternative to conventional pregnancy supplements.
“The oral-melt format wasn’t the starting point or simply a novelty. It came from the problem we were trying to solve together: could we rethink how comprehensive prenatal nutrition is delivered around the realities of pregnancy, while still providing appropriate nutrient doses, and, importantly, create something women would actually want to take every day?” said Simonis.
Technology enabled innovation
Advancements in encapsulation technology have enabled the company to design the product.
One of the main ingredients, iron, is traditionally tougher to work with due to its strong metallic taste.
In this case, the company opted to use a proprietary iron ingredient where iron is micronized and encapsulated.
“Iron was one of the more challenging ingredients, which was one of the reasons we selected a microencapsulated ferric pyrophosphate form. The encapsulation technology helped us manage the sensory characteristics of the iron within the oral-melt formulation, while also having the added benefit of being gentle on the gut,” said Simonis.
Solving this hurdle was only one part of the equation.
In fact, the team went through six rounds of R&D and almost gave up at the fourth round.
“The challenge is that you’re balancing nutrition, chemistry, sensory experience and manufacturing simultaneously,” she explained.
Iron aside, she also highlighted how B-vitamins could play a big role in sensory perception. While iron can contribute metallic notes, B-vitamins and minerals can affect taste and mouthfeel.
“Ingredients can also interact with each other and influence the stability and sensory profile of the finished formulation,” she said.
The formulation is also designed to support the growing fetus with a dual folate design that includes both folic acid and levomefolate (5-MTHF, L-methylfolate).
Not just about formats but nutritional requirements
Ultimately, the dual believes the endpoint is not that oral-melt powder is superior to conventional tablets and capsules.
The fundamental principle is that nutritional formulation should drive the format, rather than the other way around.
Tablets and capsules are established, practical delivery formats with clear advantages. For instance, these are formats that consumers and manufacturers are familiar with and they are generally stable and portable for delivering a broad range of vitamins and minerals.
On the other hand, they also present practical formulation constraints when ingredients like calcium and magnesium are used. Since these two ingredients are required in much larger quantities by weight than many vitamins, combining meaningful amounts of multiple nutrients in one compressed product can result in a large tablet or require several dosage units.
“That does not mean tablets and capsules are inherently unsuitable for pregnancy; they remain appropriate for many products and consumers. Our question was whether a different format could be better built around women’s prenatal nutrition needs and the distinct challenges of this life stage,” said Simonis.
In other words, nutritional objectives were the starting point, followed by the selection of a suitable delivery format. This eventually led the company to go ahead with the oral-melt powder format.
“We do not suggest that one product is better than the other – but rather that women deserve to choose from a format that suits them, without compromising on efficacy, quality and safety,” she said.
