How Vagilant works
A step-by-step walkthrough of using Vagilant: wearing the biosensor liner, reading the nine-pad grid, completing the online assessment and getting your insights.
Vagilant has three parts: a liner you wear, an assessment you complete online, and a report you get back. The whole thing takes about a day of ordinary wear and five minutes of your attention.
Step 1: Wear the liner
The Vagilant liner is worn exactly like an ordinary panty liner. There is nothing to charge, nothing to insert, no app to pair over Bluetooth, and nothing visible to anyone else. You put it on and get on with your day.
On the underside sits a grid of nine colorimetric biosensor pads. As you wear the liner, each pad responds to what it comes into contact with and changes color. Nine pads rather than one make the readout a pattern instead of a single value, which is what makes it possible to tell different kinds of change apart.
Timing matters.
Vagilant is designed for use outside of menstrual flow. Blood interferes with the readout. The assessment asks where you are in your cycle so your results can be interpreted in context. See how vaginal health changes across your cycle for why that matters.
Step 2: Read the grid
When the liner has been worn long enough, you take it off and look at the nine pads. You are not interpreting anything at this stage, just noting what color you see.
The online assessment walks you through the grid one pad at a time, with reference images alongside each question, so you are matching what you see to a picture rather than trying to name a shade from memory. If a pad is ambiguous, you can say so; the assessment accounts for uncertainty rather than forcing a guess.
Step 3: Complete the assessment
Alongside the pad readings, the assessment asks about context: where you are in your cycle, any symptoms you have noticed, recent antibiotics, sexual activity, and products you have used. These are the same factors a clinician would ask about, and they change how a reading should be read.
You can save and come back: the assessment is stepped, and your answers are stored as you go. Nothing is submitted until you review it.
Step 4: Get your insights
Vagilant combines the pad pattern with your answers and produces a written report in plain language. It tells you what was observed, what is typical, what stands out, and, where relevant, what would be worth raising with a doctor.
Reports are saved to your account, so repeat use builds a history. That history is the point. A single reading is a snapshot, and a snapshot of vaginal health is rarely informative on its own; a pattern across several weeks usually is. More on what a report actually contains.
What it does not do
Vagilant does not diagnose anything.
It will not tell you that you have bacterial vaginosis, a yeast infection, or an STI. It cannot tell you whether you need antibiotics, and it is not a replacement for a swab, a lab test or an examination. What it can do is help you notice change and describe it accurately to someone who can diagnose.
If you want the detail on how the sensing works and what evidence currently sits behind it, including what has not yet been independently validated, that is on the science page.
Privacy
Your answers and readings are encrypted, are never sold or shared with advertisers, and you can delete your account and everything in it at any time. See the privacy policy.
Getting started
Creating an account and taking the assessment is free. Vagilant has not launched commercially yet. How to get Vagilant covers where availability stands.