This week's stories reinforce a trend we've been tracking throughout 2026: women's health is becoming part of mainstream healthcare infrastructure rather than remaining a standalone category.

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 🏆 General healthcare expands into women's chronic pain with Swing acquisition

• 🔄 Men's telehealth platform GoRocky acquires Kindred Women's Health

• 🔒 Health data privacy back in focus for period apps and wearables

• 🔥 Coalition calls for $20bn national strategy to close the women’s health gap

Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com

💰 Capital flows

📌 US: XRHealth acquires Swing Therapeutics, expanding into digital therapeutics for fibromyalgia and chronic pain. Around 90% of people diagnosed with fibromyalgia are women, making it one of the most female-predominant chronic pain conditions. Swing developed the first FDA-authorised prescription digital therapeutic for fibromyalgia alongside a virtual specialty care platform. The acquisition now brings fibromyalgia care into XRHealth’s broader digital therapeutics platform - another example of women’s health being acquired by general healthcare companies. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 PHILIPPINES: Men’s telehealth platform GoRocky acquires Kindred Women’s Health. CEO Kiyanusch Braun said this move was driven by the fact that more than 60% of GoRocky’s weight management patients are women, despite its men’s health branding. The company has acquired selected assets of Kindred, including its brand, customer base, flagship clinic and parts of its team, after Kindred had previously scaled back operations. GoRocky plans to maintain and expand the Kindred brand into areas including menopause, metabolic health, mental health and sexual health. It’s a deal that highlights how established digital health platforms are using women’s health as a strategic growth opportunity - even if Kindred’s trajectory suggests the challenges of building standalone women’s health businesses. (Continue reading: The Business Manual)

📌 USA: Wildflower Health acquires Every Mother to expand pelvic floor care. Pelvic health issues impact millions of women across pregnancy, postpartum and midlife. Now, women’s health company Wildflower Health has acquired digital pelvic floor platform Every Mother, adding clinically-validated rehabilitation programmes to its women's health platform. The signal is the broader trend towards more comprehensive women's health platforms, rather than standalone point solutions - and a recognition of the importance of pelvic health to our overall health. (Continue reading: Wildflower Health)

📌 US: Eli Lilly invests in smart ring company ŌURA, signalling a broader bet on the emerging GLP-1 support economy. Just weeks after announcing a commercial partnership, Lilly has made an equity investment in the wearable company, which recently revealed that more than 100,000 members are already logging GLP-1 use alongside continuous data on sleep, recovery, stress, menstrual cycles, fertility and pregnancy. While the companies previously stated that no user data would be shared, the investment suggests pharma is looking towards platforms that support adherence, engagement and long-term outcomes while on GLP-1s. For women’s health, it also highlights the growing strategic value of platforms capable of incorporating female physiology into more personalised, connected models of care. (Continue reading: Oura)

📌 UK/US: Juno Bio raises US$3.8m and opens first sequencing laboratory dedicated to women’s health. This investment represents a strong bet on the clinical potential of the vaginal microbiome, as Juno Bio evolves from a direct-to-consumer testing company towards clinical diagnostics and proprietary women’s health datasets. The company uses next-generation sequencing to analyse the vaginal microbiome, screening for around 10,000 bacteria and fungi alongside four common STIs. Having sold more than 20,000 tests, Juno Bio will now use the funding to scale its platform and newly opened CLIA-certified laboratory in California. (Continue reading: Tech.eu)

📌 INDIA: Maternal care startup Promom raises Rs 30 crore (c.US$3.5m) from Fireside Ventures. Promom’s flagship breast pump was developed specifically for Indian mothers following research into breast anatomy, nipple size and lactation flow, reflecting growing demand for locally designed maternal health technology. Alongside its direct-to-consumer business, the company has early clinical adoption and has partnered with 29 hospitals and maternity centres across India. (Continue reading: Economic Times)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 UK: Mendara launches anonymous birth trauma support app ahead of planned Nesta spin-out. Developed alongside the Birth Trauma Association and incubated within Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good, this platform combines anonymous, facilitator-led peer support with trauma-informed digital tools for women recovering from difficult or traumatic births. AI is used to support facilitator training and quality assurance while keeping the intervention human-led. The broader signal is growing interest in scalable emotional support that helps women process difficult experiences before they reach the threshold for specialist mental health services. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Iris Telehealth launches integrated women’s behavioural health service. Rather than referring women only after they experience significant mental health distress, this new model introduces behavioural health support at predefined milestones throughout the care journey - be that fertility, pregnancy, postpartum or menopause. The launch follows a survey of more than 1,000 women, which found that although 86% felt their healthcare provider recognised the impact of daily responsibilities on their mental health, 30% received no specific treatment or support for stress, while 39% had delayed or avoided behavioural healthcare because of caregiving responsibilities, time constraints or emotional burden. (Continue reading: Iris)

📌 US: Stardust faces scrutiny over health data privacy. Following years of debate over the privacy of period tracking apps, new research from Mozilla claims that Stardust shares users’ sensitive reproductive health information with third-party analytics firm RudderStack, despite marketing itself as privacy-focused. Mozilla assessed six period tracking apps, rating Euki the strongest for privacy, while Flo and Clue also scored relatively well - although both companies disputed aspects of Mozilla’s assessment. (Continue reading: BBC)

📌 GLOBAL: EFF report highlights lack of transparency among wearable makers. This week it’s not just period apps in the spotlight over data privacy. A new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has found that most leading smartwatch, smart ring and fitness tracker companies still do not publish basic transparency reports explaining how they respond to government requests for user data. While not focused specifically on women’s health, the findings are relevant as wearables like Oura, Whoop, Apple and more increasingly collect menstrual cycle, fertility and other sensitive health data. (Continue reading: EFF)

📄 Policy watch: risks and opportunities

📌 US: Women’s health organisations call for US$20bn national strategy to close the women’s health gap. A coalition led by the Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Women First Research Coalition has unveiled a roadmap urging Congress to invest US$20 billion over the next decade. The strategy brings together many long-standing priorities: increased funding for women’s health research, stronger clinical training, improved sex-specific data infrastructure, regulatory reforms and greater public awareness. (Continue reading: SWHR)

📌 US: ACOG issues new guidance on collaboration between ob-gyns and doulas. As evidence continues to grow that doulas can improve maternal outcomes, including reducing preterm births, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has published new guidance encouraging closer collaboration and communication between obstetricians and doulas. (Continue reading: ACOG)

That’s all for this week! If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com and do make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and you can connect with me directly.

Anna

As always, free subscribers receive a preview of this week’s analysis. Upgrade below to read the full article.

What if the greatest success of women’s health is that it eventually stops looking like a separate market?

For years we’ve measured progress in women’s health by counting specialist companies, dedicated investors and businesses explicitly serving women.

But if the long-term ambition has always been to integrate women’s health into mainstream healthcare, we should expect those boundaries to become less distinct over time.

After tracking every verified women’s health funding round during the first half of 2026, and analysing more than 30 mergers and acquisitions over the same period, - the evidence suggests we may be seeing the first signs of that transition.

A market that’s changing shape

For years, one question has dominated conversations about women’s health:

Read more

Therapeutics platform XRHealth has acquired digital therapeutics company Swing Therapeutics. The deal adds Stanza, the first digital behavioral therapy indicated for treatments of fibromyalgia, as well as Swing Care, the company’s specialist virtual clinic for fibromyalgia and chronic pain.

Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain condition with no cure affecting around 10 million people in the US and it is estimated to affect women in 80–90% of cases. The acquisition highlights how conditions that disproportionately affect women are increasingly becoming strategic priorities for larger healthcare companies.

Founded in 2019, Swing Therapeutics developed Stanza, now an FDA De Novo-authorised prescription digital therapeutic for fibromyalgia based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). In a Phase 3 randomised controlled trial published in The Lancet, the programme demonstrated significant improvements in fibromyalgia severity, pain intensity, fatigue, sleep and depression.

Beyond Stanza, Swing also built Swing Care, a virtual specialty clinic that combines the digital therapeutic with medication management, mental health support and personalised coaching. According to the company, 88% of patients reported an improvement in overall wellbeing after one year of treatment, with just over half saying they felt “much improved” or better.

For XRHealth, the acquisition expands its platform beyond virtual and augmented reality into smartphone-based digital therapeutics, wearable technologies and virtual care. The company, which is licensed across 22 US states and delivers care through Medicare, Veterans Affairs and commercial insurance, said the combined platform will bring together AI, licensed clinicians and multiple digital care technologies under a single reimbursable model.

“The future of therapeutic care is technology. Not as a supplement to medicine, but as the medicine itself - delivered through AI, monitored by licensed clinicians, reimbursed by insurance, and continuously improved by outcomes data,” said XRHealth CEO Eran Orr.

“We are building the infrastructure for the next era of medicine.”

Fibromyalgia has historically received relatively little attention despite affecting millions of people, the vast majority of whom are women. Rather than remaining the focus of specialist companies, it is increasingly becoming part of broader healthcare platforms - another sign that conditions disproportionately affecting women are being integrated into mainstream healthcare.

Other innovations in the space include the CE-marked Remedee Labs device, NeuroMetrix’s Quell device, and the newly FDA-approved medication Tonmya.

You may also like to read:

UK startup Mendara has launched an anonymous peer support platform for women recovering from difficult and traumatic births, combining facilitator-led group sessions with trauma-informed digital tools to address a longstanding gap in postnatal support.

The platform opened early access to a small group of founding members during Birth Trauma Awareness Week. Developed alongside the Birth Trauma Association and incubated within Nesta, the UK's innovation agency for social good, Mendara is approaching spin-out as an independent company.

“There are very few places where women can go to process what happened during or after giving birth. There are even fewer that are both safe and accessible,” said founder Lilit Mesyan.

“Mendara offers peer support in a space held by a trauma-informed facilitator, allowing members to feel truly validated and heard, especially around a subject that is still largely taboo.”

Bridging the gap between clinical care and unsupported recovery

Around one in three women describe their birth as traumatic, yet access to specialist support remains limited. Mendara says that an estimated 30,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following childbirth each year, while many more experience psychological distress without meeting the threshold for formal clinical intervention.

Mendara aims to bridge the gap between clinical mental health services and unsupported recovery through facilitated peer support.

Sessions are intentionally kept small and delivered entirely through text via the app, allowing women to participate anonymously using nicknames rather than their real identities. Between sessions, members can access trauma-informed digital tools designed to help them continue processing their experiences.

Birth trauma was identified as an area of unmet need by Nesta’s mission studio, and the concept was then validated through facilitated peer support sessions and digital product testing.

The model was developed alongside the Birth Trauma Association (BTA), with the charity’s Chair, Rachael McGrath, leading many of the platform’s early facilitated sessions. McGrath came to the role through her own experience of a twin pregnancy complicated by a life-changing placental abruption, emergency caesarean birth, and severe postpartum complications.

“During my recovery, connecting with others who truly understood the impact of a traumatic birth became an invaluable part of my healing journey,” said Rachael.

“At least 30,000 women in the UK receive a PTSD diagnosis following birth every year, and many more are struggling without ever meeting the clinical threshold. Every woman who comes to Mendara deserves to be heard, and that is exactly what this does.”

Human facilitation supported by AI

Mendara’s model centres on trained human facilitators, with artificial intelligence supporting facilitator training and providing in-session guidance rather than replacing human interaction.

According to the company, every group is led by a paid facilitator with lived experience of birth trauma, with AI helping maintain quality and consistency as the service scales.

Rachael said one of the biggest risks in poorly designed peer support is what she describes as “double invalidation” - where women seek support only to leave feeling dismissed again. Mendara’s facilitation model has been designed to ensure every participant’s experience is acknowledged and validated.

The company said its goal is to build a model that can be replicated consistently, with the quality of support no longer dependent on geography, waiting lists or access to private care.

Plans to expand beyond birth trauma

Mendara currently operates on a direct-to-consumer subscription model, providing unlimited access to facilitated group sessions and between-session support tools.

Longer term, the company plans to work with employers, insurers and healthcare providers through a B2B2C model. It also intends to expand the platform beyond birth trauma, partnering with charities and patient organisations to develop facilitated peer support for other health conditions and life experiences.

The launch reflects growing interest in emotional support models that sit between routine care and specialist mental health services. Rather than waiting until women reach the threshold for clinical intervention, companies are increasingly exploring how facilitated peer support, digital tools and community-based care can help people process difficult experiences earlier.

It also highlights a broader shift in digital health away from technology replacing human interaction and towards technology enabling it at scale. In Mendara’s case, AI is used to support facilitators behind the scenes, while the core intervention remains human-led—a model the company hopes can eventually be applied across a wider range of health conditions.

ICYMI: We’ve published two major market analyses on FutureFemHealth Pro over the past week:

• 📊 Q2 2026 Women’s Health Funding Analysis - every verified global funding round analysed by health need, company focus, geography, modality and investor type.

• 🤝 H1 2026 Women’s Health M&A Analysis - co-authored with Stephanie Silverman of Solstice, we examine what 30+ acquisitions reveal about how women’s health is becoming embedded across mainstream healthcare.

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 💰 Bayer’s contraception business attracts €3bn investment

• 📈 Menopause moves further into mainstream retail

• 🏥 FDA authorises new tech designed to improve hysterectomy safety.

• 📊 Women’s health worth £36bn to the UK economy, says McKinsey

Have news to share? anna@futurefemhealth.com

💰 Capital flows

📌 GERMANY: Bayer secures €3bn investment in contraceptives business while retaining control. Long-acting reversible contraception remains one of the largest and most commercially established areas of women’s health. Bayer has agreed a €3 billion financing deal with Apollo, which will take a minority stake in a newly created entity housing its contraceptives business, including products such as Mirena and Kyleena. Bayer will retain majority ownership and full operational control, using the deal to strengthen its balance sheet while highlighting the strategic value of one of women’s health’s largest pharmaceutical franchises. (Continue reading: Reuters)

📌 US: Vertex acquires Crinetics in $10bn endocrine disease deal. Women’s health isn’t the primary focus here, but the acquisition includes a late-stage treatment for congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a rare endocrine disorder that can affect hormone production, fertility and reproductive health in women. The deal is part of Vertex’s broader strategy to expand beyond cystic fibrosis into endocrine diseases. (Continue reading: Vertex)

📌 ESTONIA: Muun Health secures €700k grant for hormone-monitoring patch. One of the biggest limitations of hormone testing today is that it provides only occasional snapshots rather than a fuller picture of hormonal changes over time. Muun Health has secured a €700,000 grant from Enterprise Estonia to advance development of its Smart Patch platform, with funding supporting work on the sensor technology needed to enable real-time hormone measurement from interstitial fluid. The company's long-term ambition is to develop a continuous hormone monitor (Continue reading: Muun Health)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 US: Menopause brand Stripes expands from four to 448 Ulta Beauty stores. Menopause is continuing its move into the mainstream consumer market and becoming a permanent beauty and wellness category. Case in point is Stripes - founded by actor Naomi Watts - which has seen its presence increase to 448 Ulta stores in just six months. “You can walk into any local store and access period care or postpartum care, and yet, for years, women have not been able to have the same level of access for menopause care.” (Continue reading: Glossy)

📌 US: FDA authorises new technology designed to improve hysterectomy safety. Hysterectomy is the second most common surgery performed on women, yet some procedures still require more invasive techniques or carry safety risks. Claria Medical has received FDA marketing authorisation for a new device designed to make minimally invasive hysterectomies safer and more efficient. It was also granted De Novo classification and accepted into the FDA’s Safer Technologies Program, which supports devices expected to offer meaningful safety improvements over current standards of care. (Continue reading: Claria)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 UK: McKinsey says closing the women’s health gap could add £36bn to the UK economy. Building on its landmark global analysis, which estimated that closing the women’s health gap could unlock US$1 trillion in annual economic value, McKinsey has now applied the same approach to the UK. This new report estimates that improving women’s health could add £36 billion to UK GDP each year by 2040, while giving every woman around 10 additional healthy days annually. It argues improving women’s health should be viewed as an economic priority as well as a healthcare one.(Continue reading: McKinsey Health Institute)

📌 US: One in three women over 35 are unsure whether they’re in perimenopause. Given there is no single diagnostic test for perimenopause, it’s perhaps inevitable that many women struggle to recognise the transition. But a study of more than 7,600 US women by Flo Health found that 34% of women aged 35+ were unsure of their reproductive stage, rising to 42% among those aged 40–44. Flo says the findings highlight the continued need for better education and support alongside improved diagnostics. (Continue reading: Flo Health)

📌 GLOBAL: New report calls for women’s blood disorders to be recognised as a women’s health priority. Bleeding disorders, heavy menstrual bleeding and pregnancy-related blood complications have historically received limited attention despite affecting millions of women worldwide. A new Lancet Haematology Commission sets out a global roadmap to improve diagnosis, treatment, education and research, arguing that haematological care should be better integrated into women’s health across the life course. (Continue reading: Cleveland Clinic)

📄 Policy watch: risks and opportunities

📌 UK: Draft guidance backs rapid endometriosis tests for NHS use. With women in England and Wales often waiting up to a decade for diagnosis, draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends that two tests - EndoSure and Endotest - be made available on the NHS. A third test, DotEndo, requires more evidence before it can be recommended. The NHS is often criticised for being slow to adopt innovation, and, with gynaecology waiting lists still in the hundreds of thousands, the real test will be whether patients ultimately get diagnosed and treated more quickly if the guidance is finalised. (Continue reading: The Guardian)

✅ Hiring now

📌 US/ Remote: Event Marketing Manager, Monarch

That’s all for this week! If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com and do make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and you can connect with me directly.

Anna

^{This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical or financial advice.}

This piece is co-written by Anna O'Sullivan and Stephanie Silverman, CFA pairing FutureFemHealth's deal tracking and analysis with Solstice's capital markets analysis of the strategic and financial trends shaping women's health M&A.

Big capital showed up for women’s health in H1 2026. The question worth asking is what it bought.

The dollars were real: an $18 billion take-private, an $11.75 billion pharma deal and a long tail of more than 30 acquisitions that never printed a price but span fertility, menopause, diagnostics, software, pharmacy and mental health.

Across all of it the same pattern holds. Across the transactions, buyers consistently targeted businesses with established capabilities, recurring revenue models and strategic assets that could strengthen broader healthcare platforms.

One thing changed that matters more than any single deal: the buyer universe expanded.

Hologic went private to two of the largest PE firms and two sovereign wealth funds. Organon, one of the largest women’s health platforms in the world, changed hands to a non-U.S. pharma with the scale and appetite to keep acquiring. WPS, a health insurer, bought a clinical platform outright and called it the first step in a build.

A year ago, the women’s health exit ran one narrow path: build, scale and sell to a U.S. strategic. After H1 2026, there are more bidders at the table, private equity, sovereign wealth, global pharma and now payers, and a wider range of outcomes. That widens the options for founders and raises the bar at the same time, because these buyers reward durability and recurring revenue.

Below: FutureFemHealth Pro members can access the full H1 2026 deal tracker, the segment-by-segment breakdown and what each shift means for founders, investors and acquirers.

Read more

Today, I’m publishing the results: a complete Q2 women’s health funding analysis, the first application of the FutureFemHealth Classification Framework, and a downloadable tracker of every funding round I verified this quarter.

Let’s get into it!….

So, what happened in women’s health funding this quarter?

FutureFemHealth has tracked US$738.78 million invested across 40 women’s health funding rounds during Q2 2026.

The average disclosed deal size was $19.96 million (based on 37 disclosed deals), with the largest investments going to CREATE Medicines ($122m) for its autoimmune platform and Nourish ($100m) for its virtual metabolic health clinic.

What’s interesting is that neither of these companies is a pure play women’s health business. Nor are they focused solely on female-specific health conditions.

Yet together they accounted for 30% of all funding tracked this quarter.

These are exactly the kinds of companies that challenge the way we measure women’s health investment.

Include them and the headline funding figure for women’s health tells a very different story. Exclude them, however, and we miss substantial investment into companies intentionally improving women’s health.

That’s why this quarter marks the first application of the FutureFemHealth Classification Framework.

Rather than asking simply whether a company is or isn’t women’s health, the framework considers two questions:

• What health need is being addressed?

• How much of the company’s business is genuinely focused on women’s health?

Together, they provide a more complete and nuanced picture of where capital is actually flowing.

In the full analysis, you’ll find:

• Why 60% of funding flowed into conditions that disproportionately affect women rather than female-specific conditions.

• Why the biggest funding rounds are increasingly emerging beyond traditional women’s health categories.

• Why data and infrastructure are becoming some of the most valuable assets in women’s health.

• Where the next decade of innovation is beginning to take shape.

• The boundary decisions behind the FutureFemHealth Classification Framework—including metabolic health and male contraception.

Below, FutureFemHealth Pro members can read the full analysis and download the complete Q2 tracker, including every deal, its classification and my notes on each company.

Read more

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 🧪 Intu Diagnostics raises €1.1m to advance lab-free HPV testing

• 🩸 Emm smart menstrual cup secures regulatory clearance

• 🤖 Xella launches AI platform for 130+ women’s health conditions

• 🔒 Monash IVF found to have breached privacy law over tracking pixels

Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com

This week’s newsletter is powered by SOSV….

Nearly 50% of investors already registered for SOSV’s Therapeutics VC-Founder Matchup (July 6–17) have indicated they’re looking for women’s health opportunities, and therapeutics specific to women’s health is a fast-growing category. Register Now.

This free, virtual Matchup will bring together about 250 therapeutics startups and 250 investors. Participants can review profiles and request introductory meetings on their own schedule over 11 days. Whether you’re building the next breakthrough in women’s health or actively investing in the category, this is an opportunity to make meaningful connections. Save your spot!

💰 Capital flows

📌 US: Aeroflow Health acquires maternal mental health platform Canopie. Aeroflow is best known for helping families access maternity and postpartum products through insurance, from breast pumps to compression garments. With the acquisition of Canopie, it is moving further into maternal mental health, adding evidence-based digital programmes for pregnancy and postpartum support. It’s an example of maternal mental health being pulled into broader care and benefits platforms, rather than sitting as a standalone category. (Continue reading: Aeroflow Health)

📌 US: Mila raises $2.5m pre-seed to develop beauty-inspired intimate wellness products. Intimate wellness has seen relatively little product innovation in recent years, despite growing consumer demand for products designed around women’s health and self-care. Mila plans to use this investment to accelerate development of its intimate wellness portfolio. The round was led by Mensch VC. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 GERMANY: Intu Diagnostics raises €1.1m to advance lab-free HPV testing. Cervical cancer screening is already moving beyond the clinic, but most molecular HPV tests still rely on laboratory processing. Intu Diagnostics has created a test that works without a lab, electricity, or trained staff - and users see results from a colour change in just 30 minutes. The €1.1m bridge round will support product development and regulatory milestones as the company works towards making high-quality cervical cancer screening more accessible in primary care and low-resource settings. The round was backed by BSV Ventures and SAB and brings total funding to more than €3m. (Continue reading: Tech Funding News)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 UK: Emm smart menstrual cup secures regulatory clearance. One of the biggest challenges in women’s health is that many symptoms are still assessed through patient recall and subjective descriptions rather than objective measurement. Emm has secured UKCA marking and MHRA registration for what it says is the world’s first regulatory-cleared smart menstrual cup, designed to automatically measure menstrual flow volume and cycle patterns. The tech aims to help bring more objective data into menstrual health and Emm is now pursuing US FDA clearance ahead of an international rollout. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Xella Health launches AI platform to screen for 130+ often misdiagnosed women’s health conditions. Diagnostic delays in women’s health are well documented, with conditions such as endometriosis often taking years to identify. From a traditional blood draw at a Labcorp or Quest, Xella combines multi-omic testing with AI to assess the likelihood of more than 130 conditions including endometriosis, PMOS and perimenopause. It then connects women to a clinician for diagnosis and treatment where needed. The launch follows the company’s $3.7m pre-seed round announced earlier this year, and comes with a reported waitlist of more than 15,000 women. (Continue reading: Xella Health)

📌 CANADA: Dynacare launches at-home hormone blood testing. Over the past few years we’ve seen hormone testing steadily moving out of the clinic and into the home. Dynacare has launched what it says is Canada’s first self-collect whole blood hormone test kits, allowing women to measure fertility-related hormones from home before samples are analysed in the company’s accredited laboratories. (Continue reading: Dynacare)

📌 EUROPE: BrightHeart secures CE mark for AI-powered prenatal ultrasound platform. BrightHeart’s B-Right AI platform is designed to support sonographers in real time by improving scan completeness, consistency and helping identify fetal abnormalities during routine ultrasound examinations. The CE mark paves the way for commercial rollout across Europe and reflects growing momentum behind AI tools that aim to standardise prenatal care and improve diagnostic consistency. (Continue reading: BrightHeart)

📌 US: ŌURA partners with LillyDirect to support people using GLP-1 therapies. Women are already the largest users of GLP-1 medications, and we’re now seeing an ecosystem emerge around what happens after a prescription is written (our recent deep dive explores this). This new partnership gives LillyDirect users access to ŌURA’s GLP-1 Insights tools, which combine wearable data with medication tracking, side effects and behavioural support. It’s another sign that the biggest opportunities around GLP-1s could lie in the support infrastructure developing around them. (Continue reading: ŌURA)

📌 GLOBAL: Most IVF add-on treatments found to offer little or no proven benefit. IVF patients are often offered extra tests, procedures and treatments designed to improve their chances of success - but a major review published in The Lancet found that most either have no effect on fertility or lack sufficient evidence to support their use. More than 70% of IVF patients in the UK, Australia and New Zealand purchase at least one add-on, often at significant cost, which raises big questions about how patients are informed about the benefits and evidence of these and the commercialisation of fertility care. (Continue reading: The Guardian)

📌 US: Merck partners with Mae to expand the doula workforce. We’ve written before about the growing evidence supporting doula care and investor interest. Now one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies is backing it. Through its Merck for Mothers initiative, Merck is partnering with maternal health platform Mae to expand and strengthen the doula workforce across high-risk US markets, combining technology, workforce development and care coordination to improve maternal outcomes. (Continue reading: Mae)

📌 AUSTRALIA: Monash IVF found to have breached privacy law through tracking pixels. Data privacy is a defining issue in women’s health. Now Australia’s Privacy Commissioner has found that fertility provider Monash IVF and telehealth company Medmate interfered with individuals’ privacy by using third-party tracking pixels to collect sensitive health information without consent. The ruling confirms that tracking visitors to health-related websites for advertising purposes can amount to collecting sensitive health information under privacy law. (Continue reading: Cyber Daily)

💡 Perspectives

📌 We’ve started talking about perimenopause - but are we getting it right? According to Flo Health’s Chief Medical Officer Anna Klepchukova, the conversation has shifted from too little information to too much misinformation. While awareness has grown rapidly, Anna argues many women are now navigating a flood of social media advice, quick fix solutions and unverified claims, leaving them confused about symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. Her argument is that women need better support: medically verified, personalized information that reflects the complexity of perimenopause rather than reducing it to a one-size-fits-all experience. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 Your new hormone tracker generates 10,000 data points. Your doctor has 7 minutes. As continuous hormone monitoring starts to attract significant investment and debate (we explored the field in our recent FFH Pro analysis) Dr Lara Zibners points out that generating more data is only half the challenge. If clinicians don't have the time, tools or evidence to interpret it, the promise of hormone intelligence risks outpacing its practical value. So, as this new generation of hormone monitoring technologies emerges, the bigger question Dr Lara says is - how on earth do we use all that data? (Continue reading: Lara Zibners on Substack)

📆 Save the date

The Nexus Collective Kick Off - Day 2: London, 9 July 2026. Watch 20 women’s health founders showcase their startups, five expert talks across fundraising, GTM and commercialisation and one investor panel. There’s also practical workshops for founders and plenty of time for networking.
🎟️ Secure your ticket here

✅ Hiring now

📌 UK: Head of B2B Sales, Ovum

📌 US: Principal, Life Sciences, Amboy Street Ventures

📌 GERMANY: VP of Product

That’s all for this week! If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com and do make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and you can connect with me directly.

Anna

^{This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical or financial advice.}

I began my career as an emergency medicine doctor. I quickly realized that many of the cases I saw were largely preventable had the patient had access to reliable, trustworthy health information. This was especially true in the arena of women’s health - an area severely lacking in research, education and consequently, health literacy. It was a huge part of the reason I wanted to join Flo as Chief Medical Officer nearly 10 years ago.

Take perimenopause, a transitional phase that will impact nearly every woman as she ages. Historically, perimenopause was rarely discussed and significantly lacking in education. For years, women were told they simply needed to suffer through symptoms, that it was all in their head, or they had to accept the pain and discomfort of their symptoms as a part of aging. The lack of education had a significant impact on their lives.

Cut to today. On one hand, we’ve come a long way. Lately, perimenopause seems to be the buzzword on every social media influencers’ tongue. It’s certainly being discussed, and women report an aggressive onslaught of marketing around it should they happen to Google any related symptom.

But this influx of “advice” from unaccredited voices that are usually trying to sell product solutions could actually be doing more harm than good - and only adding to the confusion women experience about perimenopause. In fact, in a recent survey, 66% of women told us they felt better prepared for puberty than for perimenopause.¹

We have traded one problem for another. Where there was once silence, there is now a steady stream of unverified advice, quick fixes, and soundbites. In today’s social media obsessed world, women were served TikToks instead of verified, doctor-backed medical advice.

A common misconception we hear about perimenopause is that women believe they can’t get pregnant, or that it would be very unlikely they would get pregnant, during perimenopause. This isn’t accurate and poses another risk to misinformation by convincing women they are in perimenopause before they actually are.

Women are also being sold supplements, herbal blends, creams and weight loss solutions as treatments for perimenopause - when they really should discuss any product solution they are marketed with their doctor before taking it.

We are in a cultural moment where perimenopause is being openly discussed, and many brands and companies in the women’s health industry are starting to focus on addressing the very real health concerns women in their 40s and 50s are facing. The concern I see comes when unverified sources - social media influencers, unproven product solutions, etc. focus more on selling to women than educating them and empowering them to have meaningful conversations with their doctors.

Women do not need more content. The internet is full of content. What they need is better information – specific, scientifically-grounded, medically-verified, and most importantly - personalized - health information that does not flatten perimenopause into a single story. Information that acknowledges it looks different for different women. That helps them connect patterns over time, rather than forcing them to reconcile conflicting signals in isolation. If we aren’t offering this, we haven’t actually solved the problem of improving women’s health literacy on the topic.

Perimenopause is nuanced, and even many doctors don’t have adequate training in it. I know firsthand how difficult it is to get accurate information on perimenopause. I am a doctor, I work for a women’s health company - and it still took more than 4 months, 10 books and 5 doctors to figure out that the symptoms I was experiencing were indeed perimenopause and prescribe HRTs for relief. This has to change.

An added complication is that as women have babies later in life, many of the symptoms of perimenopause mimic symptoms of postpartum. Women in their 40s are also incredibly empowered and youthful in so many ways, so it can be difficult to already be thinking about something like perimenopause at this age. This is why only sharing medically-verified, doctor-backed information is so important so that women don’t get confused and bombarded with content that tells them they are in peri too early - or too late.

As Chief Medical Officer at Flo, my mission is to make this information accessible for our 460 million users², and for any woman who is struggling to understand whether or not she is in perimenopause, and if she is, what to do about it.

If we built an entire educational infrastructure to prepare a generation of girls for puberty, we are capable of doing the same to help prepare women for perimenopause and menopause. We anticipated confusion once. We can do it again.

About the author: This article was contributed by Anna Klepchukova, Chief Medical Officer of Flo Health.

Alongside this article, Flo Health has today announced the launch of four new and updated “Flo for Perimenopause” in-app tools, powered by doctors, that work together to give women a complete picture of their health and meet them wherever they may be on their perimenopause journey.

^{1.Based on a nationally represented consumer survey conducted by Flo Health and Wakefield Research, among U.S. women age 38-50.}

^{2.Based on total number of users who downloaded Flo, March 2026}

US intimate wellness startup Mila has raised $2.5 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round to expand its portfolio of design-led intimate wellness products.

The round was led by Mensch VC, with participation from Sticker Ventures and a group of angel investors and advisors from Spotify, Dyson, Tetra Pak and BrewDog.

Founded by Ada Trujillo and Kim Aviv, Mila is developing products that combine intimate wellness with beauty and self-care. The company says it aims to bring more innovation to a category where product development has largely focused on suction technology for more than 15 years.

“For years, beauty brands have taught consumers to be intentional about what they put on their skin. The industry transformed everyday products into rituals. Intimate wellness never got that same evolution,” said co-founder Ada Trujillo.

“We saw an opportunity to build for a generation of consumers who have turned self-care into a lifestyle and finally give the category its beauty era.”

Mila said the funding will be used to accelerate product innovation and expand its patent-pending portfolio, which includes Aura, a four-in-one intimate wellness device, and Bloom, a hydrating intimate gliding mist.

“The response from investors reinforced what we’ve believed from day one – women are ready for a more modern approach to intimate wellness,” said co-founder Kim Aviv.

“This funding allows us to invest even further in product innovation, thoughtful design, and creating entirely new experiences for women.”

Women’s health wearable company Emm has secured UKCA marking and MHRA registration for the Emm Cup, which the company says is the world’s first regulatory-cleared smart menstrual cup.

The Emm Cup is designed to passively measure menstrual flow volume, daily flow rates and broader cycle patterns, replacing manual tracking and personal estimates with objective biometric data.

The device syncs with a smartphone app when placed in its charging case, allowing users to monitor changes over time and share the information with healthcare professionals.

“UKCA marking validates our technology requirements and opens the door for millions of people to truly know their health today and screen for their health tomorrow,” said Jenny Button, Founder and CEO of Emm.

Towards objective measurement

The milestone reflects a broader shift towards bringing objective measurement to areas of women’s health that have historically relied on subjective symptom reporting.

Menstrual health has traditionally depended on patients recalling information such as cycle length or estimating whether bleeding is ‘light’ or ‘heavy’. Technologies such as the Emm Cup aim to replace those subjective assessments with measurable physiological data that can be tracked over time and shared with clinicians.

“For too long, a critical data gap in women’s health has led to delayed diagnoses and the routine dismissal of pain,” continued Jenny. “We believe our technology can act as a catalyst to unlock some of the world’s least understood reproductive health challenges, turning subjective symptoms into objective, actionable data.”

Following UK regulatory clearance, Emm said it is pursuing US FDA clearance and ISO 13485 certification as it prepares for an international rollout.

Starting with our Q2 2026 Funding Tracker (out in early July), FutureFemHealth is introducing a new framework for analysing investment across women’s health.

Rather than asking whether a company ‘is’ or ‘isn’t’ a women’s health company, we ask two questions:

• What type of health need is being addressed?

• How exposed is the company to women’s health?

Together, these two lenses provide a more nuanced view of where capital is flowing, from pure-play women’s health companies through to broader healthcare businesses making meaningful investments in women’s health.

The goal is to provide a more transparent and consistent way of understanding an increasingly complex market.

Why we built it

The challenge became obvious as companies such as WHOOP, Oura, UroMems (incontinence) and Hemi Health (migraine) began raising funding.

Should these count as women’s health investments?

The answer felt like yes - but not in the same way.

WHOOP is a good example. The company has invested heavily in female physiology research, menstrual cycle insights and women’s health features. Ignoring that would overlook an important shift.

Yet, counting its entire $575 million funding round as women’s health investment would also distort the market. The raise was almost as large as every other women’s health funding round in Q1 2026 combined!

The same tension exists across healthcare. Some companies address conditions that disproportionately affect women. Others are redesigning products around biological sex differences. Some have made women’s health a major commercial priority despite operating across much broader markets.

Traditional funding trackers struggle to capture these distinctions.

As a result, we risk both overstating and understating the market. We inflate women’s health funding by including companies only partially exposed to the category, while simultaneously overlooking businesses where women’s health is hiding in plain sight.

The questions we wanted to answer were simple:

• How much capital is flowing into pure-play women’s health companies? (most existing trackers do this part well)

• How much is flowing into businesses where women’s health is a major commercial focus?

• How much is flowing into broader healthcare companies investing in women’s health as part of a wider strategy?

Answering those questions requires two separate lenses.

An overview of the FFH Classification Framework

Lens #1: What health need is being addressed?

The first lens classifies the underlying health need and uses a well-established framework:

Solely: Conditions that only affect women, such as menstruation, pregnancy, menopause and endometriosis.

Disproportionately: Conditions affecting everyone but where women experience a greater burden of disease, including osteoporosis, urinary incontinence, migraine, autoimmune disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Differently: Conditions where biological sex influences symptoms, diagnosis or treatment, such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, metabolic health, sleep and mental health.

Adjacent: Areas commercially relevant to women but where women’s health is not the primary lens, including consumer wellness, longevity, male contraception, and healthcare infrastructure.

Lens #2: How exposed is the company to women’s health?

The second lens looks at the business itself.

In simple terms:

If women’s health disappeared tomorrow, how much of the business would remain?

We classify companies into four categories:

Pure Play: Women’s health is the business.

Majority Focus: Women’s health represents most, but not all, of the company’s activity.

Material Focus: Women’s health is an important strategic focus alongside broader products or markets.

Inclusive: The company serves women, but women’s health is not a material driver of the business or investment case. (In this case, the company is unlikely to be included).

Why use two lenses?

A single label doesn’t tell us the whole story. Migraine, for example, disproportionately affects women, but companies addressing migraine vary enormously in how central women’s health is to their strategy.

The same is true for wearables. A company may invest heavily in female physiology research and cycle tracking while generating most of its revenue from broader health and fitness markets.

Looking only at the health need - or only at the company - misses part of the picture.

Together, the two lenses capture both.

Finally, an important feature of the framework is that it helps us explain both what we include and what we don’t. Not every company with a predominantly female customer base is a women’s health company, just as not every business addressing women’s health will identify itself as one. By assessing both the health need and the company’s strategic focus, we can make those decisions more consistently and transparently.

What does this look like in practice?

Let’s return to WHOOP.

Under a traditional funding tracker, WHOOP either counts as a women’s health company or it doesn’t. But, neither answer feels particularly satisfying.

Excluding the company ignores its growing investment in women’s health. Including all of its funding overstates the amount of capital flowing into dedicated women’s health businesses.

Our framework allows us to recognise both the health need being addressed and the company’s overall exposure to women’s health.

The same principle can be applied to companies such as Oura, Hemi Health, Salvo Health, Eight Sleep and many others. Rather than forcing a binary decision, we can better reflect the complexity of today’s women’s health ecosystem.

Why this matters

Women’s health is expanding well beyond fertility, pregnancy and menopause into mainstream healthcare.

As that happens, understanding where capital is flowing becomes both more important and more complicated.

We do not claim this framework is the definitive answer. The category is evolving quickly, and reasonable people will disagree on individual classifications.

Our aim is simply to provide a more transparent and consistent way of understanding the market.

Because before we can decide whether women’s health is underfunded, we first need to agree on what we’re counting.

See the framework in action

The FutureFemHealth Classification Framework will now underpin our funding trackers, M&A analysis and broader market intelligence.

FutureFemHealth Pro subscribers receive quarterly funding trackers, M&A trackers and deep-dive analysis applying the framework across every tracked deal.

If you’d like to understand where capital is flowing across women’s health - and why - explore FutureFemHealth Pro.

A final note: Throughout this framework we use the terms “women” and “women’s health” because they remain the most widely used terms across healthcare, research and investment. We recognise that not everyone affected by these health needs identifies as a woman, and that sex and gender are distinct concepts. Our use of these terms should not be interpreted as a statement about identity.

GLP-1s are creating a support economy around everything that happens after the prescription, and women may be the most important customer group within it.

The global GLP-1 market is forecast to reach $150 billion within the next few years, with more than 100 million people expected to be using the drugs. Women are already the largest group of users, with a recent KFF poll finding that 15% of women versus 9% of men, are currently taking a GLP-1.

So far, the headlines have focused on the drugs themselves. But look beyond the prescription and an entire support economy is being built around everything that happens after the treatment begins.

ŌURA recently added GLP-1 Insights to its new Ring 5 model to help users track doses, side effects and weight, and then announced a partnership with Eli Lilly’s LillyDirect platform. Walmart has expanded weight-management support services. Maven has integrated GLP-1s into its broader women’s health offering. Weight Watchers has turned its behavioural expertise into a ‘GLP-1 success program’.

There is also a growing number of startups building businesses around nutrition, body composition, side-effect management and long-term maintenance. Even companies that didn't intentionally set out to serve GLP-1 patients are recognising this rapidly growing customer segment.

None of these companies are competing with the drug manufacturers. They're building businesses around everything that happens after the prescription.

After speaking with founders, clinicians and operators across the ecosystem, including Lean Health, Bummed, Metamorphysis, Qventus, and Found, it’s clear that an entirely new layer of healthcare is being built around everything that GLP-1s make necessary.

In this FFH Pro deep dive we map the emerging GLP-1 support economy: the companies building it, the gaps in care they're addressing, and why women may be at the centre of one of healthcare's fastest-growing new markets.

In this report you’ll learn:

• Why GLP-1s are becoming a women’s health story

• The care gaps driving the GLP-1 support economy

• How ŌURA, Walmart, Maven and a new generation of startups are building beyond the prescription

• The five commercial categories emerging around GLP-1s

• Why women are asking different questions about fertility, menopause and metabolic health

• What this could mean for the future of women’s health

This piece is part of our FutureFemHealth Pro - our subscriber-only intelligence layer covering the trends, infrastructure shifts and market signals shaping the future of women’s health.

Read more

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 🏆 Clair Health raises $11.6m – sparking debate about continuous hormone monitoring

• 🏥 June Health secures CAD$2.4m with insurer backing

• 📱 Huawei expands women’s health partnerships

• 💉 HPV vaccination reduces cervical cancer deaths to near zero in UK

Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com

This week’s newsletter is powered by The Longevity Show:

The UK’s first longevity festival takes place in London this week - on 26 & 27 June.

Women’s health will be central - with a dedicated Women’s Health Summit led by Hertility, as well as an immersive Expo, headline talks, movement and recovery experiences, and a B2B Conference for founders, investors, clinicians and innovators shaping the future of health.

🎟️ FutureFemHealth readers can get 20% off tickets with code FFH20. Book here

💰 Capital flows

📌 US: Clair Health raises $11.6m for its wearable hormone monitoring platform. Few stories have sparked as much debate as this one. Is it a continuous hormone monitor (it doesn’t monitor hormones directly), is it not, and - does it even matter? Either way, the size of this round suggests investors are placing some big bets on hormone intelligence - this is a story that will run and run. (Continue reading: Fortune)

📌 GERMANY: Nuvisan awarded $25m from the Gates Foundation for non-hormonal contraceptive drug discovery. There’s still substantial unmet need for alternatives to hormonal contraception, but history shows that scientific innovation alone isn’t enough. Products such as Evofem’s Phexxi show how the commercial challenges around adoption and reimbursement. Nice to see then, this Gates Foundation grant which suggests there’s still a strong belief in a need for a new generation of options. (Continue reading: Nuvisan)

📌 CANADA: June Health raises CAD$2.4m with strategic investment from Securian Canada. Women’s health startups have spent years trying to convince employers that better support can improve productivity and retention. Now insurers seem to be paying attention too. The funding round may be relatively modest, but seeing an insurer invest directly in the space feels like another signal that women’s health is finally being viewed as a mainstream healthcare and benefits opportunity. (Continue reading: June Health)

📌 AUSTRALIA: Oli secures an additional $2m in government funding for maternal monitoring device manufacturing. Hot on the heels of its recent $6.5m Series A3, Oli has now secured a further $2m non-dilutive grant from the Australian Government’s Industry Growth Program to establish manufacturing capabilities in Sydney. Combined with a previous NSW Medical Devices Fund grant, the company has now attracted more than $11.5m in government support. It’s showing how public funding can help de-risk women’s health innovation, especially in areas like maternal health where the clinical and societal impact extends well beyond the healthcare system. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Rejoni secures $25m to tackle post-surgical uterine scarring. Rejoni’s Juveena system is designed to prevent intrauterine adhesions (sometimes called Asherman’s syndrome), a condition where scar tissue forms inside the uterus following surgery and can affect fertility and reproductive health. The company is nearly ready to commercialise as the FDA has accepted the company’s premarket approval application earlier this year. New and existing investors include ClayystBio, Amed Ventures and FemHealth Ventures. (Continue reading: Rejoni)

📌 AUSTRALIA: Ovum AI raises $4m seed round for its AI-powered women’s health platform. Ovum is one of a growing number of startups attempting to build longitudinal women’s health records, creating a single place for women to track symptoms, medical history and reproductive health over time. Just a year after raising a $1.7m pre-seed round, the company has secured a further $4m at triple its previous valuation. Since launching last August, Ovum has attracted more than 20,000 users and recorded over 113,000 AI health conversations. The round was led by Admiralty Capital Group, with participation from Antler, Giant Leap and others. (Continue reading: Business News Australia)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 GLOBAL: Huawei expands its wearable ecosystem with new women’s health partnerships. Huawei doesn’t immediately spring to mind when it comes to women’s health wearables - although the tech giant has offered menstrual tracking features for several years. Now, it’s intentionally expanding its strategy and looking to third-parties - adding integrations with Clue, Life: Period Tracker and The Ginger Club to its WATCH FIT 5 Series. (Continue reading: Huawei)

📌 NETHERLANDS: Sibyl pilots pregnancy loss support platform with Dutch healthcare providers. Pregnancy loss is one of the most common yet least supported experiences in women’s health. Sibyl is now partnering with a gynaecology clinic and midwifery practice to test a model that integrates personalised digital support into routine care following miscarriage and other forms of pregnancy loss. The pilot will track patient-reported outcomes and engagement, helping build evidence around whether digital interventions can improve support during the weeks and months after loss. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 UK: HPV vaccination found to reduce the risk of dying from cervical cancer before age 30 to almost zero. We’ve known for years that HPV vaccination prevents cervical cancer. What’s new here is evidence that it’s now saving lives. Researchers estimate the vaccine has already prevented around 200 cervical cancer deaths in England, while no women aged 20-24 died from cervical cancer between 2020 and 2024 for the first time on record. For all the discussion around new diagnostics and therapeutics, this is a reminder that some of the biggest gains in women’s health still come from prevention. (Continue reading: The Guardian)

📌 US: Healthcare affordability falls to a five-year low, with women hit hardest. New research from West Health and Gallup found that just 42% of women are now considered able to consistently afford the healthcare and prescription medicines they need, compared with 57% of men. The gap has widened steadily since 2021 and reached its highest level on record in 2025. “Without meaningful reforms that better address healthcare delivery, high prescription drug prices and rising insurance premiums, Americans will continue to struggle and affordability will only continue to deteriorate.” (Continue reading: West Health-Gallup)

📌 GLOBAL: World Athletics studies return to sport after pregnancy. The governing body has launched a new research initiative exploring how pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood affect elite athletes’ careers. The project will combine athlete surveys with performance data to better understand everything from training and recovery to rankings, sponsorship and financial support. As more athletes compete at the highest levels before and after pregnancy, the focus is increasingly shifting from whether women can return to sport to how sporting organisations can better support them when they do. (Continue reading: World Athletics)

💡 Perspectives

📌 PERSPECTIVES: Who’s making decisions about women’s health? According to an analysis by menopause advocate Johanna Wicks, mostly men. Looking at 13 pharmaceutical companies that manufacture menopause hormone therapies, Johanna found that none had achieved gender parity at executive level and only one had a female CEO. To be clear, this isn’t about excluding men from women’s health, or even from leading in women’s health. But when an entire industry serves a predominantly female patient population, it’s fair to ask whether women are sufficiently represented in the rooms where strategic decisions get made. (Continue reading: Johanna Wicks)

📆 Save the date

📌 The Nexus Collective Kick Off - Day 1, London, Friday 26 June. A day for founders in medtech, biotech or deeptech with a focus on regulated sectors and clinical trials. Register here.

That’s all for this week! If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com and do make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and you can connect with me directly.

Anna

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical or financial advice.

Australian maternal and fetal monitoring company Oli has secured an additional AU$2 million in non-dilutive funding from the Australian Government’s Industry Growth Program, bringing its total government support to more than AU$11.5 million.

The latest funding follows a AU$1.3 million award from the New South Wales Medical Devices Fund earlier this year and comes just weeks after parent company Baymatob announced a AU$6.5 million Series A3 financing round.

The Industry Growth Program grant will support the establishment of manufacturing capabilities in Sydney, while the Medical Devices Fund award is being used to advance Oli’s maternal and fetal monitoring platform, including the development of additional clinical capabilities designed to support future adoption.

Identifying serious complications earlier

Oli is a wireless wearable platform that monitors maternal and fetal signals during pregnancy and labour. The company says its technology is designed to help clinicians identify signs of serious complications earlier, including postpartum haemorrhage, stillbirth and uterine rupture.

“Maternal and fetal monitoring has remained largely unchanged for decades, despite maternal health complications continuing to rise globally,” said CEO Tara Croft.

“We’re building technology that helps clinicians see what’s coming and act earlier, shifting maternal and fetal healthcare from a reactive process to a predictive one.”

The funding highlights the extent to which Australian government programmes are backing maternal health innovation, particularly technologies with both healthcare and advanced manufacturing potential.

For Oli, the combination of venture capital and more than AU$11.5 million in grant funding provides a substantial runway as it works towards broader clinical adoption and commercial scale.

Pregnancy loss support platform Sibyl has partnered with two Dutch healthcare providers to pilot a new model of care designed to support women beyond the clinic appointment.

The company, founded by Melissa Ablett-Jordaan following her own experiences of pregnancy loss, is working with gynaecology clinic Medisch Centrum Wetering and midwifery practice ELLE Midwives to offer women access to a personalised digital companion following miscarriage and other forms of pregnancy loss. The 90-day pilot will track engagement, patient-reported outcomes and preparedness for follow-up appointments.

The partnership marks one of the first attempts to formally integrate a dedicated pregnancy loss support platform into routine care pathways in the Netherlands.

For Melissa, the idea emerged after experiencing first-hand how little support many women receive once the immediate clinical aspects of pregnancy loss have been addressed.

“You have the medical care for pregnancy loss, which is usually pretty standard, and then you’re just kind of left on your own,” she told FutureFemHealth.

“It’s low clinical acuity, but very high emotional acuity.”

Beyond the clinic

Research from Tommy’s National Centre for Miscarriage Research has found that around one in three women meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress in the weeks following early pregnancy loss, while around one in six continue to experience symptoms nine months later. The Lancet’s Miscarriage Matters series has also called for urgent reform of miscarriage care.

Sibyl combines personalised information about different types of pregnancy loss with digital mental health exercises and a conversational support tool designed to answer questions between appointments.

“It tends to be this quiet thing you deal with at 3am,” said Melissa.

“People don’t necessarily feel mentally sick enough to seek formal mental health support, but they still need somewhere to turn.”

And while digital tools have become commonplace across fertility, pregnancy and women’s health, pregnancy loss remains relatively underserved.

“Most apps and services just kind of say, ‘come back to us when you’re pregnant again’,” she said.

That gap appears to be resonating with healthcare providers. Under the pilot, clinicians introduce the app at the point a loss is diagnosed, giving women access to support during the days, weeks and months that follow.

Beyond patient support, the project also aims to generate evidence around whether digital interventions can improve longer-term outcomes.

Users are surveyed after one and six weeks using the Reproductive Grief Scale, helping researchers understand whether personalised support can reduce distress and improve engagement with ongoing care.

Melissa points to research suggesting mental health challenges are a significant factor in fertility treatment drop-out, creating downstream consequences for patients, providers and employers alike.

The project will also generate new data on an experience that often disappears from view. “The first thing you do after you have a miscarriage is you delete your pregnancy tracking app,” she said. Sibyl hopes the pilot will help build a better understanding of women’s experiences after pregnancy loss and where additional support can have the greatest impact.

A growing opportunity in women’s health

While the company’s first partnerships are with midwives and gynaecologists, Melissa sees applications across a much broader ecosystem. Sibyl is already in discussions with fertility clinics, pregnancy tracking apps, women’s health and fertility benefits platforms, and healthcare providers looking for ways to better support women between appointments.

“We’re hearing from midwives, gynaecologists and OB-GYNs who say, ‘if I had better tools, I would 100% use them. I just don’t have them’,” she said.

This is echoed by early testers in the project. Dr S Mahesh, a gynaecologist at Medisch Centrum Wetering said:

“We see patients every day who receive excellent clinical care but leave without ongoing support for what comes next. Pregnancy loss doesn’t end when the appointment does - and we know that. Partnering with Sibyl gives us a way to extend care beyond what we can provide within the clinic walls.”

Looking ahead

To date, Sibyl has raised close to $200,000 in a friends-and-family round, completed a closed beta with more than 100 women and was selected as an observer in the Springboard Women’s Health Accelerator. Around 85% of women who signed up went on to download and start using the app.

The company plans to launch a direct-to-consumer version of the app later this summer, initially through a subscription model, while continuing to explore partnerships across the reproductive health landscape.

The commercial opportunity reflects a broader gap in women’s health. For providers, employers and digital health platforms, there is an important unmet need to support women during a period that sits between clinical appointments, but can have lasting consequences for mental health, treatment adherence and future reproductive care.

Continuous hormone monitoring is one of the most talked about emerging areas in women’s health.

Investors are backing startups. Researchers are pursuing new sensing technologies. Germany's SPRIND innovation agency has partnered with Clue founder Ida Tin to launch a €40 million challenge dedicated to continuous hormone monitoring.

The topic became even more visible this week when US startup Clair Health announced its $11.6 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures.

The company describes itself as building a continuous hormone monitor for women, yet unlike some others in the field, it does not directly measure hormones.

That might sound like a technicality. After all, so many of us are familiar with wearables such as Oura and WHOOP delivering our health insights without directly measuring the underlying biology.

But, it’s reignited an important debate. And after speaking with founders, researchers and industry leaders across the field over the past few months about this very topic, I’ve found that companies are pursuing at least three distinct approaches to solving the same problem - often under the same label and language.

Which begs the question - what should count as continuous hormone monitoring? And more importantly, does this even matter?

In this FutureFemHealth Pro analysis, we break down the three emerging approaches, where they differ, and why the debate could shape the future of women's health.

Read more

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 🧠 Women’s mental health platform Mavida Health acquired by health insurer WPS

• 🤝 Intimate health brand FemiClear acquired by Venture Life Group

• 🌙 Natural Cycles launches sleep insights feature

• 🇪🇸 Spanish Government commits €18m to women’s health research.

Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com

This week’s newsletter is powered by The Longevity Show:

The UK’s first longevity festival takes place in London on 26 & 27 June.

Women’s health will be central - with a dedicated Women’s Health Summit led by Hertility, as well as an immersive Expo, headline talks, movement and recovery experiences, and a B2B Conference for founders, investors, clinicians and innovators shaping the future of health.

🎟️ FutureFemHealth readers can get 20% off tickets with code FFH20. Book here

💰 Capital flows

📌 US: Women’s mental health platform Mavida Health acquired by health insurer WPS. A deal that shows appetite in incorporating maternal mental health into women’s healthcare rather than as a standalone service. Mavida Health is a virtual care platform founded by reproductive psychiatrist Dr Sarah Oreck that provides therapy, medication management and mental health support across fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and parenthood. These phases can be some of the most emotionally challenging periods in a woman’s life, yet specialist mental health support remains difficult to access. (Continue reading: WPS)

📌 UK/US: Women’s intimate health brand FemiClear acquired by Venture Life Group. Venture Life is expanding its women’s health portfolio - it already owns menopause brand Health & Her (acquired in 2024) and vaginal health brand Balance Activ. Now, in a deal worth up to $28 million, it’s adding FemiClear which sells over-the-counter products for bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections and genital herpes symptoms. (Continue reading: Drug Store News)

📌 FRANCE: Wellness app studio Rocapine raises €11.2m to build products designed to “hold instead of hook”. Rather than betting on a single app, Rocapine tests hundreds of concepts each year across areas including women’s health, mental health and behaviour change before scaling those that gain traction. The company’s women’s health portfolio includes pregnancy support app Eve and cycle tracking app Harmony. (Continue reading: EU-Startups)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 GLOBAL: Natural Cycles launches sleep insights feature designed around the menstrual cycle. Natural Cycles has long partnered with Oura, one of the best-known names in sleep tracking. So it's fascinating to see Natural Cycles take a step into Oura's territory with its own sleep insights feature. The new tool combines sleep and cycle data to help women understand how hormonal changes throughout the menstrual cycle may influence sleep, recovery and overall wellbeing. And of course, it still integrates with Oura as well as Natural Cycles' own wearable. The lines really do seem to be blurring: wearables are moving into cycle tracking, while cycle tracking apps are moving into sleep. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Wearable startup The90 launches UV-tracking pendant aimed at healthier skin ageing. Most of us know we should wear sunscreen, but few of us know how much UV exposure we’re actually getting throughout the day. The90 has created a necklace to help with that. The90 Gem is a $299 jewellery-style wearable for women that measures real-time UVA and UVB exposure and provides personalised guidance on sunscreen use, sun exposure and long-term skin health. Backed by investor and The Skinny Confidential founder Lauryn Bosstick, this launch shows how just how specialised the wearables market is becoming. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 UK: Lupus patients in England in remission after pioneering NHS trial of GM therapy. About five million people worldwide are thought to have lupus - and most of them are women. It’s a chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks healthy tissues, causing widespread inflammation and damage to organs such as the kidneys, lungs and heart. Now doctors say that therapy that genetically modifies a person’s T-cells could potentially offer a cure for it. Medics in London have successfully used the technique to effectively cure five NHS patients with severe lupus. (Continue reading: The Guardian)

💡 Perspectives

📌 GLOBAL: How Qatar is introducing global women’s health startups to the Middle East region. When Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) launched a new women’s health accelerator earlier this year, applications arrived from 47 countries, with 240 startups applying across fertility, hormonal health, chronic disease, diagnostics, AI and preventative health. In this interview, QSTP President Rama Chakaki explains why Qatar sees women’s health as both a healthcare challenge and an economic opportunity, and how the programme is helping startups explore pilot and expansion opportunities across Qatar, Egypt and the wider MENA region. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 GERMANY: What it takes to get reimbursed in women’s health - the Hello Inside story. Securing reimbursement through a statutory insurer gives startups something difficult to achieve through direct-to-consumer models alone: integration into the healthcare system itself, alongside distribution and institutional credibility. It’s a big deal. In this interview, Hello Inside’s CEO Mario Aichlseder explains how the company spent 18 months transforming itself from a consumer health startup into a reimbursement-ready healthcare company, what it took to secure reimbursement with one of Germany’s largest insurers, and the lessons other women’s health founders can take from the journey. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📄 Policy watch

📌 SPAIN: Government to invest €18m to tackle gender bias in health research. Spain has unveiled a new programme, Somos, Contamos, aimed at tripling investment in women’s health research to around €18 million and addressing what it describes as a historic gender gap in biomedical innovation. The initiative will support research into areas including endometriosis, autoimmune diseases, chronic pain, menopause and pelvic floor disorders, while also backing women’s health-focused biotech innovation and talent development. It is a clear - and hopefully precedent-setting example - of a national government framing women’s health as an innovation, research and industrial growth opportunity rather than solely a healthcare issue. (Continue reading: RTVE)

📌 UK: First GLP-1 weight loss tablet approved by UK regulator. Removing one of the biggest barriers for some patients, the UK’s medicines regulator has approved the first tablet version of semaglutide for weight loss and weight management, giving patients an alternative to weekly jabs. The once-daily pill can be prescribed to adults with obesity, or those who are overweight with at least one weight-related condition, alongside diet and exercise. (Continue reading: UK Government)

📆 Save the date

📌 Women’s health founder days, London, 26 June and 9 July. Join one of two founder days with the Nexus team. Choose between regulated sectors on 26 June (register here), or consumer tech/products + B2B on 9 July (register here).

📌AI in women’s health, London, Thurs 25 June, 1pm-6.30pm. A half-day showcase on how AI is being applied to clinical challenges in women’s health. Bringing together clinicians, academics, founders, tech experts, investors and regulators driving change in the field. Hosted at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering and sponsored by MEGI Health. Register here

That’s all for this week! If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com and do make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and you can connect with me directly.

Anna

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical or financial advice.

Natural Cycles has launched a new sleep tracking feature designed to help women better understand how hormonal changes throughout the menstrual cycle may influence sleep, recovery and overall wellbeing.

Called Sleep Insights, the feature is being added to the company’s app and combines sleep data from connected wearables - including Natural Cycles’ own wearable - with cycle information and daily user check-ins.

And while sleep tracking has become increasingly mainstream, many consumer sleep platforms do not incorporate menstrual cycle data when interpreting sleep patterns.

“We hear from many women that they notice changes in their sleep throughout their cycle, but most sleep platforms aren’t designed to explain those patterns through the lens of female physiology,” said Dr Magda Armbruster, Vice President of Product at Natural Cycles.

“Because Natural Cycles already helps users understand their hormonal patterns and fertility status, we’re uniquely positioned to connect sleep changes to the menstrual cycle and deliver insights that feel more personal, relevant, and actionable.”

Personalised insights on sleep

Natural Cycles’ new feature includes a daily morning check-in where users can record how they slept, alongside sleep metrics such as duration, efficiency and timing collected from connected devices. The app then combines those signals with fertility status and cycle phase to generate personalised insights.

Over time, users can also view longer-term trends to explore how sleep patterns may change across different stages of their cycle.

Research has suggested that hormonal fluctuations throughout the menstrual cycle may influence sleep quality, sleep architecture and perceived restfulness, particularly during the premenstrual phase. Research has also shown that women's subjective experience of sleep quality does not always align with objective sleep measurements, particularly during the premenstrual phase.

Natural Cycles says combining wearable data with subjective experiences may help create a more complete picture of how women experience sleep throughout the month.

Wearable integration

Natural Cycles’ new feature expands the role of the NC° Band, Natural Cycles’ first proprietary wearable, which launched earlier this year and collects temperature and heart rate data.

Sleep Insights will initially be available to users tracking overnight with the NC° Band and the Oura Ring. The company said support for Garmin and Apple Watch users is planned following launch.

Founded in 2013 by physicists Dr Elina Berglund Scherwitzl and Dr Raoul Scherwitzl, Natural Cycles developed the first FDA-cleared birth control app and has since expanded into pregnancy planning, pregnancy, postpartum and perimenopause tracking. The company says it now has more than six million registered users worldwide.

The addition of Sleep Insights marks Natural Cycles’ latest move beyond fertility tracking, as digital health companies look to build broader platforms around women’s health, physiology and personalised health data.

When Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) launched a new FemTech accelerator earlier this year, applications arrived from 47 countries.

In partnership with Merck, the programme attracted 240 startups working across fertility, hormonal health, chronic disease, diagnostics, AI and preventative health. More than 70% of applicants were female founders.

“We wanted to start with a programme that could encourage more founders who are solving for women’s health issues to consider the region a home and be able to solve for the challenges we had regionally,” explains Rama Chakaki, President of QSTP.

“And also to encourage female founders who are looking at the same to come in and say, look, we have capital for you.”

Starting with women

Rama’s interest in women’s health predates her work at QSTP. She previously worked in venture capital and spent years supporting medical non-profits operating in conflict zones. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, she also experienced some of the challenges women face navigating healthcare systems first hand.

“I experienced firsthand what it was like to be a young lady in the healthcare system,” she said. “Everything is hush hush and shy.”

The focus on women’s health was also enabled by what existed around QSTP and the wider Qatar Foundation ecosystem. QSTP sits opposite a centre dedicated to women’s and children’s health and is surrounded by research, healthcare and education institutions.

“If we’re going to do health, we will start with women,” Rama said.

“We’ve got the research institution right across the way that’s already solving for women’s health issues. You’ve got all of the elements, the natural elements to say we’re going to do this.

“If you are lagging behind addressing half of the population, then that gap presents a huge economic opportunity.”

And the QSTP accelerator arrives as women’s health appears to be rising up the policy and investor agenda in the wider Gulf region.

In May, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health announced a partnership with Oura to explore how wearable data could support preventative healthcare, beginning with women’s health and cardiometabolic risk.

Earlier this year, Expo City Dubai launched a dedicated FemTech Hub, while UAE-based women’s health company Nabta Health continues to expand its hybrid care model across the Middle East and Africa - raising a $2 m pre-Series A at the end of 2025. The UAE also launched its National Policy for the Promotion of Women’s Health in 2024, stating ‘women’s health is integral to the overall health of society’.

Cohort support

The accelerator was launched in partnership with Merck, which has identified women’s health as a major area of unmet need and innovation.

The accelerator is designed around market access as much as mentorship, with support provided to access healthcare systems, pilot opportunities and commercial pathways across the region.

Merck Egypt is supporting the programme through introductions to healthcare stakeholders and ecosystem partners, helping participating companies explore opportunities to pilot, scale and reach patients across Egypt and wider MENA markets.

The programme has also attracted support from investors including Golden Gate Ventures, Shorooq, White Star Capital, Raed Ventures, Global Ventures, STV, Jaza Rift Ventures, Rasmal Ventures and the QSTP Tech Venture Fund.

The accelerator is currently moving through its first phase, which includes workshops, investor sessions and introductions to healthcare leaders, researchers and regulators. The next stage will see selected startups pursue pilot projects in Qatar and Egypt.

Selected companies span everything from fertility and maternal health to menopause, diagnostics and chronic disease. Participants include Noor Sciences, a US startup developing AI-powered embryo assessment technology for IVF; South Africa's Babysteps Health Technologies, which predicts high-risk pregnancies using low-cost diagnostics and AI; Canada's Hyivy Health, which is building an at-home pelvic health system for women living with chronic pelvic pain; and Prickly Pear Health, a US company for hormonal and brain health.

Geographically, the cohort stretches from Canada, the US and the UK to South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia, Estonia, Australia, and the MENA region itself.

Adapting for local realities

Most applicants to the QSTP programme were not building for the MENA region when they started their companies. And for Rama, the question has been how to support women’s health technologies to easily translate to the region.

“Are the apps like Flo or others tailored to our needs? Or are they not?” she asked. “And if they’re not, then how do we create that market in a way that’s suitable for us?”

She points to differences in family structures, reproductive health needs and demographics across the region, alongside conditions that may be less common in North America and Europe.

“There’s maybe not enough data on and not enough applications for and studies for,” she said, discussing some of the healthcare challenges specific to local populations.

Much of the programme is therefore built around helping founders understand the healthcare systems, patient populations and cultural realities they hope to serve.

It includes sessions on healthcare delivery, fundraising, regulation and market access, alongside workshops focused on cultural and religious differences across the region.

“We’ve also had some workshops on what’s culturally different,” Rama said. “How do you also navigate, for example, the cultural and religious differences and similarities in the different markets?”

One session is led by Al-Mujadilah, a women-focused cultural dialogue centre established by Qatar Foundation. Its role is to help founders understand what Rama describes as the difference between “hard facts versus soft realities” and avoid confusing cultural misunderstandings with genuine barriers.

A launchpad for the region

While Qatar itself is a relatively small market, Rama sees the accelerator as part of a wider effort to connect founders with opportunities across the MENA region.

“We are looking at it as a launch pad for the region,” she said.

QSTP sits within a network of around 40 institutions spanning education, research and healthcare. The ecosystem also includes the Qatar Precision Health Institute, which has assembled genomic data from approximately 40,000 people.

“The access to all of whether it’s human capital or the institutions or the data,” Rama said, is part of what founders find attractive.

And the pilots aim to expose founders to very different healthcare systems.

“You have a potential to pilot in Qatar and to pilot in another country that has a very different demographic,” she said. “In this case, it’s Egypt.”

Rama also contrasts this to what might be a typical founder experience in the US where the level of access can be challenging.

“I’ve seen companies try to navigate it in the States and they’re pretty much on their own,” she said.

“Whereas here the QSTP is leading on facilitating those discussions and bringing them to the attention of the highest levels of people in government.”

“The benefit of being a large fish in a small sea is that you can make these things happen.”