Issue 26: $17m for AOA Dx ovarian test | GenM partners Sainsbury's | Fertility boost from CHLOE AI tool | Daye's diagnostic tampon trial
+ lots more in your weekly round-up of women's health innovation and FemTech news
Hi! Welcome to issue #26 of FutureFemHealth, here to bring you your weekly news about women’s health innovation and FemTech (w/c 16 October 2023).
🌟 Coming up today we’ve got:
🍏 GenM - the menopause partner for brands - scores deal with Sainsbury’s
💰 $17million for AOA Dx to develop its diagnostic test for ovarian cancer.
✅ Fairtility’s AI decision-maker ‘CHLOE’ now integrates seamlessly with fertility clinics around the world.
🩸 Daye begins clinical trial for its ‘diagnostic tampon’ for HPV and STI detection.
Got news to share from the world of FemTech and women’s health innovation? Let me know at anna@futurefemhealth.com
It’s World Menopause Awareness Day today, so let’s get straight into a couple of stories that caught my eye on this very topic this week.
🍏 Menopause on its way to becoming ‘the new vegan’
This week, supermarket giant Sainsbury’s has become the first of the big four supermarkets in the UK to join the GenM menopause network.
GenM is the self-proclaimed ‘menopause partner for brands’. It created the ‘M’ symbol for brands who want to showcase their products as being ‘menopause-friendly,’ as part of a paid-for partnership. 70 partners have signed up over the last year including founding partner Boots (which has around 100 products now featuring the M-tick), Co-op and Holland & Barrett.
As co-founder Sam Simister said:
“With 15.5 million women in the UK in menopause at any given time, this vital audience deserves signposting to products, informative and uplifting campaigns and support in the workplace. They are increasingly demanding to be served.”
The vision of Sam and her co-founder Heather Jackson is to turn menopause into the ‘new vegan’.
“Our objective over the five years is to make the M-Tick as globally recognisable as the vegan V, symbolising momentous change for both the lived experience and with the global menopause marketplace.”
GenM is building a whole ecosystem around this idea - they also launched an awards earlier this year (presumably to recognise brands signed up to the M-tick!) and provide a consultancy service to brands too. GenM’s Invisibility Report is also a super useful read if your audience or customer base is midlife women.
❤️ Is it time for a more nuanced conversation about menopause?
A new report out of Australia (and covered here in The Guardian) suggests that media and brands need to be careful not to catastrophise menopause - especially since 70% of people going through menopause don’t experience severe symptoms.
Co-authored by the Australasian Menopause Society, Monash University and Jean Hailes for Women’s Health, the report is the first time a large and nationally representative survey of Australian women has been conducted to ask about menopause experiences.
It found that coverage in media and public discussion is often not based on strong evidence and can overemphasise the severity and frequency of symptoms.
One example cited by the report was widespread coverage of a study that found “nearly one million” women had quit their jobs in the UK due to lack of employer support for menopause symptoms.
However, the study was later found to be flawed, the report said, based on data from a non-representative sample of women that was then extrapolated and applied to the whole UK population. The study also combined other reasons for leaving the workforce, such as pregnancy and fertility issues, with menopause symptoms.
Launching the report, CEO of Jean Hailes, Dr Sarah White said:
“The problem is that a lot of the studies of menopause have been conducted through convenience sampling, so they ask women who have already self-identified as having an issue with menopause and then ask those women about their experiences.”
I think this report is thought-provoking and a useful call to action. It’s much-needed as we emerge from the first phase of menopause awareness into one where we can have a much richer and balanced conversation about menopause - recognising that everyone’s experience is different.
It’s ok to do that and it not undermine the suffering of the 30% who do experience the sharp end of menopause symptoms and need extra support (something I’ve seen first-hand through my work with The Latte Lounge, a community for menopause and midlife).
There’s already been a definite shift recently to a more varied conversation about menopause. I loved this Positive News piece about the progress being made for example. And have you noticed that even the celebrity tell-all on menopause of late has been evolving - with singer Shania Twain sharing that, for her, ‘menopause was a good thing’.
💰 Funding, deals and investment news
📌 $17million for AOA Dx to develop diagnostic test for ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is diagnosed at stage 3 or stage 4 in 80% of cases when survival rates much lower. CEO Oriana Papin-Zoghb and her team will develop a diagnostic platform which together with the test will detect cell signaling molecules called gangliosides in the blood. These are elevated levels often seen in cancer patients. Investors included Y Combinator and Good Growth Capital. The funding builds on an initial $7 million scored last year. (Source: Endpoints News)
🌟 More news from this week
📌 Fairtility’s AI decision-maker ‘CHLOE’ now integrates seamlessly with fertility clinics. The four main Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems used in fertility clinics around the world are now compatible with CHLOE in a major step towards the digitalisation of fertility clinics. CHLOE is an AI-powered software platform which works by continuously capturing and interpreting data within a clinic environment and then aiding decision-making. One barrier to use has been that it needs to sync up with fertility clinics’ own software - and now it does! (Source: Fairtility press release)
📌 Menstrual health companies push to show period blood in ads. Period care start-up companies Daye and August feature in this piece about the continued pushback from some consumers and mainstream media companies when portraying periods in a more realistic way. As Daye founder Valentina Milanova says: “It’s just completely absurd when you have videogames and movies showing blood and noone minds.” (Source: WSJ)
📌 FDA sets up a new digital health advisory committee. Could this mean more regulation to come for US FemTech? The new committee will support the ‘safe and effective regulation’ of digital health technologies. Its scope includes all sorts of tech including AI, machine learning, VR, wearables as well as issues such as decentralised clinical trials, patient generated health data or cybersecurity. One to watch if you operate in the US! (Source: FDA)
📌 What’s happening in Ireland when it comes to FemTech? A lot it turns out! This in-depth piece features a look at Irish start-ups including menopause biosensor wearable IdentifyHer, pelvic floor exerciser Innovo and vaginal atrophy device Aveta Medical. As IdentifyHer’s Heidi Davis says: “Wouldn’t it be great if Ireland could lead the way in femtech? It hasn’t happened anywhere yet, that it has really taken over” (Source: Irish Times)
📌 Menopause in the Middle East: ‘It’s not taboo anymore’.
’s Anne Marie McQueen explains the progress made in menopause awareness in the region, while recognising there still needs to be more education and acceptance. (Source: The National)📌 The overcensorship of women’s health and FemTech continues. Solidarity to FemTech Insider’s Kathrin Folkendt after her website content was deemed too ‘unsafe’ for Google Ads to consider partnering with anymore. Essentially that means her website has fallen foul of the censorship algorithms and will not be able to include Ads, which can be a significant source of income for publishers. (Source: FemTech Insider)
📌 Why Gameto’s CEO decided to try her own (fertility) medicine. Gameto is a start-up which aims to streamline and speed-up the IVF process, especially for professional women who are time poor. CEO Dina Radnekovic decided to share her experiences of testing out the very treatment that she helped create. (Source: Technology review)
🩸 Research and women’s health news
📌 Daye begins clinical trial for a ‘diagnostic tampon’. The tampon is for sample collection and analysis for HPV and STI detection. Daye founder Valentina Milanova says: “Time is of the essence when it comes to HPV and STI detection, as catching them early can help to prevent some of the negative effects and complications.” For the research, Daye has teamed up with Lindus Health - a clinical trial start-up aiming to ‘revolutionise’ the clinical trial process by running it three times faster than usual. (I wrote about them here in August). (Source: Medical Device Network)
📌 Canada: Menopause costing employers $237m annually in lost productivity. A new report from the national non-profit Menopause Foundation of Canada outlines the economic impact of menopause in the country. It also found women lose $3.3b in lost income and 540,000 lost days of work can be attributed to menopause symptom management. (Source: Menopause Foundation of Canada)
📌 Lung cancer continues to be higher in women. A new research letter in JAMA Oncology reports that while overall rates of lung cancer have declined, they’ve fallen more among men than women. The authors write that reasons for the shift are unclear since smoking rates don’t differ to men significantly. They call for lung cancer screening among eligible women. (Source: Stat News morning newsletter)
📌 UK: Periods stop girls liking PE. A new report from Youth Sport Trust has found periods and low confidence are the top two reasons girls give for not wanting to take part in PE. Rates of enjoying PE are dropping - just 59% of girls in secondary schools said they liked PE or liked it a lot, compared to 74% in 2016. That’s so disappointing considering the more open conversations about periods we are seeing since 2016 and the boost for sport that the women’s world cup (and other women’s sport) has given to young girls. The rate for boys enjoyment of PE has meanwhile remained stable at 84%. (Source: BBC)
📄 Govt & policy news
📌 UK: Disparity still exists in maternity mortality rates. A shocking, but sadly unsurprising report from MBRRACE-UK this week looking at data from 2019-21. It found Black women are four times more likely than white women to die as a result of childbirth in the UK, and asian women are twice as likely. Overall though, it still found giving birth in the UK is largely safe. In 2019-21, 241 women died during or up to six weeks after pregnancy among 2,066,997 women giving birth in the UK. (Source: MBBRACE-UK)
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading.
Anna