As innovations in the FemTech field continue to evolve, the future of women’s health holds promise of improved equity and accessibility. In this blog, Lavinia Pamparau, NHS Navigator for DigitalHealth.London, explains how FemTech solutions are tackling current health disparities and enabling women to proactively manage their health and wellbeing.
Stemming from a historical lack of representation in medical research and gender bias, the lack of women-specific health care solutions has long been compounded by socioeconomic factors, ethnicity, and geographic disparities.
In particular, women from diverse backgrounds (those who identify as being from global majority, are neurodiverse and/or disabled) often experience poorer health and care outcomes. This has been highlighted by high rates of maternal mortality and childbirth within these communities, as well as the barriers they face in accessing vital health services for women, such as reproductive health care. and support for female-specific conditions (e.g. endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), and menopause).
As women’s health care and health disparities increasingly become a national priority, new digital health technology companies dedicated to developing women’s-specific health care solutions have emerged. Known as FemTech (Female Technology), the sector encompasses a diverse range of software, devices and diagnostics designed to address the unique health needs of women through innovative technology.
The FemTech sector is experiencing meteoric growth: more than 60% of FemTech startups were founded in the five years to 2022, and is expected to be a $100 billion industry by 2030 (Femhealth Insights). FemTech innovations demonstrate significant benefits, including the ability to address health equity, diversity and inclusion by:
- Remove barriers to access to healthcare – particularly for underserved populations – while giving women equitable access to clinically safe technologies (diagnostic, therapeutic or preventive)
- Closing data and evidence gaps on women’s health, tackling gender bias in datasets
- Empower women to make informed choices about their health decisions by providing reliable, easily accessible and personalized health information
Collaborative efforts between the NHS, academia, policymakers and industry are needed to drive meaningful change in women’s healthcare and accelerate the adoption of innovative solutions that tackle health inequalities for women across the UK. These include:
Improving education and awareness of the enormous potential of FemTech
- Efforts to champion FemTech opportunities are underway, such as collaborations with FemTech Insider on FemTechTV, and a series of interviews exploring innovation in women’s health. Organizations like Women of Wearables (WoW) also play a central role in inspire and connect individuals in this space.
Increase female representation among researchers, founders, investors, managers and decision-makers
- Reflecting the whole population and their specific health care needs is essential to ensure equality is embedded in our systems, structures and processes. Even though FemTech is largely driven by women entrepreneurs – with more than 70% of FemTech companies having at least one female founder, which contrasts with the average of 20% for new companies (Pitchbook, 2021) – there is still a shortage of women in leadership positions. in digital, technology and AI (around 20 to 25 percent of leaders are women). In 35 percent of FemTech patents, women are listed as inventors, compared to 19 percent in other technology fields (for example, 22 percent of AI workers are women).
Improving support and access to digital resources for NHS staff and patients
- We need to pay special attention to women’s health professionals and women. Initiatives such as the Digital Academy and DigitalHealth.London Scholarship for Digital Pioneers are examples of programs facilitating the adoption of innovations among NHS staff.
Bridging the gender data gap
- Introduction of new NHS datasets focused on women’s health outcomes highlighted in annual report NHS priorities and operational planning guidance, will help ensure that women’s health considerations are integrated into decision-making about how clinical services are designed, delivered and promoted. FemTech offers huge potential to collect better data and improve women’s health knowledge, while empowering them and improving health outcomes. For example, speech recognition is 70% less likely to accurately understand women than men because many algorithms are trained on male datasets.
Tailored training and networking programs for FemTech entrepreneurs and inventors
- The National Health Innovation Networks play a central role in helping innovators drive the development of technology solutions to address today’s women’s health challenges. Established by NHS England in 2013 to deliver innovation at pace and scale, the network brings together the NHS, industry, academia, the third sector and local organizations to improve health outcomes and generate economic growth.
- Specialized programs like DigitalHealth.London Accelerator, FemTech LaboratoryTHE NHS Innovation Accelerator And the FemTech Acceleration program play a key role in supporting FemTech founders. The latter in particular has been strategically designed to address the challenges outlined in the Women’s Health Strategy for England, by empowering small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to innovate at an early stage in health women through tailored support, expert-led workshops and mentoring. It was led by the Health Innovation Network (HIN) South London and in collaboration with the 15 Health Innovation Networks and various partners from across the UK, using funding from Innovate UK under the Biomedical Catalyst .
Investment in the FemTech industry:
- Adequate financing, including government grants and venture capital investments, is essential for the growth and sustainability of FemTech companies. While awareness of the potential of the FemTech market is growing, investments remain far too unbalanced and underexploited.
- Less than 2 percent of all venture capital is invested in women-led companies, with 1.4 percent of equity investment in FemTech and 4 percent of research and development (R&D) funding in field of health care aimed at women’s health. Addressing this disparity is essential to ensure the continued advancement of FemTech innovations and their integration into the NHS. An investment of $300 million in women’s health research for just three diseases could generate approximately $13 billion for the global economy. (Access to Women’s Health Matters, WHAM Report)
Femtech Startups Leading Change to Close the Gap in Women’s Health
A wave of FemTech start-ups are developing innovative solutions tailored to meet the unique needs and challenges faced by women:
- Ellescope, a former Accelerating FemTech program company, is on a mission to close health inequities in maternity care through more reliable and accurate screening for maternal psychosocial risk, which disproportionately affects socially disadvantaged women. The company developed MpRisk, a predictive model-based tool developed for healthcare professionals to more accurately assess and stratify psychosocial risk during pregnancy, enabling personalized care and improved outcomes.
- Flowery, another Accelerating FemTech alumni company, is an AI-powered triage solution that provides streamlined, personalized, and accessible gynecologic care to underserved women around the world. Their platform collects curated, longitudinal data to identify patients for trials, as well as data assets to facilitate drug discovery, enabling better research in the field.
At HIN and DigitalHealth.London, we are proud to champion FemTech solutions as essential tools to improve women’s health services that help close the healthcare access gap. Our various programs support FemTech startups through mentoring, financing opportunities and access to health networks. In doing so, we aim to amplify their impact and accelerate the adoption of innovative solutions that tackle health inequalities for women across the UK.
Learn more about Accelerate FemTech and how our programs supporting NHS staff, academia and industry in the digital health landscape.
The acceleration of FemTech was achieved by the South London Health Innovation Network (HIN) and partners (the network, CW Innovation, Mills & Reeves and others), using funding from Innovate UK under the Biomedical Catalyst in collaboration with the Medical Research Council.
