Getting a women’s health product reimbursed through a public healthcare system can take years - if at all.

And earlier this year, Austrian women’s metabolic health company Hello Inside achieved just that, securing a deal with German statutory insurer BARMER, giving members access to its prevention programme.

For context, Hello Inside uses continuous glucose monitoring, behavioural data and AI-supported recommendations to help users understand links between metabolism, symptoms, nutrition, stress and hormonal health.

And BARMER is one of Germany’s largest statutory health insurers, covering more than nine million people. 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 large-scale distribution and institutional credibility. It’s a big deal.

In this interview with FutureFemHealth, 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.

Read more

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 🏆 $215m from Melinda French Gates for women’s health

• 📈 Apple adds perimenopause tracking to its Health app

• 💰 Impli secures £1.4M NIHR grant to advance continuous hormone monitoring for IVF

• 🩸 Why Ida Tin believes hormones are medicine’s biggest missing dataset

Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com

But first…

💰 Capital flows

📌 GLOBAL: Melinda French Gates expands her investment in women’s health with a new $215M commitment through Pivotal. This latest commitment brings Melinda French Gates total women’s health investments to more than $600M over the past two years. Alongside continued support for reproductive health and maternal care, Melinda is also expanding her focus to midlife and menopause for the first time, including a $10M grant to expand menopause education and clinician training through The Menopause Society. (Continue reading: Pivotal)

📌 UK: Impli secures £1.4M NIHR grant to advance continuous hormone monitoring for IVF. Despite decades of advances in IVF, hormone monitoring still relies on periodic blood tests - which can mean lots of clinic visits for the patient and only a snapshot of hormone levels for the clinician. Impli’s wearable biosensor is designed to continuously measure hormones out of clinic, creating a real-time “live feed” of hormonal changes to help guide treatment decisions. The NIHR funding will support first-in-human clinical validation of the technology. This story is also significant more broadly too - the emerging field of continuous hormone monitoring is part of a growing push to move beyond hormone snapshots and generate richer, longitudinal data on female biology (for more on this see our interview with Ida Tin later in this week’s newsletter!). (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Q32 Bio secures $55M to advance alopecia areata programme. While hair loss is often viewed as a cosmetic issue, alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease that disproportionately affects women, who face a significantly higher lifetime risk of developing the condition than men. This funding will support development of bempikibart, a Phase 2 therapy designed to address the underlying immune dysfunction that drives the condition. The private placement was led by new investor BVF Partners, alongside participation from existing and new healthcare investors. (Continue reading: Q32 Bio)

📌 UK: All-female GP firm Thena Capital raises £45m for debut fund. Already backing five companies from Fund I including Plexaa (Bloom) and Salient Bio, THENA will back approximately 25 early-stage companies across digital health platforms and fast-track medical devices, with vital initial cheques of £500k to £1m at Seed stage. THENA originally announced its first close in March 2025 for £27m. (Continue reading: Sifted (paywall))

📌 CANADA: Two women’s health companies receive federal AI funding. As part of a C$16.5M programme to accelerate AI innovation across the Greater Toronto Area, pelvic health company Cosm Medical has received nearly C$2.0M to support the clinical and commercial rollout of its AI-powered Gynethotics™ platform, which designs and manufactures personalised gynaecological devices. Meanwhile, Future Fertility has received C$555k to commercialise a new AI-powered technology designed to improve assessment of endometrial receptivity, building on the company’s existing AI tools used in more than 300 fertility clinics globally. The awards highlight growing interest in applying AI to some of women’s health’s most persistent challenges, from pelvic floor disorders to fertility treatment. (Continue reading: Government of Canada)

📌 UK: Joyvié Health raises €897k to rethink continence care. While continence remains one of the least discussed areas of healthcare, it affects millions of people and is particularly relevant to women’s health through pregnancy, childbirth, menopause and ageing. Joyvié is developing patent-pending continence underwear designed to improve comfort and dignity while reducing caregiver burden. The pre-seed round was backed by Innovate UK, HERmesa Angels, Lavender Ventures and other investors, with funding supporting clinical pilots and a planned commercial launch later this year. (Continue reading: Eu-startups)

📌 IRELAND: Fertility intelligence startup Fertally secures €100,000 Enterprise Ireland backing. Founded after CEO Aisling Mooney’s 15-year infertility journey, Fertally is building a platform designed to better connect fertility care with the latest scientific evidence. It will now expand clinical pilots and advance development of its evidence-based fertility intelligence platform. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 US: Apple adds perimenopause tracking to its Health app. While (peri)menopause apps have existed for years, perimenopause has now arrived on one of the world’s largest health platforms. Announced at WWDC 2026, the update allows users to log menopause-related symptoms and receive notifications when cycle patterns are suggestive of perimenopause. The move is another sign of menopause shifting from a niche category into mainstream consumer health, with major technology companies now recognising midlife women’s health as a significant market and unmet need. (Continue reading: Tech Crunch)

📌 AUSTRALIA: AstraZeneca to discontinue Zoladex 3.6mg, a treatment used in breast cancer and endometriosis. While AstraZeneca has said the decision is commercial, patient advocates have criticised the move as another reminder of how vulnerable women’s healthcare can be when treatment options are limited. The announcement has also sparked concern because a higher-dose version of the same medicine will remain available for prostate cancer, while women using the 3.6mg formulation face uncertainty about future access. (Continue reading: ABC)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 US: AOA Dx reports promising results for early ovarian cancer detection. Ovarian cancer is frequently diagnosed after it has progressed, creating a major need for better diagnostic tools. At ASCO 2026, AOA Dx reported that its AKRIVIS GD blood test detected 92% of early-stage ovarian cancers in symptomatic women. Unlike traditional diagnostics that rely on a single biomarker, its test combines multiple biomarkers with machine learning, as more interest in multi-omic approaches aim to capture a more complete picture of disease biology. (Continue reading: AOA Dx)

📌 UK: Ripple unveils cohort of 26 women’s health innovations. Getting women’s health innovations into the NHS remains notoriously difficult. This Women’s Digital Health Challenge supports early-stage innovators developing digital solutions with backing from NHS innovation partners. The new cohort spans menopause, contraception, breast health, maternal care and mental health, offering a snapshot of where unmet needs remain. (Continue reading: RippleScale and see the full list of the 26 cohort members here)

📌 UK: University of Liverpool launches Women’s Health Innovation Studio. This £1.8m initiative will support the development of new women’s health technologies, including innovations aimed at reducing maternal deaths from postpartum haemorrhage. More broadly, it reflects a growing recognition that improving women’s health requires not just new startups and products, but dedicated innovation infrastructure to help promising ideas reach patients. (Continue reading: Liverpool University)

💡 Perspectives

📌 Why Ida Tin and SPRIND are building the future of continuous hormone monitoring. Hormones influence everything from fertility and menopause to cardiovascular health, cognition and immunity, yet most testing still relies on occasional snapshots. In an interview with FutureFemHealth, Clue founder Ida Tin explains why SPRIND has launched a €40M challenge to accelerate continuous hormone monitoring, why the opportunity extends far beyond fertility, and why building a shared hormone dataset may ultimately matter as much as the sensors themselves. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 What can femtech learn from salmon farming, airline safety and biopharma? Perhaps unlikely comparisons, but it turns out that other industries have faced versions of the same problems that femtech faces - and they have built different structures to navigate it. In this guest post for FutureFemHealth, Brittany Ryan, founder of Her Health Agents, argues that there is a case for precompetitive collaboration clusters to advance women’s health innovation. “The founder working on the same condition in a different market, with a different product and a different clinical approach, is not the competition yet. She, he, or they are a potential collaborator on the work that benefits everyone.” (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📄 Policy watch: risks and opportunities

📌 US: Washington State moves to improve workplace support for menopause. Governor Bob Ferguson has signed an executive order directing state agencies to review menopause and perimenopause accommodations, while the Washington State Women’s Commission develops guidance and training resources for both public and private employers. Proposed measures include flexible dress codes, improved temperature control, access to cold water and greater use of remote working options. While the order does not create new requirements for private employers, it reflects growing recognition of menopause as a workforce issue and could help establish a model for broader adoption. (Continue reading: Seattle Times)

📆 Save 20% on tickets

📌 The Longevity Show is the UK’s first longevity festival, taking place at Tobacco Dock, London, on 26–27 June.

Helping people discover what really works for living healthier, longer, the show brings together the science, experts, technologies, brands and real-life experiences shaping the future of proactive health.

For the FutureFemHealth community, the show offers a chance to explore how femtech and women’s health innovation are becoming central to the future of longevity, diagnostics, wearables, prevention and personalised healthcare.

Highlights include the Women’s Health Summit led by Hertility, The Assessment Lab, the 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

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

Our hormones shape everything from fertility and menopause to cardiovascular health, cognition, mood, immunity and metabolism. Yet most of what we know about hormones comes from occasional blood, saliva or urine tests that offer only brief snapshots of a constantly changing system. And despite their central role in health, many fundamental questions about female hormonal physiology in particular remain unanswered.

This is the gap that Ida Tin wants to close.

The founder of Clue is leading a €40 million Hormone Challenge at SPRIND, Germany's Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation, which supports ambitious scientific and technological breakthroughs with the potential to create entirely new industries.

The challenge aims to accelerate the development of continuous hormone monitoring technologies capable of measuring hormones in real time, while helping to build the foundations of a new field.

The idea is not a new one for Ida. She first started thinking about hormone sensors much earlier in her career.

“We tried to build a hormone sensor 20 years ago,” she told FutureFemHealth. “I’ve been looking at this space for a long time. It’s kind of happening, but it’s happening slowly.”

Applications are now open to startups, researchers and technical teams across Europe and Israel. Selected teams will receive funding, mentorship and support over the course of the three-year programme as they work to develop technologies capable of continuously measuring hormones.

And for Ida, the ultimate opportunity goes far beyond building a sensor.

“[This is a chance to] not just try to build one company, but try to build an industry,” she said. “I think that’s amazing.”

The problem with hormone snapshots

Today, hormones are typically measured through blood, urine or saliva tests.

While these tests can be useful, they provide only snapshots in time.

“The challenge is that it’s really hard to understand a curve when you have just a couple of points,” Ida explained. “Even if you have a point every month, it’s still really difficult.”

That lack of longitudinal data leaves huge gaps in our understanding of female physiology.

"It's just phenomenally mind-boggling that we have so little understanding of our hormonal system,” she said.

“We don’t have teenagers when they start their reproductive journey, understand their levels, and then understand how that maybe even affects them at the end of their lives.”

The implications extend far beyond fertility.

Ida points to unanswered questions around cardiovascular disease, Parkinson’s disease, cognitive decline, the gut microbiome and hormone replacement therapy.

“Hormones are kind of like the operating system of the body,” she said. “They affect our brain, our bones, our cognitive abilities, our mood, our reproductive health, our immunity.”

“We really don’t understand yet” many of these relationships, she said.

Why hasn’t this happened already?

So if the opportunity is so significant, why don’t continuous hormone monitors already exist?

Part of the answer is that the science is extraordinarily difficult.

“The concentrations that you have to be able to measure reliably are extraordinarily small,” said Ida. “It’s like a sugar cube in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.”

Female sex hormones are among the hardest molecules to measure continuously. They are present at very low concentrations and behave differently from easier analytes such as glucose and cortisol, which have attracted much of the attention in biosensing to date.

There are also non-technical factors too.

“What we consider important scientific questions to pursue is also formed by our culture and our gender norms,” Ida said.

The result is a field that has remained fragmented despite years of research and growing interest from startups.

Why SPRIND is taking a different approach

The SPRIND programme focuses only technologies capable of directly measuring hormones. According to the challenge criteria, participating teams must measure the hormone of interest itself rather than relying on surrogate physiological signals such as heart rate or temperature.

And rather than backing a single company, the programme is designed to support multiple technical approaches simultaneously while encouraging collaboration across the emerging ecosystem.

Ida believes that approach is essential.

When she looks back at the early days of Clue, she argues that the biggest challenge was never competition from other startups.

“The biggest challenge was to educate the market, educate the VCs, change culture,” she said.

She sees a similar challenge emerging in continuous hormone monitoring.

For the field to succeed, companies will need to solve not only technical problems but also manufacturing, regulation, clinical adoption, user experience, reimbursement and education.

“That’s why we need ecosystems,” she said.

The dataset may be as important as the sensors

Underpinning the creation of an ecosystem is a focus on building a shared reference dataset as part of the SPRIND programme.

Alongside the sensor development work, participating teams will contribute towards creating a common foundation for understanding hormone levels across different ages, ethnicities, life stages and health conditions.

According to Ida, this is not something any individual startup could realistically build alone.

“There are different hormones, different body fluids, different ages, different ethnicities, different conditions, different times of the day,” she said. “It’s really difficult for one startup to build that.”

The hope is that the dataset will outlive the programme itself and provide a trusted benchmark against which future hormone monitoring technologies can be validated. Ida argues that today's reference ranges are often so broad that they can be difficult to interpret meaningfully.

Building the infrastructure for female physiology

Ida’s vision is that continuous hormone monitoring is a foundational layer for future healthcare.

“When I think about modern medicine, I kind of get this picture of it being built on this backdrop of a healthy white man,” she said.

"And our bodies just look totally different."

Continuous hormone data, she argues, could help enable more personalised medicine, improved disease prevention, digital twins, new approaches to drug discovery and even AI models built around female physiology.

In Ida’s view, better hormone data could ultimately help medicine move beyond a one-size-fits-all model and towards a deeper understanding of how physiology changes across sex, age and life stage.

That is ultimately why she chose continuous hormone monitoring as the focus for SPRIND’s first major women’s health initiative.

"There is enough to be done in women's health," she said. "But from all the time I spent in femtech, I felt this was a really huge data gap that we have."

By 2029, when the programme ends, Ida hopes it will have done more than produce promising technologies. She hopes it will have helped create the foundations for an entirely new industry.

“The ultimate goal,” she said, “is that this data makes a difference for women out there.”

• Applications for the SPRIND continuous hormone challenge are open until 26 June 2026 at 6pm CEST. For more information and to apply visit SPRIND.

London-based startup Impli has secured a £1.4 million grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to advance clinical validation of its continuous hormone monitoring technology for fertility treatment.

The funding will support a 30-month consortium programme bringing together Impli, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, King’s College London, Fertility Europe and specialist medical device manufacturer TTP to take the company’s BEAM (Bio-Endocrine Analysis Monitor) biosensor from prototype to first-in-human clinical validation.

Impli is developing a minimally invasive microneedle patch designed to continuously measure estradiol, luteinizing hormone (LH) and progesterone in interstitial fluid. The patch transmits data wirelessly to a smartphone, where AI algorithms convert raw sensor signals into real-time hormone trends.

The company is initially focused on IVF, where treatment decisions are often made using hormone readings that may already be 24 to 48 hours old. According to Impli, critical events such as LH surges, progesterone dips linked to implantation failure and early signs of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome can be missed between tests.

“Continuous hormone monitoring has the potential to change the landscape of fertility treatment, both in terms of clinical care and patient experience,” said Mr Sotirios Saravelos, Consultant Gynaecologist and Reproductive Medicine Subspecialist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and the Wolfson Fertility Centre.

“Rather than snapshots taken at fixed points in time, with Impli we will have access to a live feed of each patient’s hormonal response, allowing us to personalise care in a way that has not been possible before.”

Infertility affects one in six people globally, yet IVF success rates remain between 15% and 32%, dropping to as low as 6% for women over 43. Treatment can require up to ten clinic visits for blood draws and monitoring during a single cycle.

The NIHR award will fund final device development and manufacturing, a 25-participant pilot study through Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s Clinical Research Facility, AI model development, patient and public involvement activities, and regulatory and health economic work to support future NHS adoption.

“We are not just building a device, we are building the evidence base to show that continuous hormone monitoring is possible, clinically meaningful, and ready for the real world,” said founder and CEO Anna Luisa Schaffgotsch.

“With an exceptional consortium behind us, we now have the funding, the expertise and the clinical pathway to do that properly. The NIHR i4i award is a pivotal moment for Impli and for continuous hormone monitoring as a field.”

The company sees IVF as its initial entry point, but says the same biosensing platform could eventually be applied across PCOS, endometriosis, menopause, endocrinology and hormonally driven cancers.

Impli has developed three functional prototypes, completed in-vitro pre-clinical studies and begun animal trials. The company also has an existing strategic partnership with Bayer focused on real-time hormone biosensing.

Irish fertility technology startup Fertally has secured €100,000 in funding from the Enterprise Ireland Pre-Seed Start Fund, as it looks to expand clinical pilots and advance development of its evidence-based fertility intelligence platform.

Founded by Aisling Mooney, Fertally is developing a clinical intelligence platform designed to help fertility specialists make more informed treatment decisions by combining real-time patient data with insights drawn from peer-reviewed fertility research.

The platform brings together biomarker data, patient-reported symptoms and clinical outcomes, creating a continuous view of a patient’s fertility journey. This information is then indexed against a growing database of scientific literature, with the aim of helping clinicians identify relevant evidence and treatment approaches more efficiently.

“My aim is to help people facing infertility shorten their journey to growing their families by connecting the dots in a very fragmented system through machine-learning intelligence,” said founder Aisling Mooney.

The funding will be used to expand Fertally’s pilot programme with fertility clinics, support clinical validation of the platform, strengthen its data and regulatory infrastructure, and fund key early hires.

Connecting to the latest evidence

Aisling’s own experience of infertility helped inspire the company.

“After 15 years of infertility, I undertook my own search into medical journals and learned how to decipher trial data and found an article discussing a trial that doctors hadn’t heard of,” she said.

“I found a doctor willing to try the protocol and and it worked on the first cycle. Something clicked when I saw my first positive pregnancy test and I knew I had to find a way to share what I'd found.”

Aisling later began studying programming and machine learning, with the goal of building a platform that could help other people facing infertility navigate what she describes as a fragmented fertility ecosystem.

Fertally operates on a dual model, offering a platform for fertility clinics and clinicians alongside direct research access for patients. The company says it has been designed to GDPR standards and is being developed in line with the EU Medical Device Regulation (MDR) pathway.

The investment comes as fertility providers increasingly explore how data, artificial intelligence and clinical decision-support tools can help personalise treatment and improve patient outcomes.

This is a guest post by Brittany Ryan, founder of Her Health Agents and a fractional product and communications advisor for women’s health teams.

Spend enough time in FemTech circles and a pattern starts to emerge. Founders, researchers, and clinicians in this space are, by and large, working toward the same thing: a healthcare system, services and tooling that take women’s health seriously. Yet the ecosystem often behaves as though each company is solving a problem no one else has thought of, building in isolation, fundraising in isolation, and educating the market in isolation.

The signs of strain are hard to miss. Amy Beckley, PhD, owner and CEO of Proov, kicked off 2026 with her prediction that “70% of current women’s health businesses will fail in 2026…[because of] too many companies all competing for the same small pot of funding”.

Beyond the funding crunch, she points to the proliferation of “micro education”, with companies producing noise around the same health topics. For a field with no shortage of ideas, urgency, or competent contributors, and as a woman with a vested interest in the collective success of women’s health innovation, this is a difficult pattern to watch from the sidelines.

As the FemTech industry matures, consolidation is a natural part of commercial evolution; the inevitable thinning of the herd and economic survival of the fittest (or funded-est). Surely FemTech isn’t the first industry to face this collision of: urgency, data shortages, funding shortages, and a gulf of opportunities brought by new technology… Is there something to learn from how others have navigated this crossroads?

Duplicated efforts with no IP-value-added

Take endometriosis. One of the most prevalent and historically under-researched conditions affecting women, it has attracted a wave of startups, many building to establish a foothold in their local markets: in the US, in the UK, in Australia, in France and so on. Initially, this global momentum radiates hope and optimism that finally [insert any underserved women’s health condition] is having a moment. But how many players will survive long enough to have real impact?

Each of these start-ups is navigating its own regulatory environment, generating its own clinical evidence, and making its own case to investors about why the condition deserves attention and capital, and why they are the founding team to bet on. The geographic distance means they are rarely in direct competition, but every hard-won insight, every regulatory lesson, every clinical relationship stays siloed within the company that earned it. The same foundational work ends up being paid for repeatedly.

The second pattern is even more visible if you’ve spent time in the space. Alongside building their products, FemTech founders carry an additional burden: the work of making the problem legible. Often called the “awareness tax,” it means building awareness among users dismissed or misdiagnosed for years, among investors encountering conditions like endometriosis, PMOS (previously PCOS), or pelvic floor dysfunction for the first time across a boardroom table, and among clinicians working with an evidence base that has historically underrepresented women.

Download any app in the women’s health space. Odds are it will offer you the ability to track your cycle, and a library of supporting educational content. In any given condition space, libraries appear, written independently, clinically reviewed independently, published independently, covering similar or related topics. How many hours of clinical advisor time have gone into explaining what endometriosis is (or reviewing what an LLM wrote), across how many companies, in how many languages, when that explanation already existed somewhere else in slightly different form? That is scarce time and money that could have gone toward solving the actual problem, or toward an open-source body maintaining a reliable, trustworthy library of condition information. More importantly, it’s time and money not being invested in the IP and differentiators that actually build company value.

Unlikely collaborations: lessons from elsewhere

It turns out other industries have faced versions of the same problem, and built different structures to navigate it.

Global Salmon Initiative (GSI)

In 2013, CEOs of competing salmon aquaculture companies, facing regulatory and shareholder pressure, joined forces around collective interest. They recognised shared challenges costing every company regardless of performance, including sustainability certification, disease management, and feed efficiency, and agreed to pool resources on those challenges while competing on everything else. The outcomes over the following decade were significant: around 40% of global salmon production became certified to the industry’s gold environmental standard, medicinal sea lice treatments dropped by 50%, and feed efficiency improved measurably across the sector. Collective progress served everyone’s interests more than parallel, siloed effort ever would.

Commercial Aviation Safety Standards

In the midst of a “crisis of public confidence” in 1997, competing airlines agreed to share flight safety data through a body called the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, or CAST. Data flows through an independent third party, the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) system, which anonymises it so airlines can contribute operational information without handing anything sensitive to a competitor. As a result of a shared pool of data, it was possible to identify patterns that otherwise may not be apparent through the lens of an individual operator. Over the following decade, commercial aviation fatalities in the US fell by 83%. The programme has since produced over 100 industry-wide safety enhancements and continues to expand nearly 20 years on.

Biopharma - The Pistoia Alliance

In 2007, senior R&D directors from competing pharmaceutical companies gathered in Pistoia, Italy, and concluded they were independently spending on the same foundational research tasks: gene sequencing, literature monitoring, and data standards. Work necessary for everyone and competitively useful to no one. The Pistoia Alliance grew out of that conversation, built around the explicit aim of encouraging “the cross-company conversations that identify the most pernicious examples of resource-wasting replication of pre-competitive research activities, and then launching project teams to address these challenges.” Founded by major players including AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis and Pfizer, the Alliance continues today, built on the principle that collaborative solutions can “advance science and create value for the industry, without yielding competitive advantage for individual organizations or requiring competitive data to be shared.”

What can we learn here?

One caveat before applying these examples to FemTech. The precedents above sit largely in systems and operational practices, far from the consumer. They also come from industries with deeper pockets, and formal collaboration bodies take real effort to build. Duplication in women’s health behaves differently: much of it lives at the patient-facing layer, in education, guidance, and interpretation of evidence. That layer shapes trust directly, and inconsistency is immediately visible to the end user. The case for coordination is stronger here, but it rubs against every founder’s need to establish themselves as a serious voice in the space; both for the investors deciding whether to back them, and the end users deciding whether to trust them. Content and awareness are usually the entry point to both.

That being said, all three examples started with a group of people recognising shared urgency and shared costs, and deciding to do something about it together. That starting point is available to women’s health companies now. Two areas stand out as candidates, though an entire paper could be written about a third: addressing the data gap.

The first is regulatory and clinical intelligence. A founder who has spent eighteen months in the German regulatory landscape has knowledge another founder entering that market would benefit from enormously. Sharing it does not hand a competitor an advantage. The product, the brand, the clinical relationships, and the commercial execution remain entirely theirs. The “IP-free zone” holds the foundational map and supplemental assets, not key ingredients to each player’s unique answer to the problem.

The second is condition-level education and awareness. If several endometriosis companies jointly developed and openly licensed a shared body of educational content, or partnered with bodies where that content already exists, each would walk away with something more credible and more comprehensive than any of them could have produced alone, at a fraction of the cost. The shared layer simply stops consuming precious resources, and patients gain access to a trustworthy, open-source library.

Progress here requires someone to call the room. The Global Salmon Initiative did not emerge from a general sense that collaboration was a good idea. It required a small number of leaders to decide that the cost of continued fragmentation outweighed the discomfort of sitting down with competitors. In women’s health, that moment feels overdue.

With our powers combined

Salmon farmers, airlines, and pharma researchers all found a meaningful difference between the work that makes a company distinct and the work that simply has to exist for the field to function or advance. The latter doesn’t need to be duplicated, at full cost, across every company in a space.

This is where precompetitive collaboration can play a role.

The harder questions sit further down the road: who convenes, how it is governed, how trust is held across stakeholders with different incentives and definitions of success. None of those has an obvious answer in women’s health yet. None of the precedents above did at the start either.

The people building in women’s health are, almost without exception, here for two reasons: they believe women deserve better, and they can see the commercial opportunity in proving it. Which means the founder working on the same condition in a different market, with a different product and a different clinical approach, is not the competition yet. She, he, or they are a potential collaborator on the part of the ‘IP-free zone’ work that benefits everyone — and precompetitive collaboration is one way to put more of the available money where it actually counts.

About the author

Brittany Ryan is founder of Her Health Agents, a portfolio of 0→1 discovery ventures working at the intersection of women’s health innovation, data infrastructure, and access. She also serves as a Fractional Product and Communications Advisor, helping women’s health teams sharpen what they’re building and how they talk about it.

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 👀 Flo Health publicly addresses privacy lawsuit as Dutch complaint emerges

• 🏆 Clue becomes the first insurance-covered period and cycle tracker

• 💍 ŌURA pushes further into healthcare with Ring 5 launch

• 👩🏽‍💻 UK Government responds to concerns over women's health content censorship

Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com

💰 Capital flows

📌 US: Contraline raises $92.5 million Series B for male contraception. Few options for male contraception have progressed into late-stage clinical development despite their potential to reduce reliance on female hormonal contraception, share responsibility for contraception more evenly and create new approaches to family planning. Contraline’s latest raise will support NES/T Gel, a daily hormonal male contraceptive that recently completed a Phase 2b trial involving 462 couples and is expected to enter Phase 3 development in 2027. The company says this would be the first Phase 3 trial of a pharmacological male contraceptive. Funding will also support development of ADAM, its long-lasting non-hormonal contraceptive. (Continue reading: Contraline)

📌 US: Elation Health acquires women's health startup Aster. This deal sees a women's health-focused electronic health records (EHR) company acquired by a mainstream primary care platform. Founded in 2023, Aster developed AI-powered clinical and administrative tools designed for women's health providers. The acquisition will bring Aster's team and technology into Elation Health's platform, which serves more than 50,000 clinicians and 24 million patients across the US. Aster had previously raised $2.8m in capital. No deal terms disclosed. (Continue reading: Elation Health)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 GLOBAL: Flo Health publicly addresses privacy lawsuit. The world's largest period-tracking app is publicly revisiting the lawsuit that resulted in an $8 million settlement last year and is responding to longstanding concerns about reproductive health data. Flo Health has launched a campaign featuring its privacy and security teams, and in a series of videos and posts says that "sensational headlines and narratives" created the perception that it sold user data, which it strongly denies. The campaign marks one of the first times the company has publicly revisited the case in detail. At the same time, Flo is facing a new complaint in the Netherlands relating to its handling of sensitive reproductive health data, highlighting how privacy remains one of the most closely watched issues in women's health. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 GERMANY: Clue becomes the first insurance-covered period and cycle tracker. Menstrual and cycle tracking apps have traditionally been consumer products paid for directly by users. Now Clue has announced a partnership with German private health insurer SDK, making it the first period and menstrual cycle tracking app in the world to be covered by health insurance. The agreement gives eligible SDK members access to Clue Plus at no additional cost and perhaps shows a change in how payers view menstrual and reproductive health tools. (Continue reading: Clue)

📌 US: AI fertility platform Alife Health receives FDA clearance for embryo assessment tool. Embryo selection is one of the most important decisions made during IVF treatment, making it a growing area of interest for AI developers. Alife Health has secured FDA clearance for Embryo Predict, an AI-powered tool that analyses embryo images and generates a score to help embryologists identify embryos with the highest likelihood of resulting in pregnancy. The clearance was supported by a multi-centre clinical trial involving 440 patients across seven US fertility clinics. (Continue reading: PR Newswire)

📌 FRANCE: FemTech sector grows to 200 startups as ecosystem shows signs of maturity. Up from 170 startups just a year ago, the latest French Femtech Landscape report from Femtech France and consulting firm Wavestone indicates a market beginning to show signs of commercial maturity. Nearly a quarter (23%) of startups are already profitable, 41% have been operating for more than five years and seven now benefit from reimbursement through the French national health insurance system. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 GLOBAL: ŌURA launches Ring 5 with new GLP-1 tracking features and further push into healthcare. While much of the attention has focused on Oura Ring 5 being 40% smaller than its predecessor, the bigger story may be ŌURA’s continued move from health tracking into healthcare. Alongside new features including GLP-1 Insights, blood pressure trend monitoring and AI-powered health guidance, ŌURA has announced partnerships that allow users to access personalised medical advice and connect with licensed healthcare providers directly through the Oura app. Regular readers of FutureFemHealth will know that women make up the majority of Oura’s user base, making it one of the most influential consumer health platforms in women’s health. This launch suggests ŌURA increasingly sees its future not just in helping people understand their health, but in helping them act on it. (Continue reading: Oura)

📌 US: Walmart begins nationwide rollout of Nella pelvic exam comfort kit. For many women, pelvic exams are associated with discomfort, anxiety and loss of control. Walmart is rolling out Nella’s pelvic exam comfort kit nationwide, allowing women to purchase their own speculum and comfort products ahead of gynaecological appointments. Designed to improve the exam experience, the launch brings a product typically associated with clinical settings into mainstream retail. (Continue reading: Ceek Women’s Health)

📌 UK: Adora Health partners with Medicash to expand workplace menopause support. As UK employers prepare for new menopause action plan requirements under the Employment Rights Act, workplace menopause support is increasingly moving from a nice-to-have benefit to a strategic workforce issue. Women’s health platform Adora Health has partnered with employee health benefits provider Medicash to provide menopause support through employer-funded health benefits. (Continue reading: Adora)

📌 CANADA: Cosm Medical partners with Duke and Mayo Clinic on personalised pelvic recovery devices. Post-operative recovery options following pelvic floor surgery remain relatively limited and largely standardised. Cosm Medical has partnered with Duke Health and Mayo Clinic to develop patient-specific recovery devices using medical imaging, AI-driven design and 3D printing. The collaboration will explore whether personalised devices can improve healing and recovery following pelvic floor surgery. (Continue reading: Cosm)

📌 MIGRAINE: EU approves AbbVie’s AQUIPTA for acute migraine treatment. Migraine disproportionately affects women yet remains one of the most under-recognised causes of disability worldwide. The European Commission has approved AbbVie’s AQUIPTA (atogepant) as an acute treatment for migraine, expanding its use beyond prevention. The decision means European patients will be able to use the same medicine for both preventing migraine and treating attacks when they occur. (Continue reading: Abbvie)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 UK: DNA test could spare thousands of breast cancer patients from chemotherapy. A number of breast cancer patients undergo chemotherapy despite receiving little benefit from it. Researchers led by University College London found that a genomic test called Prosigna can identify women with early-stage hormone receptor-positive breast cancer who may be able to safely avoid chemotherapy. In a study of more than 4,000 women, over two-thirds received hormone therapy alone while maintaining similar five-year survival outcomes. Researchers estimate the findings could spare more than 5,000 NHS patients each year from unnecessary treatment. (Continue reading: BBC)

📌 US: Hormone therapy use for menopause falls to just 1.7% despite growing evidence of benefits. While it can feel as though the conversation around HRT is everywhere, new data suggests uptake remains shockingly low. A Mayo Clinic study found that menopausal hormone therapy use in the US fell from 4.4% of women over 40 in 2007 to just 1.7% in 2023. Even among women aged 50–59, who are often considered the group most likely to benefit, only 3.5% were using hormone therapy. Researchers say ongoing misinformation, clinician knowledge gaps and lingering concerns following the infamous Women’s Health Initiative study may be contributing to the low uptake. The findings suggest that increased awareness of menopause has not yet translated into widespread access to evidence-based treatment. (Continue reading: Newswise)

📌 UK/US: Oxford and Stanford researchers develop wearable ultrasound patch for continuous pregnancy monitoring. Most pregnancy monitoring relies on intermittent scans, meaning complications can develop between appointments. Researchers from Oxford and Stanford have developed a soft wearable ultrasound patch that continuously tracks fetal blood flow and wellbeing for hours at a time. Tested across 62 pregnancies, the technology could help clinicians identify complications such as pre-eclampsia, fetal growth restriction and placental dysfunction earlier, with the long-term goal of supporting at-home monitoring. (Continue reading: University of Oxford)

💡 Perspectives

📌 GLOBAL: Can FemTech scale without serving affluent women first? Everyone wants women’s health innovation to be accessible, inclusive and representative. But building diverse datasets, running inclusive clinical studies and reaching underserved populations all require time, money and infrastructure. In our latest FutureFemHealth Pro piece, we explore the tension between commercial reality and healthcare equity, asking not whether inclusion matters, but how a still-maturing sector can realistically achieve it. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth Pro)

📌 NORDICS: Can the Nordics build the first systems-level blueprint for women’s health? Women’s health is often discussed as a series of disconnected problems to solve - from menopause to fertility, funding to research. The new Women’s Health 2040 Playbook argues that many of these challenges are connected and should be approached as part of a wider system. Developed with the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, the framework aims to align research, care, policy, data and AI infrastructure across the Nordic region through a shared open-source approach. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📄 Policy watch: risks and opportunities

📌 UK: Government responds to concerns over women’s health content censorship online. Finally, it seems that the censorship and suppression of women’s health content is becoming a policy issue rather than simply a platform moderation issue. In the latest development, the UK Government has formally responded to recommendations from the Women and Equalities Committee calling for them to hold platforms accountable, highlighting existing protections under the Online Safety Act but stopping short of introducing new measures specifically targeting women’s health censorship. Women and Equalities Committee Chair Sarah Owen MP said the Government should take the problem of shadowbanning more seriously, while also calling for greater scrutiny of “ineffective, unsafe and exploitative” FemTech apps. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 GLOBAL: Eight countries pledge record US$175m for women’s health supplies amid growing funding concerns. Every day more than 700 women die from preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Against a backdrop of global funding cuts and a projected US$185 million contraceptive funding gap in 2026, eight countries have committed more than US$175 million towards contraceptives and reproductive, maternal and newborn health supplies. The pledges, from countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia, suggest some governments are now treating women’s health supplies as essential infrastructure rather than optional public health spending. (Continue reading: UNFPA)

📌 EU: Open letter calls for dedicated EU funding for women’s health. Europe can’t close the gender health gap without dedicated EU funding for women’s health research. And the EU is now entering the decisive phase for its next big research funding programme for 2028–2034 – the 10th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. An open letter from women’s health leaders and organisations is now calling on Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva to support the establishment of a dedicated EU instrument on women’s health R&I within the programme. (Continue reading: DSW via LinkedIn - note deadline extended to June 23)

📆 Opportunities & support

📌 VIRTUAL/FINLAND: Eir Accelerator - a women’s health program for global startups. Eir Accelerator is a six-month, fully funded accelerator, powered by the Women's Health Hub Finland and partners. It’s accepting women's health startups globally for its free program that provides support with fundraising, scaling and pilot opportunities.
🎟️ Find out more and apply to the programme.

📌 VIRTUAL / UK: The Nexus women’s health collective - supported by Barclays Eagle Labs. Apply before 15 June for a new nine-month cohort of 30 companies building in women’s health. You’ll be surrounded with mentors, investors, finance expertise and a tight peer groups, so you’ll leave the programme stronger, better connected, and ready to raise.
🎟️ Find out more and apply to the programme.

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

Flo Health, the world’s most popular female health app, is publicly addressing years of privacy scrutiny through a new social media campaign featuring its privacy chief, while separately facing a new complaint in the Netherlands over its handling of reproductive health data.

The campaign marks one of the first times the world’s largest period tracking app has directly discussed the lawsuit that led to an $8 million settlement in 2025, with Flo arguing that many public perceptions of the case do not reflect what actually happened.

The initiative includes a series of social media videos and posts featuring Flo's Vice President of Privacy and Data Protection Officer Sue Khan, Flo’s VP of Security Laure Lydon alongside cybersecurity creator Tazin Khan. Together, they address common questions about reproductive health data, privacy protections and the company's approach to handling sensitive information.

Part of the campaign includes a carousel-style "Letter to our community on privacy", outlining the company's position on privacy, data protection and the legal challenges it has faced in recent years.

In the posts, Flo argues that privacy should not be a reason for women to avoid using digital health tools and says users should not have to choose between benefiting from technology and protecting their personal information.

“Privacy is one of the most important topics for our users, and we believe people deserve fact-based and clear information about how their health data is protected,” Sue Khan told FutureFemHealth.

Flo Health also shared that it has created a Trust & Safety Center, where users can access accurate information about all things privacy at Flo.

“The conversation we shared on social media is part of our broader commitment to transparency and education.”

“We know privacy and security can feel complex, and many people have questions about what safeguards are in place. Partnering with an inspiring cybersecurity expert like Tazin Khan helped make these topics accessible and allowed us to address common questions head on."

Revisiting the lawsuit

Much of the campaign, which appeared across Flo’s social media channels between May 28 and June 1, focuses on addressing concerns stemming from the legal challenges that have followed the company over the past several years.

Discussing the lawsuit in one of the videos, Sue Khan says that “sensational headlines and narratives” led many people to believe Flo had sold user data, adding that this “absolutely did not happen.”

She later argues that “if we continue fearmongering in this industry”, “women end up losing out because they don’t have the facts in front of them.”

Part of Flo’s response also comes in the form of a community letter published alongside the campaign. In a slide titled “The lawsuit. What actually happened.”, the company explains that between 2016 and 2019 it used software development kits (SDKs) provided by third-party companies to monitor app performance, fix bugs and improve reliability.

Flo argues that the lawsuit centred on questions around disclosure and transparency regarding how those tools operated, rather than allegations that users’ health data was sold.

“The lawsuit questioned whether this was explained clearly enough and how it was handled,” the community letter states. “We want to be direct: that limited technical information was never sold or used for advertising. Ever.”

The posts also reference court proceedings from the case, with Flo highlighting that a judge had indicated the main claim faced an “insurmountable” lack of evidence before the company ultimately agreed to settle.

The lawsuit relates to allegations that reproductive health data was shared with digital advertising companies without user consent between 2017 and 2019. Last year, Flo agreed to contribute $8 million to a proposed settlement fund while denying wrongdoing.

The campaign also highlights a number of privacy initiatives introduced in recent years, including annual third-party privacy audits, global GDPR-level protections, an independent Privacy and Security Advisory Board and Anonymous Mode, a feature that allows users to use the app without linking identifying information to their health data.

Flo also emphasised that it open-sourced the technology underpinning Anonymous Mode in 2023, allowing other health apps to adopt similar protections.

The campaign also arrives just months after the company advertised for a dedicated PR lead focused on privacy and policy communications.

New complaint filed in the Netherlands

The renewed focus on privacy comes as Dutch digital rights organisation Bits of Freedom has filed a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority over Flo’s handling of sensitive user information.

According to Dutch media reports, the complaint alleges that Flo collects and processes highly sensitive personal information, including data relating to sexual activity, menstrual cycles and pregnancy intentions.

At the time of writing, the full details of the complaint have not been made public.

Flo says it has not yet been provided with sufficient information to respond to the allegations in detail.

“We are surprised by this campaign, particularly as Bits of Freedom has not responded to Flo’s substantive engagement and responses to their questions from 2024,” a Flo Health spokesperson told FutureFemHealth.

“At this stage, we have not been provided with details or the basis for this complaint, which limits our ability to respond in detail.

“Privacy and the protection of sensitive health data are fundamental to Flo and we simply have never and will never sell user data. We have implemented robust privacy and information-security measures, reflected in our ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certifications, and have been externally recognised for our work on data protection.

“We nevertheless remain committed to constructive engagement to address the facts and any specific concerns Bits of Freedom may have.”

A wider challenge for women’s health

Flo is not alone in placing greater emphasis on privacy.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 in particular, a number of companies moved quickly to strengthen and publicise their privacy protections amid growing concerns about how reproductive health data could be accessed or used.

Companies including Clue have highlighted privacy as a core part of their offering, while newer entrants such as 28X (which bills itself as the ‘private period tracker’) have incorporated privacy and data ownership into their product design and messaging from the outset.

As scrutiny of reproductive health data continues from regulators, campaigners and consumers, privacy remains one of the most closely watched issues across the women's health sector.

The UK Government has formally responded to concerns about the suppression of women’s health content online, marking another step in the growing political scrutiny of how social media platforms treat information related to women’s health.

In March 2026, the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) dedicated a section of its report on menstrual health to the issue of social media censorship and shadowbanning, citing evidence from CensHERship as well as clinicians, charities and women’s health organisations.

The Committee recommended that social media platforms should be held accountable for the inappropriate suppression of women’s health information and called for greater scrutiny of how content moderation systems impact access to health information.

In its response, published this week, the Government pointed to provisions within the Online Safety Act 2023 that require platforms to consider users’ rights to freedom of expression and ensure their terms of service are applied consistently.

The response also highlights the need for platforms to provide complaints and redress mechanisms when content is wrongly removed or restricted.

The Government said it agreed with the Committee’s broader recommendations to improve women’s health outcomes and experiences, acknowledging the impact that menstrual health conditions can have on women’s lives, education and participation in the workforce.

However, while the response outlines existing legislative protections, it stops short of introducing any new measures specifically aimed at tackling the inappropriate restriction of women’s health content online.

The Government also declined to commit to several recommendations made by the Committee, including measurable actions on online misinformation, new initiatives to address censorship of women’s health content and additional commitments relating to the needs of disabled and Deaf women.

Calls for stronger action

Responding to the Government’s position, Women and Equalities Committee Chair Sarah Owen MP welcomed the renewed focus on women’s health but warned that progress must be backed by meaningful investment and action.

“There are both opportunities and risks when it comes to increasing use of technology in women’s healthcare,” she said.

Sarah Owen identified two areas of concern: the inappropriate suppression of women's health content online and the need for greater scrutiny of some digital health products.

“As the Committee’s report set out, social media companies should be held to account for inappropriate and disgraceful ‘shadow banning’ censorship of important women’s health content and there should be a rigorous approach to tackling the risks from ineffective, unsafe and exploitative for-profit FemTech apps.”

“The Government should take the problem of ‘shadow banning’ more seriously.”

The comments highlight how policymakers are increasingly examining not only access to women's health information online, but also the wider role of technology and digital health products within women's healthcare.

As FemTech adoption grows, questions around evidence, safety, transparency and accountability are also moving further up the policy agenda.

Significant gaps

Owen also raised concerns that the Government’s renewed Women’s Health Strategy lacks sufficient funding and measurable targets, warning that without stronger commitments it risks only “scratching the surface” of the issues facing women and girls.

The response follows the publication of the Government’s renewed Women’s Health Strategy in April, which included £1.5 million in funding for women’s health hubs and a renewed focus on reducing gynaecology waiting lists, improving patient experience and tackling what ministers described as “medical misogyny”.

However, the Women and Equalities Committee argues that significant gaps remain between the ambitions outlined in the strategy and the practical measures needed to deliver change. It said that it had produced a report back in 2024 on medical misogyny and called on the Government then to recognise the benefits of increased investment in early diagnosis and treatment.

“While it’s welcome to see a focus on tackling ‘medical misogyny’ in April’s renewed Women’s Health Strategy and an emphasis on women’s voices being heard, this must be backed by adequate funding, not financial half measures, particularly when compared to men’s health,” added Sarah Owen MP.

Alongside these concerns and those on online censorship, MPs also highlighted the absence of new commitments on other areas too.

“Significant questions remain following today’s response publication over the adequacy of investment being provided, including for workforce training, menstrual health education in schools, research and additional ring-fenced funding for women’s health hubs to deliver services within the emerging neighbourhood health framework,” continued Sarah Owen MP.

The response comes after recent analysis by The Times showing that the Government is allocating 60% more funding to its men’s health strategy than its renewed strategy for women’s health.

“A strategy which does not fully address the concerns set out in WEC’s report, alongside measurable actions and timescales, will only scratch the surface of the issues facing women’s health,” said Sarah Own MP.

“WEC will keep a close eye on progress and continue to push for long overdue tangible change for women and girls.”

Censorship moves into policy mainstream

On shadowbanning specifically, the Government’s response represents another milestone in the evolution of a debate that until recently was often dismissed as anecdotal.

Over the past two years, concerns about the suppression of women’s health content have expanded from individual complaints by creators, charities and companies to parliamentary inquiries, committee reports, parliamentary debate and now formal Government responses.

Research by CensHERship found that 95% of women’s health organisations surveyed have experienced censorship, shadowbanning or content restrictions online, with examples spanning fertility, menopause, sexual health, pregnancy, endometriosis and gynaecological cancers.

In May 2026, the issue was also debated in Parliament during a Westminster Hall debate on menstrual health and medical misogyny, where MPs raised concerns about the impact that social media censorship can have on access to information, support and health education.

“Just a few years ago, the censorship of women’s health content was routinely dismissed as isolated incidents or anecdotal experiences,” said Anna O’Sullivan, co-founder of CensHERship.

"The fact that it has now been debated in Parliament, cited in official committee reports and addressed in a formal Government response shows how far the conversation has progressed."

“Recognition is an important first step. But we now need Government, regulators and platforms themselves to ensure those protections are more than words on paper."

France’s Femtech ecosystem has grown to 200 active startups, up from 170 a year ago, according to the latest French Femtech Landscape Report from Femtech France and consulting firm Wavestone.

The annual report, now in its fourth year, suggests the French women’s health market is moving beyond its early-stage phase and beginning to show signs of commercial maturity.

Nearly a quarter (23%) of startups are already profitable, 41% have been operating for more than five years and 38% reported stable revenues despite a challenging economic environment.

Average funding rounds reached €2.9m in 2025, while total funding disclosed by venture-backed respondents amounted to €34.9m. Perhaps more notably, half of investment came from international investors, highlighting growing interest in the French market beyond its borders.

The ecosystem's growing confidence is reflected in broader institutional support. 2025 also saw the launch of Femtech Île-de-France Fund, a dedicated investment vehicle, expected to have €50 million in assets, backed by the Île-de-France Region, Turenne Groupe and Université Paris Cité. The fund is expected to begin investing in startups from pre-seed through to Series A in 2026.

“France is not only the country with the most Femtech startups in Europe: it is also the first country in the European Union to have established an investment fund dedicated to women’s health innovation. European leadership is within reach,” said Delphine Moulu, co-founder and Managing Director of Femtech France.

Reimbursements secured

The report also highlights growing recognition of women’s health innovation within the healthcare system itself. Seven Femtech companies now benefit from reimbursement through the French national health insurance system, including digital platform Woma and medical device company Les Pas d’Chichi.

Despite ongoing geopolitical uncertainty and political instability in France during 2025, founders remain remarkably optimistic. Nearly four in five startups (79%) plan to hire in 2026, while 77% describe themselves as optimistic or very optimistic about their future.

The report argues that this confidence reflects a sector that is increasingly embedded within the wider health innovation landscape, supported by stronger business models, growing commercial traction and rising institutional recognition.

“By addressing a longstanding blind spot in healthcare, Femtech is accelerating the recognition of women’s health, and now with the support of national health insurance and complementary health schemes,” said Laurence Al Neimi, Insurance Expertise Lead at Wavestone.

The findings come as France seeks to position itself as a European hub for women’s health innovation at a time when governments, investors and health systems are paying increasing attention to the economic and societal impact of women’s health.

Created in 2022, Femtech France brings together more than 110 companies. The organisation aims to spark innovation, unite the ecosystem and bring together the experts needed to finance women’s health.

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Can femtech scale without serving affluent women first?

It’s an uncomfortable question, and one I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, particularly as I write about a lot of emerging technology that is simply out of reach for the average person.

As healthcare waiting lists grow longer, healthcare deserts expand and advanced technologies move faster, the gap between innovation and the women who need it most can start to feel ever more urgent.

And yet, from a founder perspective I also have to be brutally honest about the realities of building a commercially viable and sustainable business.

Which is why I think the sector needs to discuss these questions more honestly.

Who are the products in femtech really being designed, validated and distributed for?

Can innovation eventually scale beyond early adopters and traditional healthcare pathways?

At what stage should companies realistically be expected to operationalise equity and inclusion?

This week, Teal Health, the makers of an at-home cervical cancer screening kit, shared a timely example of how parts of the sector may be starting to navigate this tension.

The company announced a new pilot with Washington University School of Medicine focused on expanding access to at-home cervical cancer screening through trusted community spaces including health fairs, food banks and local wellness initiatives across Illinois and Missouri.

Importantly, the initiative is not simply about distributing Teal’s product more widely. The study is also testing broader questions around how women’s health infrastructure itself can become more accessible: whether community-based outreach, navigators, telehealth follow-up and trusted local partnerships can help reconnect women with preventive care and screening systems.

The findings could ultimately have implications far beyond Teal itself - there could be useful learnings from the research for how health systems, Medicaid programs, academic institutions and public-health organisations think about scaling cervical cancer screening and preventive women’s healthcare more broadly.

In many ways, this feels symbolic of where women’s health now finds itself as a sector. Until recently, much of femtech has been focused on simply proving commercial viability and demonstrating that there is a market at all.

The next phase should start to look very different. The real success stories will likely be the ones that can integrate into public health systems, reimbursement pathways and community-based care infrastructure capable of reaching broader populations at scale.

And so perhaps the playbook at a company-level is to first prove commercial viability within a narrower initial market before expanding into broader questions around accessibility and infrastructure.

What I find interesting, though, is whether an alternative approach was ever realistically possible.

Could this sort of accessibility work and research partnership have happened earlier in a startup’s journey? Could it have happened from day one?

My instinct is probably not.

And that’s where brutal honesty comes in.

This tension also sits at the centre of a recent paper published in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health* which explores how femtech can evolve into a more equitable healthcare ecosystem.

Read more

A Nordic women’s health initiative launching today is making the case that coordination is key to progress in the sector.

The Nordic Women’s Health 2040 Implementation Playbook, developed with the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, attempts to create a shared framework connecting women’s health research, care, policy and innovation across the Nordic region.

The Playbook builds on the Nordic Charter for Women’s Health 2040, first launched in late 2025 and published in The Lancet, which brought together more than 136 contributors from across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden - including researchers, clinicians, policymakers, founders and patient advocates - around the question: what would it look like to design women’s health at a systems level rather than through disconnected initiatives?

“We do not need one more strategy,” says Julia Persson, founding architect of the initiative. “We need to have an architecture.”

The architecture itself emerged from independent validation by five independent expert groups who all arrived at the same underlying structure when asked to design at the system level. It’s this that Julia treats as the signal that the framework reflects a system properly, rather than imposed design.

The framework is structured around three operational domains - research, care and innovation - intersecting with four enabling pillars: people, money, policy and data, and one ‘cognitive foundation’ – awareness. Within that frame, the Playbook names twenty-eight infrastructure needs, each anchored to a Nordic or European initiative already underway. The goal, according to Julia, is not to prescribe a single roadmap, but to help institutions and organisations identify how their existing work fits into a wider ecosystem.

“The Playbook is not asking organisations to join a programme,” Julia says. “It gives them a shared architecture they can use immediately within their existing mandate.”

“At the moment, a lot of activity is happening in parallel,” she says. “The purpose is to surface what people are already doing and help them work together.”

The AI and data urgency

A major focus of the Playbook is the question of what happens as healthcare systems become increasingly shaped by AI, data infrastructure and interoperability standards.

Julia explains that the current pace of technology and how that is shaping healthcare, drives an urgent need for the framework. Many of the frameworks now shaping future healthcare - from European health-data standards to AI systems - are being built on historical datasets that have long underrepresented women’s health.

The initiative repeatedly references the estimated 14-year lag between research publication and routine clinical adoption, for example, arguing that women’s health should be viewed as a systems challenge involving data quality, standards and how evidence moves into practice.

Julia believes that creates a relatively narrow window to address those gaps before they become more deeply embedded in future healthcare systems.

“We have lived for years with the gap between research and care,” she says. “If we do not correct this bias now when we are setting up the standards for European health data - before we build AI models - then we will amplify this bias for many generations going forward.”

A testbed in the Nordics

So why the Nordics? Aside from the region being Julia’s home, the Playbook argues that the Nordics offer unusually favourable conditions for testing a more coordinated approach.

Together, the five Nordic countries combine relatively small populations with high levels of digitalisation, extensive health registries, strong public institutions and comparatively high public trust.

“We already have many of the components,” Julia explains. “We have trusted institutions. We have strong healthcare systems. We have digital infrastructure.”

The initiative also arrives as policymakers across Europe continue discussions around the future direction of women’s health policy at EU level, including proposals for a European Women’s Health Strategy.

Julia believes the Nordic countries have an opportunity to contribute more collectively to those discussions rather than through separate national approaches.

“We are 27 million people,” she says. “We can come together and speak with one voice instead of trying to do each national thing.”

An open framework

The obvious question of course, is how a framework like this becomes operational in practice.

What’s interesting about the project is that it has been structured as an ‘open commons’ framework, rather than a new NGO or formal membership body. This is intentional and allows the framework to be adopted voluntarily by institutions, networks and individuals already working in the space. A network of ambassadors and partner organisations are already engaged in amplifying and embedding the work.

“No single institution controls research, care, innovation, regulation, employers and data simultaneously,” she says. “That is why coordination has to emerge across the ecosystem rather than through one central authority.”

“I want people to own it and use it,” she says. “I just want to facilitate it and make sure people are using it.”

The idea is that organisations do not formally “join” the framework, but instead use the parts relevant to their existing work and mandates.

That could mean researchers using the Playbook to support Nordic funding or policy proposals, employers integrating women’s health literacy into ESG reporting ahead of future regulation, or ecosystem organisations using the data, analysis and mapping within their own initiatives.

Julia argues that the framework is designed to work alongside forces already reshaping healthcare systems, rather than relying on the Playbook itself to create momentum.

She points to three dynamics already underway.

The first is regulatory pressure, including European initiatives such as the European Health Data Space (EHDS), the AI Act and the upcoming FP10 research framework, all of which are beginning to shape standards around healthcare data, interoperability and AI infrastructure.

The second is bottom-up adoption across the wider ecosystem - from patient organisations and regional health systems to employers, professional societies and media platforms already working within women’s health.

“The work fits their existing scope,” Julia says. “It fits their mission and mandate already.”

The third is what she describes as “political-moment activation” - moments where ministries, Nordic institutions and research funders move when broader coordination windows emerge.

Alongside the Playbook, the initiative has also launched a weekly Nordic Intelligence Brief intended to track and surface examples of organisations acting early, creating visibility around what the framework describes as “first movers” across the ecosystem.

Women’s health as infrastructure

The phase ‘women’s health as infrastructure’ is a popular one within the sector. Julia sees awareness too as infrastructure - although not in the typical sense of awareness-raising.

During our call for this feature, Julia spoke about the idea that progress in women’s health is shaped by how societies understand these issues in the first place - not just by healthcare systems and policy.

And so, she explains “I decided to think about it as ‘cognitive infrastructure’, because I think that’s what it is. That’s how we think as a society.”

This rethink of the term awareness in women’s health has implications for the role of media, advocacy groups and information platforms operating in the sector.

We spoke about how platforms such as FutureFemHealth may operate and function less like traditional trade media and more like coordination layers connecting researchers, founders, policymakers, clinicians and public conversation - something that aligns closely with how I’ve also come to understand the role we play in the ecosystem.

The Playbook also references the need for stronger evidence-sharing and trusted information systems, including around the moderation and suppression of medically accurate women’s health content online - an issue documented through CensHERship’s campaigning and research, which is cited within the framework itself.

That awareness layer will become more important as women’s health moves further into debates around AI governance, public health infrastructure and data standards - particularly if information visibility itself shapes which issues receive attention, funding and clinical prioritisation.

For Julia, the real test of the framework will not be whether the Playbook itself becomes influential, but whether it helps create visible movement across the wider ecosystem.

“The idea is to accumulate the signals and trace where things are moving forward and where things are still standing still,” she says.

“My success would be if we can actually see movement in women’s health - if we can see progress compared to the snapshot we have today.”

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 🔥 ŌURA files confidentially for US IPO.

• 💰 Gaia Fertility raises $100m debt facility to scale operations across the US

• ✅ Maven Clinic launches integrated women’s health platform with GLP-1 therapy and hormone support

• 💬 MPs debate censorship of women’s health content

Share your news anna@futurefemhealth.com

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💰 Capital flows

📌 US: ŌURA files confidentially for US IPO. Almost two years ago, ŌURA revealed that women had become the majority of its user base for the first time following major investment into women’s health features. Since then, the smart ring company has continued to scale rapidly - reaching a reported $11bn valuation last year, selling more than 5.5m rings to date (with half sold in the last year alone) and reportedly on track to hit 5m paid members this quarter. The company has expanded at pace into menstrual cycle tracking, fertility insights and menopause-related features, making it one of the clearest examples of how women’s health can become a major commercial growth driver. (Continue reading: CNBC)

📌 US: Gaia Fertility raises $100m debt facility to scale operations across the US. The fertility industry operates on a ‘fee-for-service’ model where patients pay for procedures. Gaia flipped this on its head, underwriting the IVF risk itself, meaning patients get flexible financing plans and protections on costs built in. As demand grows for more affordable fertility options, Gaia says it has now surpassed 1,100 memberships and has partnerships with 200+ clinic locations. This credit facility follows a $14 million Series A round raised in January 2025, led by Valar Ventures, that brought Gaia’s total equity funding to $37 million across three rounds. (Continue reading: Crunchbase)

📌 US: Nourish raises $100m Series C for AI-native metabolic health clinic. Virtual nutrition platform Nourish has secured a $100m Series C to expand its AI-powered metabolic health clinic, with investors betting on long-term nutrition and behaviour-change infrastructure alongside the GLP-1 boom. The company combines virtual dietitian care, metabolic health services and AI tools, and says it now supports more than 10,000 registered dietitians with payer coverage reaching over 200 million lives. The round was led by Menlo Ventures. (Continue reading: Nourish)

📌 AUSTRALIA: Baymatob raises AU$6.5m for maternal health monitoring platform Oli. Baymatob’s Oli platform uses AI-powered monitoring to detect early warning signs for serious pregnancy and labour complications, including postpartum haemorrhage, stillbirth and uterine rupture. The Sydney-based company says the funding will support wider hospital adoption of the platform, which is designed to help clinicians identify maternal and fetal risk earlier during labour and birth. This Series A3 round drew funds from Scale Investors, the University of Sydney, and Clare Ventures. (Continue reading: Forbes)

📌 INDIA: Cloudnine Hospitals to acquire Apollo Cradle and Apollo Fertility in ₹1,550 crore (c. $160m) healthcare deal. This acquisition will combine two of India’s largest maternity, fertility and paediatric care networks, further consolidating women’s healthcare infrastructure in one of the world’s fastest-growing healthcare markets. (Continue reading: The Health Colossus)

📌 AUSTRALIA: Factory Capital to invest $25m in women’s midlife health. The Sydney-based firm will open a US-based research institute and seek to make five to 10 business investments in the untapped peri- and post-menopause healthcare market. “What we’re really doing is creating a market” says partner and managing director Anna Samuelsson. (Continue reading: Capital Brief (paywall))

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 US: Maven Clinic launches integrated women’s health platform with GLP-1 therapy and hormone support. Maven appears to be differentiating itself from purely transactional GLP-1 prescribing platforms as it pitches continuity of care all inside one clinic model. It’s positioning weight-loss medication as part of a broader women’s health journey, since it argues that women’s metabolic health is deeply tied to hormones, reproductive history and life stage - meaning GLP-1 treatment should account for factors such as PCOS, postpartum recovery, perimenopause and fertility planning, not simply BMI. (Continue reading: Nutrition Insight)

📌 US: Dry Days Health urinary incontinence clinic goes in-network with BlueCross BlueShield Maryland. Virtual pelvic health clinic Dry Days Health has become in-network with CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield Maryland, expanding insurance-covered bladder health care access to more than one million women in the state. The move reflects broader momentum around urinary incontinence as investors, providers and payers increasingly recognise pelvic health as a major chronic care category rather than simply a quality-of-life issue. Earlier this month alone, UroMems raised $60m for its smart implant, BlueWind Medical secured $47.8m for its urinary incontinence device, and NinaMED launched in Australia with $13.75m for overactive bladder therapy. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 UK: Cyclana Bio granted Health Research Authority approval. This 500-patient clinical observational study aims to improve understanding of the disease physiology of endometriosis - a condition that affects 1 in 10 women. It will look at a tissue level at those with endometriosis compared to healthy women, in order to uncover the basic biology of endometriosis, allowing Cyclana to then prioritise novel druggable targets for therapeutic developments. (Continue reading: Medtech Insights)

📌 UK: Pharmacy2U launches dedicated women’s health hub backed by GenM’s menopause accreditation system, MTick. The online pharmacy says the platform brings together more than 200 menopause-friendly certified products alongside education and care support covering the 48 recognised signs of menopause. The move reflects how pharmacies and retailers are increasingly repositioning women’s health as a long-term consumer healthcare category combining clinical guidance, ecommerce and curated product discovery into a single digital experience. (Continue reading: Pharmacy Business)

📌 UK: Unfabled makes grocery debut with Sainsbury’s supplement launch. Health and wellness is expanding into our everyday routines. Supplement brand Unfabled has entered grocery retail for the first time with national retailer Sainsbury’s under the grocer’s new ‘New and Trending’ plinth, which showcases brands who are emerging through consumer demand. Unfabled previously expanded into 700+ Boots stores nationwide after the pharmacy contacted the start-up after seeing its viral success on TikTok. (Continue reading: Grocery Gazette)

📌 US: Bryan Johnson expands biohacking focus into women’s health. The longevity entrepreneur says a new project with partner Kate Tolo will explore biomarkers linked to fertility, PMS, perimenopause and endometriosis, signalling growing interest from the consumer longevity movement in women’s biology. The experiment will allegedly cost $2m a year to run. (Continue reading: Unilad)

🔒 From FutureFemHealth Pro

📌 This week in Pro: Why urinary incontinence may finally be becoming a true healthcare market. We explore how reimbursement, payer economics and consumer demand are reshaping pelvic health innovation. Read it here.

→ Upgrade to access Pro analysis, market intelligence and deep dives.

💡 Perspectives

📌 Mental health isn’t separate from women’s health - so why is it still treated that way? At every stage of a woman’s life, mental and physical health are inseparable. That’s why mental health doesn’t sit alongside care - it also shapes how women move through it: whether they engage, follow through, or drop out of their care programme altogether. Yet in women’s health, accessing it too often means going elsewhere. In this feature, ieso’s Dr Clare Palmer explains why integrated mental health support matters and what it looks like practically. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth - partner content)

📄 Policy watch: risks and opportunities

📌 UK: MPs debate censorship of women’s health content online. During a Parliamentary debate this week, MPs discussed the growing evidence that medically accurate posts on topics including menstruation, menopause and vaginal health are being suppressed online or misclassified as “adult content”. The discussion marks another sign that the issue is now being recognised not simply as a social media moderation problem, but as a healthcare access, equality and digital regulation issue. (Continue reading: Daily Express)

📌 UK: MP failed by NHS appointed first maternity advisor. An MP whose own experience of giving birth was part of the biggest review of maternity failings in NHS history has been appointed as the government’s first maternity adviser. Michelle Welsh, Labour MP for Sherwood Forest, will work with families, the government, the NHS and maternity organisations to push for “better, safer care for mothers, babies and families”, the Department of Health said. (Continue reading: BBC)

📌 AUSTRALIA: Government announces an additional $8.4m investment into women’s health information and education through Jean Hailes for Women’s Health. Aiming to counteract the rise of misinformation, this funding will support evidence-based health resources, research, professional education and national awareness campaigns, including Women’s Health Week and the National Women’s Health Survey. It builds on a previously announced $800million women’s health package. (Continue reading: Health Gov)

📆 Opportunities & support

📌 VIRTUAL: A women’s health program for global startups, 2 June, 3pm CET / 9am ET. Join the program announcement for the new Eir Accelerator, organised by Anastasiya Markvarde together with Jessica Federer, a leading in women's health and MD of the Women's Health Fund, who acts as advisor for Eir. Eir Accelerator is run by the Women's Health Hub Finland and is accepting women's health startups globally for its free program that provides support with fundraising, scaling and pilot opportunities.
🎟️ Register for the live launch event

📌 VIRTUAL / UK: The Nexus women’s health collective - supported by Barclays Eagle Labs. Apply before 15 June for a new nine-month cohort of 30 companies building in women’s health. You’ll be surrounded with mentors, investors, finance expertise and a tight peer groups, so you’ll leave the programme stronger, better connected, and ready to raise.
🎟️ Find out more and apply to the programme

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

Several years ago, when I first saw femtech pioneer Ida Tin speak, she said something that stuck with me ‘progress can’t happen in the shadows’ - the point being, that in women’s health we first have to make something visible before it can be improved.

Pelvic health is a perfect example of this. Urinary incontinence - one of the largest and most overlooked segments within pelvic health - has existed in a strange corner of healthcare: it’s clinically common, commercially underestimated and culturally hidden in plain sight.

The numbers have always been enormous. Millions of women will experience bladder leakage, urgency and pelvic floor dysfunction, particularly after childbirth and during menopause. Some estimates cite prevalence of urinary incontinence in women as up to 60% or more.

Yet despite the scale, urinary incontinence (and more broadly pelvic health) has rarely behaved like a major healthcare market.

Then past few weeks, a flurry of activity all related to urinary incontinence:

• UroMems raised $60m to advance its smart implant for stress urinary incontinence

• BlueWind Medical raised $47.8m to expand commercialisation of its Revi implant for urge urinary incontinence

• and Australia’s NinaMED launched with $13.75m for overactive bladder therapy.

At the same time, virtual pelvic health clinic Dry Days Health announced it had gone in-network with its first insurer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield Maryland, expanding access to specialist-led bladder care for more than a million women across the state. Developed by Amara Therapeutics (which is also building broader digital therapeutics and pelvic health technologies), Dry Days Health is a virtual care platform designed to make specialist bladder care easier to access remotely.

Together, these developments suggest growing recognition that urinary incontinence is a major chronic health category with significant unmet need, specialist shortages and long-term quality-of-life impacts.

But - the breakthroughs we’re seeing may not simply be better devices or therapies. Something more fundamental may be shifting.

According to Brendan Staunton, CEO of Amara Therapeutics, the company behind Dry Days Health, one of the biggest barriers to innovation in pelvic health has not been technology itself, but access to care.

“Only 50% of women actually seek help due to stigma, embarrassment, lack of specialists and cost,” he said.

“Historically, many women were effectively told to live with these conditions, often in silence, despite the major impact on quality of life, mental health, intimacy, exercise, work, and social confidence,” he said.

“That mindset is changing rapidly.”

So, changing patient behaviour may help to explain why pelvic health innovation is beginning to scale in ways it struggled to for years.

But, as Brendan explains, increased demand is still not enough to transform the category. There’s another major bottleneck for innovators to overcome:

Read more

Dry Days Health, a virtual clinic for women living with urinary incontinence, is now in-network with CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield Maryland, expanding access to specialist-led bladder health care for more than a million women in the state.

Pelvic health company Amara Therapeutics originally launched Dry Days Health in 2025 to support one of the most common yet under-treated conditions in women’s health, estimated to affect up to 1 in 3 women globally.

The company, which operates from Baltimore, Maryland, and Galway, Ireland, created the clinic to address longstanding barriers that prevent many women from receiving appropriate treatment. It offers virtual appointments with licensed clinicians, providing personalised treatment plans delivered remotely.

Amara Therapeutics CEO Brendan Staunton said: “Urinary incontinence affects millions of women, yet far too many never receive timely, specialist-led care due to access barriers, stigma, long wait times, and fragmented treatment pathways.

”By combining virtual specialist care with our digital-first treatment pathway, we are making it easier for women to access insurance-covered care from home - while helping health systems identify and support patients earlier.”

More broadly, Amara Therapeutics develops digital therapeutics and virtual care solutions for pelvic and bladder health conditions, including urinary incontinence and overactive bladder. The company says Dry Days Health is part of its broader mission to redesign how women access and sustain treatment for these conditions.

”This milestone represents another step forward in our mission to modernize women’s pelvic health care and build a scalable, integrated pathway for urinary incontinence treatment in the United States,” continued Brendan.

The announcement on Dry Days Health coincides with growing investor and payer interest in urinary incontinence and pelvic health. Earlier this month, UroMems raised $60m to advance its smart implant for stress urinary incontinence, BlueWind Medical raised $47.8m to expand commercialisation of its Revi implant for urge urinary incontinence, and Australia’s NinaMED launched with $13.75m for overactive bladder therapy. Together, they demonstrate increased recognition that urinary incontinence is a major chronic health category with significant unmet need, specialist shortages and long-term quality-of-life impacts.

You might also like:

A milestone for our CensHERship campaign this week as the issue of women’s health censorship will be debated in Parliament! I’ll share more details on what’s discussed next week.

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 💧 UroMems raises $60m for smart implant for stress urinary incontinence

• 🤖 Evvy launches AI advisor built on vaginal microbiome data

• 🎨 How women’s health branding grew up

• 🧫 March of Dimes initiates preterm birth prevention microbiome trial

Share your news anna@futurefemhealth.com

This week’s newsletter is powered by BOLD LIP

In women’s health, clarity is what makes trust possible. BOLD LIP is the branding agency built exclusively for women’s health organizations, helping them launch, evolve, and grow with branding that audiences understand and stakeholders believe in. Through strategy, messaging, design, and digital experience, BOLD LIP builds brand systems that strengthen your impact.

Visit BOLD LIP's website

💰 Capital flows

📌 FRANCE: UroMems raises $60m to advance smart implant for stress urinary incontinence. Women suffer from SUI at higher rates than men with risk factors including age and pregnancy. Current treatment options are sometimes only partially effective. UroMems’ automated artificial urinary sphincter is designed to treat SUI in both women and men - it adjusts automatically based on patient activity, aiming to make it easier to use and with less complications than existing surgical options. The raise follows promising female clinical feasibility results reported last year, where a small group of women all successfully reached six-month endpoints with no revision surgeries or device removals needed. This strategic investment came from Ajax Health Fund and followed UroMems’ Series C in 2024. (Continue reading: UroMems)

📌 US: BlueWind Medical raises $47.8m to expand commercialisation of its Revi implant for urge urinary incontinence (UUI). Another major urinary incontinence raise this week, as BlueWind Medical’s minimally invasive system secures funding to scale sales and market access. The implant works through a device near the ankle that stimulates the tibial nerve to help reduce bladder leakage and overactive bladder symptoms. Just last month, the company published three-year clinical data showing 79% of women maintained a 50% or greater reduction in UUI episodes, with no device-related serious adverse events reported. The equity and debt funding will support broader rollout of the FDA-cleared device. (Continue reading: Medical Device Network)

📌 AUSTRALIA: NinaMED launches with $13.75m for overactive bladder therapy. And a third pelvic health and incontinence funding story this week for medtech company NinaMED and its non-invasive, at-home neuromodulation device for overactive bladder (OAB) as a drug-free alternative to existing treatments. The company has secured exclusive global rights to the “NiNA System” and this funding - led by SPRIM Global Investments - will support clinical development, regulatory pathways and global commercialisation efforts. (Continue reading: BioPharma APAC)

📌 US: CREATE Medicines has raised $122m to advance its in vivo CAR-T platform across autoimmune disease and oncology, including programmes in breast cancer. CREATE develops therapies designed to engineer immune cells directly inside the body rather than through traditional lab-based manufacturing, with a pipeline spanning cancer and autoimmune conditions. The raise reflects growing momentum behind advanced immunology approaches in autoimmune disease. (Continue reading: CREATE)

📌 US: Autoimmunity BioSolutions closes $1m seed extension. Traditional autoimmune treatments broadly suppress the immune system, but Autoimmunity BioSolutions is developing genetically targeted therapies targeting patients with a genetic variation linked to more severe autoimmune disease and poorer treatment response. The company has now expanded its seed round to $3.1m as it continues to develop more personalised treatments for autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus (both of which disproportionately impact women) as well as type 1 diabetes. The financing was anchored by Eos BioInnovation. (Continue reading: Pulse 2.0)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 US: Evvy launches AI advisor built on vaginal microbiome data. “EvvyAI” is built on data from more than 100,000 vaginal microbiome tests and will help users navigate vaginal health, fertility and menopause through personalised AI guidance. It’s another example of companies in women’s health using AI as the interpretation layer that sits between diagnostics, data and ongoing care. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Carrot expands AI-powered metabolic health programme, Sprints, into menopause care. There’s growing interest in the role metabolic health may play in symptoms including sleep disruption, fatigue, weight changes and stress during perimenopause and menopause - alongside broader demand for more continuous and personalised menopause support. The Sprint platform combines guidance across nutrition, movement, sleep and stress with wearable device integrations and AI-driven recommendations designed to adapt to symptoms, lifestyle and health goals over time. Carrot says the programme is designed to help address gaps in menopause education and ongoing support, with more than 80% of women reporting they do not feel informed about menopause or available care options. (Continue reading: Carrot)

📌 US: Gatorade launches women’s hydration research initiative. Major consumer brands continue to align themselves with the growing interest in women’s sports, performance and hormonal health. This multi-year research initiative will focus on women’s hydration and nutrition across life stages including menstruation, pregnancy and perimenopause. The programme - called “Body of Science” - aims to address the lack of female-specific sports science research. Gatorade says only 6% of sports science research focuses exclusively on women. Around 500 women have already participated in early studies, with Venus Williams joining as an ambassador. (Continue reading: PepsiCo)

💡 Perspectives

📌 How women’s health branding grew up. Women’s health branding is moving beyond euphemistic wellness aesthetics and into a more confident, evidence-led era. In this feature, we explore how brands are combining clinical credibility, consumer-grade design and honest relatability - alongside the rise of “evidence branding”, more direct healthcare language and emotionally intelligent design. Featuring insights from BOLD LIP, Bummed and Salus Global on why healthcare branding is becoming more human, more specific and more clinically confident. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 US/UK: March of Dimes initiates preterm birth clinical trial. If successful, this therapy being trialled in partnership with Imperial College London could become one of the first new preventative approaches for preterm birth in decades. Researchers believe microbiome-related inflammation may contribute to up to 40% of preterm births, making the vaginal microbiome an increasingly important area of maternal health research. The trial will test whether a vaginal live biotherapeutic containing “good bacteria” can reduce rates of preterm birth in high-risk women. Earlier feasibility data suggests a 50% reduction in preterm birth rates among women receiving the therapy. (Continue reading: March of Dimes)

📌 GLOBAL: New research suggests osteoporosis may increase mortality risk in postmenopausal women by as much as 47%. A study of nearly 3,000 women found lower bone mineral density in the femur was associated not only with higher fracture risk, but also higher overall risk of death - reinforcing growing recognition of osteoporosis as a broader systemic health issue rather than simply a bone condition. Researchers say the findings, published in the The Menopause Society journal, highlight the importance of early screening, weight-bearing exercise and preventative menopause care as global osteoporosis rates continue to rise. (Continue reading: Menopause)

Did you miss our latest FutureFemHealth Pro feature?

Last week’s FutureFemHealth Pro deep dive explored the rise of a new “trust layer” in women’s health - from AI governance and verification systems through to discovery infrastructure shaping how women find and evaluate health information.

It’s a theme we’ll continue to track over the coming weeks and months, particularly around AI interpretation, credibility and trusted healthcare navigation.

Read about the 'trust layer'

FutureFemHealth now offers FutureFemHealth Pro - our new paid layer focused on deeper analysis on where women’s health is going.

Founders, investors, operators and leaders across the space are already joining FFH Pro and you can explore our first pieces: our Q1 funding tracker and key signals, the emerging ‘trust layer’ in women’s health, or our feature on the bone health market.

Find out more and join FutureFemHealth Pro for more analysis behind the headlines:

Join FutureFemHealth Pro

📆 Save the date

📌AUSTRALIA: Breaking the silos: the women’s health medtech summit. Sydney, May 27-28. This inaugural event is dedicated to addressing long-standing gaps in research, innovation, and policy affecting women’s health in Australia. The program brings together leading voices shaping the national conversation on women’s health in MedTech - spanning media, policy, research, and industry - to drive real system change.
🎟️ Tickets 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

For years, women’s health branding came wrapped in euphemism.

Period blood was blue. Menopause was beige. Pelvic pain hid behind flowers, soft gradients and vague promises of “balance” and “wellness”. Even products built for some of the most intimate and life-altering experiences in healthcare often looked either sterile enough for a hospital corridor or pastel enough for a baby shower.

Now the category looks very different with women’s health brands that are louder, sharper and more specific. Companies talk openly about vaginas, herpes, perimenopause, anorectal care and pelvic floor dysfunction. And they borrow visual cues from beauty, wellness and luxury consumer brands, while also leaning harder into evidence, data and medical credibility.

“The brands standing out right now are the ones making women feel both informed and understood,” says Taralyn Carver, Chief Creative Officer and Partner at BOLD LIP, a creative agency for women’s health.

“Women want more than a pretty wellness brand. They want transparency, real expertise and messaging that reflects the experiences and health concerns they’re actually navigating in their day-to-day lives.”

The shift is now reaching far beyond consumer startups and into hospital systems, patient safety programmes and healthcare institutions themselves.

From ‘safe’ branding to culturally confident brands

There is a reason so many women’s health startups from the last decade look strangely similar. The soft pinks, rounded fonts and muted illustrations were designed to reassure rather than provoke.

Partly, that reflected the reality of the sector itself. Women’s health sat at the edges of healthcare and consumer markets for years, and so founders were often trying to solve two problems at once: making taboo subjects feel socially acceptable enough to market in the first place, while also signalling quickly and clearly that these products were for women. In crowded pharmacy aisles and early consumer health markets, it was the pinks, softness and traditionally feminine visual cues that became shorthand for that identity.

But the wider culture has shifted.

Consumers increasingly self-manage their health. Preventative health has become aspirational - shaped by fitness culture, longevity trends and biomonitoring devices like Oura Ring. Tracking hormones, recovery and metabolic health sits alongside lifestyle and identity.

At the same time, conversations around fertility, menopause, ADHD, PMDD and gut health have become far more open online. Direct-to-consumer healthcare exploded during the pandemic, while wellness aesthetics merged with healthcare expectations.

“Women are more informed now and eager to have open, honest conversations about their health,” says Taralyn.

Some of the clearest examples can be seen in menopause branding.

“Brands like Stripes helped move menopause away from the pharmacy aisle aesthetic towards something closer to premium skincare,” says Taralyn.

Taralyn also points to smaller brands, such as Toronto-based LUME Clinic, whose warm, grounded identity reframes menopause care through what she describes as “elegant empathy”.

Meanwhile companies like Hertility have fused consumer-friendly branding with deeply data-driven positioning, turning clinical data itself into part of the brand promise.

“Women want the data and information to back up the purchase,” says Taralyn. “That’s the credibility and trust in a product. But they also want to see themselves reflected in it.”

Why specificity is replacing scale

One of the biggest shifts in women’s health branding is that smaller companies no longer need massive budgets to build recognisable brands.

Direct-to-consumer healthcare has changed the economics of visibility. Brands no longer rely on pharmacy shelves or traditional healthcare advertising to reach consumers; instead, they are building highly specific worlds around conditions, symptoms and life stages online.

“The brands doing this best know exactly who they are for,” says Taralyn. “They understand the audience deeply and make that person feel seen.”

That specificity increasingly matters more than broad “women’s wellness” messaging. Consumers may first encounter a company through TikTok, then move to a telehealth intake form, investor announcement or patient community.

“The strongest brands keep consistency across every touchpoint,” Taralyn says. “That’s where trust starts to build.”

The rise of ‘evidence branding’

Women’s health brands now use evidence as a design feature in itself.

Clinical icons, dosage information, trial data and ingredient transparency are becoming more prominent across packaging and websites.

“The language of healthcare is no longer being hidden in the small print,” says Taralyn. “Labels aren’t just about compliance anymore, we’ve seen them become a real competitive advantage.”

Consumers now scan skincare labels for active ingredients in the same way they once only scanned pharmaceutical leaflets - behaviour increasingly spilling into women’s health.

“Generic wellness won’t differentiate anymore,” says Taralyn. “The next challenge is owning a specific demographic and a specific problem.”

Saying the actual words

Another significant change in women’s health branding is linguistic. The new generation of brands use direct, medically accurate language rather than euphemism.

Jenny Dwork, co-founder of anorectal care platform Bummed, says she first saw the power of that approach during her time at telehealth company Wisp.

“We had campaigns that were literally just saying the word vagina,” she says. “At first I’d feel embarrassed talking about herpes campaigns in public. But the more you say these actual words, the more you take away the power they hold.”

That same thinking shaped Bummed - a company tackling constipation, fissures and hemorrhoids, including among users of GLP-1 weight loss drugs.

The brand deliberately balances humour and clinical credibility, with a playful name designed to lower the barrier to engagement.

“When you’re actually dealing with these issues, it’s no laughing matter,” Jenny says. “People are in pain and worried. So when they come to us, everything is grounded in science and getting them to a solution as quickly as possible.”

Even the language around the category became part of the branding exercise.

“I’d never even heard the term anorectal care before,” she says. “But once we started using it, it gave us a way to talk about these issues properly. It’s a real medical term. Let’s say it.”

Why healthcare branding is starting to look more human

Healthcare consultancies and hospital-facing organisations are grappling with the same questions too.

At Canadian healthcare quality and safety firm Salus Global, Director of Marketing and Communications Megan Hood says even traditionally B2B healthcare organisations are moving towards more human storytelling.

“The human connection - less clinical and more human - is something we’re seeing across healthcare,” she says.

That storytelling becomes especially powerful in areas like maternal health, where emotional experiences and patient outcomes are tightly intertwined.

And unlike many industries racing towards fully digital communication, healthcare still often functions through deeply human systems: bulletin boards, staff huddles, manager talking points and in-person team dynamics.

“The reality in healthcare is that everything has to work for care teams on the unit,” Megan says. “How they access information, how quickly they can act on it, and how partners like Salus Global support them in real time.”

It means healthcare branding increasingly has to work everywhere simultaneously: in investor decks, Instagram ads, patient education materials, hospital units and clinical conversations.

The danger of sameness

As women’s health matures, the reliance on muted palettes, serif fonts and visual sameness is making way for bolder, more relatable brands.

“There’s definitely an aversion now to making everything pink and floral,” says Taralyn. “Women aren’t all pink and flowers.”

“The strongest brands have a sharper point of view - they are the brands willing to clearly define who they are for, what problem they solve and what emotional reality they are reflecting back to consumers. Women want to see their actual challenge reflected.”

For agencies like BOLD LIP, this means designing brands that can hold both emotional resonance and scientific credibility at the same time.

“The strongest brands balance premium aesthetics with transparent information,” Taralyn says. “Women are asking: what’s in it? How much? What proves it? What exactly does this solve?”

What comes next

Women’s health branding is still early in its evolution.

The next phase is likely to become even more specific: more personalised care, more biomarker-driven products, more evidence-led storytelling and more brands built around defined life stages and conditions rather than broad “women’s wellness” positioning.

The companies that succeed will be the ones able to navigate both worlds at once: the emotional reality of women’s lived experiences and the clinical rigor consumers increasingly demand.

As founder Jenny puts it: “People want proof. They want evidence. But they also want to feel less alone.”

Precision women’s health company Evvy has launched “EvvyAI”, an AI-powered advisor designed to help women interpret vaginal microbiome results and navigate questions around vaginal health, fertility and menopause.

The tool is built on data from more than 100,000 vaginal microbiome tests, which the company says makes it one of the largest datasets of its kind focused specifically on female biology. Users can ask questions through a conversational interface designed to explain test results, provide research-backed guidance and surface relevant educational information.

The launch reflects a broader shift emerging across women’s health as companies are no longer just offering testing or diagnostics, but increasingly positioning themselves as the interpretation layer sitting between data and clinical care.

“For too long, women have been left to navigate their own health in the dark - searching the internet, second-guessing themselves, and getting answers that weren't built for their bodies,” said Priyanka Jain, co-founder and CEO of Evvy.

“EvvyAI provides access to real science - based entirely on the female body - to every woman who needs it.”

The interpretation gap

As at-home diagnostics, wearables and health tracking tools proliferate, many users are left managing large amounts of fragmented health information without clear clinical support. AI is increasingly being framed as the solution to that “interpretation gap” - helping users contextualise results, identify patterns and stay engaged between appointments.

Women’s health may be particularly suited to this model given the longitudinal nature of care across areas including fertility, menopause, hormones and chronic vaginal health, where patients often spend years navigating symptoms and conflicting advice.

Evvy’s launch also lands amid growing scrutiny around the reliability of AI-generated healthcare advice, with a study last year finding that AI models currently fail on around 60% of women’s health questions due in part to historical underrepresentation of women in medical datasets.

Notably, Evvy says the platform is designed to recognise when human clinical support is required, directing users to Evvy’s care team where appropriate. Prescription care programmes and test results will continue to be reviewed by licensed clinicians.

The move follows a wider wave of AI-driven interpretation tools emerging across healthcare and women’s health specifically - from diagnostic explainers and symptom guidance to wearable-driven coaching and personalised care navigation - signalling that the next competitive layer may not simply be generating more health data, but helping users understand what to do with it.

A new “trust layer” is emerging across women’s health.

This week’s launch of the Women’s Health AI Consortium - is one of the clearest signs yet that parts of the sector are beginning to move beyond simply building products and towards setting standards and creating the infrastructure helping women decide what to trust.

The Consortium is not a standalone initiative. Across the wider ecosystem, a new “trust layer” is taking shape - it’s spanning platforms, standards and tools designed to help women navigate health decisions, from AI-generated answers and online information through to apps, products and providers.

The forces driving this have been building for years: misinformation, an explosion of choice - including everything from AI-generated answers to under-evidenced products and questionable health claims - alongside regulatory gaps, privacy scandals, social media censorship, rising customer acquisition costs and more.

More recently, companies have started attempting to solve these problems directly.

In this feature for FutureFemHealth Pro, we outline three emerging layers of the women’s health trust ecosystem:

• Discovery infrastructure -The platforms reshaping how women find health solutions

• Trust, scoring and verification - The systems deciding which products and brands earn credibility, and help them to signal it too

• Trusted AI and governance infrastructure - The models, standards and communities shaping the future of women’s health AI

At each layer, we map the companies building this new trust infrastructure across discovery, verification and AI - and why the next power layer in women’s health may belong to the platforms shaping what women find, trust and act on.

Together, they point to a broader question now facing women’s health: not simply how products get built - but how women discover, evaluate and trust them in the first place.

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

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FutureFemHealth has had a glow up! Over the past three years, both the content and the ambition behind FutureFemHealth has evolved... and honestly, the brand hadn’t caught up. That’s why, over the past few months I’ve been working behind the scenes with the team at BOLD LIP - a female-founded creative agency who specialise in women’s health branding - on a full rebrand for the platform. I’ve written a behind-the-scenes look at the process, the thinking behind the new identity, and what this next chapter of FutureFemHealth looks like. Read it here.

🌟 In this week’s briefing:

• 🧠 PCOS renamed PMOS after 14-year campaign to reflect broader metabolic and hormonal impact of the condition.

• 🤖 Women’s health leaders launch first AI consortium to create standards for safety, bias and transparency.

• 🌍 Abu Dhabi and ŌURA partner on women’s health and prevention research using wearable data.

• 💊 Calla Lily doses first patients in miscarriage trial testing leak-free vaginal drug delivery device.

Share your news for next week: anna@futurefemhealth.com

This week’s newsletter is powered by BOLD LIP.

In women’s health, clarity is what makes trust possible. BOLD LIP is the branding agency built exclusively for women’s health organizations, helping them launch, evolve, and grow with branding that audiences understand and stakeholders believe in. Through strategy, messaging, design, and digital experience, BOLD LIP builds brand systems that strengthen your impact.

Visit BOLD LIP's website

💰 Capital flows

📌 US: Tot Squad acquires AI doula startup Robyn to expand maternal support platform. Parenting platform Tot Squad has acquired Robyn, an AI-powered doula trained on more than 70,000 real messages between parents and doulas. The deal adds 24/7 AI maternal support to Tot Squad’s existing offerings, which already include registry concierge services at Target and access to doulas and lactation consultants through its MotherFund platform. The acquisition reflects growing interest in combining human care with always-on AI guidance in maternal health - particularly as startups look to support parents continuously rather than only at moments of clinical intervention. Robyn enters closed beta this summer, with a wider rollout planned for later this year. (Continue reading: Tot Squad / EIN Presswire)

📌 INDIA/US: TechThrive Ventures launches $7m San-Francisco-based fund. Founded by FemTech India’s Navneet Kaur, TechThrive will invest in pre-seed consumer health, wellness, longevity and women’s health startups across the US and India. The new fund is part of Decile Access - a platform that connects LPs with emerging venture fund managers launched through VC Lab and the Decile Group ecosystem.(Continue reading: Navneet Kaur on LinkedIn)

📌 UK/EUROPE: Arāya Ventures and Sie Ventures launch £7.5m fund backing female founders. The new Arāya Sie Fund will back up to 40 pre-seed and seed-stage startups across AI, deeptech, fintech, healthcare and sustainability, with around 70% of capital for the UK. Backed by the British Business Bank through its Regional Angels Programme. (Continue reading: UKTN)

🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts

📌 PCOS renamed PMOS in landmark shift for women’s health. After a 14-year-long campaign, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is being renamed Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS) in a major move researchers and patient advocates say could reshape diagnosis, research and understanding of one of the world’s most common women’s health conditions. The change, announced in The Lancet by the International PCOS Network, reflects growing recognition that the condition extends far beyond the ovaries - affecting hormones, metabolism, mental health, skin and long-term disease risk. Professor Helena Teede called the decision a “landmark moment” that could drive long-overdue improvements in care and clinical practice. However, some campaigners have raised concerns that the new acronym may create confusion and additional rebranding costs for smaller organisations and support groups. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 Women’s health leaders launch AI consortium to set standards for the sector. A new Women’s Health AI Consortium co-founded by Willow and Ema EQ is bringing together executives and experts from organisations including Clue, Oura and Thrive Global to create shared standards for AI in women’s health. The group says women are at risk of being failed again by AI systems trained on incomplete datasets and launched without sufficient oversight. The consortium plans to focus on areas including clinical safety, bias reduction, transparency and “emotional and clinical quality at scale” as more women’s health companies roll out AI-powered tools and coaching products. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 UAE: Abu Dhabi partners with ŌURA to study wearable data in women’s health and prevention. The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi and smart ring company ŌURA have launched a joint research programme exploring how continuous wearable data could support earlier intervention and more personalised care. What’s fascinating is that the partnership will initially focus on women’s health, preconception care and cardiometabolic risk - a sure sign that women’s health is seen as an entry point for prevention-led healthcare systems. It’s early days, but Abu Dhabi’s combination of capital, longitudinal health data and centralised healthcare infrastructure could make it a real-world testing ground for whether women’s health itself becomes the foundation for next-generation preventive healthcare models - with implications inspiring far beyond the UAE if successful. The press release framing too positions women’s health as central to wider population health and economic outcomes, with ŌURA CEO Tom Hale stating: “the health of women is the health of families, and the health of families is the health of the nation.” (Continue reading: Department of Health – Abu Dhabi / ŌURA)

📌 UK: Calla Lily Clinical Care doses first patients in miscarriage treatment trial. Vaginal pessaries for drug delivery can leak, shift position, and be uncomfortable to use - with some patients advised to lie down after they’ve inserted them. Calla Lily is working towards a leak-free device to improve comfort, consistency and absorption of vaginally-administered drugs. It’s now dosing its first patients in a clinical trial funded by NIHR to test its tampon-like drug delivery device in women at risk of miscarriage where progesterone is recommended by NICE. Co-founder Thang Vo-Ta says the device has ‘massive potential’ beyond miscarriage for drug delivery in areas such as IVF. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 UK: Women dismissed by healthcare professionals are turning to AI and social media for health advice. More than half of women say their pain has been ignored or dismissed by healthcare professionals, according to new research from Nurofen — rising to 73% among women aged 18–24. The report found many women are increasingly turning to AI tools, social media and other online sources for answers instead, with 74% of those who experienced dismissal seeking help from unverified sources and 91% acting on the advice they found. The findings come just weeks after the Government’s updated Women’s Health Strategy acknowledged the impact of medical misogyny. Alongside the report, Nurofen said it plans to train 10,000 pharmacists at Boots on recognising gender pain dismissal and expand access to its Pain Pass symptom-tracking tool, which is designed to help women communicate symptoms more clearly during appointments. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 AUSTRALIA: Baymatob awarded $1.3m AUD by NSW Government for AI-powered maternal-foetal health platform. Baymatob’s ‘Oli’ platform saves lives by providing early warning for serious, treatable complications in pregnancy and labour, such as postpartum haemorrhage, stillbirth and uterine rupture. Postpartum haemorrhage is the leading cause of preventable maternal death worldwide. The funding will support the company’s clinical trials and deep-tech innovation. (Continue reading: Medical research NSW)

📌 US: Women are delaying care for hemorrhoids and anal fissures because of stigma, embarrassment and poor education. A survey of 533 US women who had experienced anorectal conditions suggests many felt undertreated despite seeking medical help, while others said they were never warned about the risk of hemorrhoids after pregnancy and childbirth. Nearly four in 10 respondents had experienced the condition three or more times, while the postpartum period emerged as a major gap in support and awareness. Dr Carmen Fong, chief medical officer at Bummed who carried out the research, says stigma is delaying care, with some patients waiting years to seek treatment because they were “embarrassed about having someone look at their butt”. Dr Fong also warns that more serious conditions could be missed when symptoms are dismissed or hidden. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📄 Policy watch

📌 ENGLAND: NHS overhauls clinical standards to reduce maternal deaths. Every maternity service in England will be required to meet new clinical safety standards under an NHS overhaul aimed at reducing maternal deaths, after data showed improvements in care could have changed outcomes in nearly half of cases. The full roll-out is expected by March 2027. (Continue reading: NHS)

📆 Save the date

📌AUSTRALIA: Breaking the silos: the women’s health medtech summit. Sydney, May 27-28. This inaugural event is dedicated to addressing long-standing gaps in research, innovation, and policy affecting women’s health in Australia. The program brings together leading voices shaping the national conversation on women’s health in MedTech - spanning media, policy, research, and industry - to drive real system change.
🎟️ Tickets 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

Before you go…

FutureFemHealth now offers FutureFemHealth Pro - our new paid layer focused on deeper analysis on where women’s health is going.

Founders, investors, operators and leaders across the space are already joining FFH Pro and you can explore our first pieces: our Q1 funding tracker and key signals, or our feature on the bone health market.

Looking ahead, Pro is where I’ll now be sharing:

• deeper dives into specific areas

• more context and analysis behind the headlines

• and the thinking that doesn’t fit into a weekly briefing

This weekly newsletter will continue as normal - but this is the direction FutureFemHealth is evolving in.

If you’d like to go deeper, you can join FutureFemHealth Pro here and receive our next piece this Friday, where I’ll be exploring the emerging ‘trust layer’ in women’s health:

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As always, this newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical or financial advice.