💌 Issue 153: Emm smart menstrual cup | Xella launch | IVF privacy breach
The global weekly briefing on women's health innovation and Femtech
Welcome to issue #153 FutureFemHealth, (w/c June 29 2026) - the global weekly briefing on women’s health innovation.
🌟 In this week’s briefing:
🧪 Intu Diagnostics raises €1.1m to advance lab-free HPV testing
🩸 Emm smart menstrual cup secures regulatory clearance
🤖 Xella launches AI platform for 130+ women’s health conditions
🔒 Monash IVF found to have breached privacy law over tracking pixels
Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com
This week’s newsletter is powered by SOSV….
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💰 Capital flows
📌 US: Aeroflow Health acquires maternal mental health platform Canopie. Aeroflow is best known for helping families access maternity and postpartum products through insurance, from breast pumps to compression garments. With the acquisition of Canopie, it is moving further into maternal mental health, adding evidence-based digital programmes for pregnancy and postpartum support. It’s an example of maternal mental health being pulled into broader care and benefits platforms, rather than sitting as a standalone category. (Continue reading: Aeroflow Health)
📌 US: Mila raises $2.5m pre-seed to develop beauty-inspired intimate wellness products. Intimate wellness has seen relatively little product innovation in recent years, despite growing consumer demand for products designed around women’s health and self-care. Mila plans to use this investment to accelerate development of its intimate wellness portfolio. The round was led by Mensch VC. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
📌 GERMANY: Intu Diagnostics raises €1.1m to advance lab-free HPV testing. Cervical cancer screening is already moving beyond the clinic, but most molecular HPV tests still rely on laboratory processing. Intu Diagnostics has created a test that works without a lab, electricity, or trained staff - and users see results from a colour change in just 30 minutes. The €1.1m bridge round will support product development and regulatory milestones as the company works towards making high-quality cervical cancer screening more accessible in primary care and low-resource settings. The round was backed by BSV Ventures and SAB and brings total funding to more than €3m. (Continue reading: Tech Funding News)
Next week on FutureFemHealth Pro:
📊 We’ll be publishing two new pieces of original market intelligence:
→ Q2 2026 Women’s Health Funding Tracker and analysis
→ H1 2026 Women’s Health M&A Tracker and analysis
Both are powered by our new FutureFemHealth Classification Framework, designed to provide a more nuanced view of where investment is flowing across women’s health. The framework classifies both the underlying health need and a company's exposure to women's health, recognising that these are different questions and should be assessed independently.
🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts
📌 UK: Emm smart menstrual cup secures regulatory clearance. One of the biggest challenges in women’s health is that many symptoms are still assessed through patient recall and subjective descriptions rather than objective measurement. Emm has secured UKCA marking and MHRA registration for what it says is the world’s first regulatory-cleared smart menstrual cup, designed to automatically measure menstrual flow volume and cycle patterns. The tech aims to help bring more objective data into menstrual health and Emm is now pursuing US FDA clearance ahead of an international rollout. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
📌 US: Xella Health launches AI platform to screen for 130+ often misdiagnosed women’s health conditions. Diagnostic delays in women’s health are well documented, with conditions such as endometriosis often taking years to identify. From a traditional blood draw at a Labcorp or Quest, Xella combines multi-omic testing with AI to assess the likelihood of more than 130 conditions including endometriosis, PMOS and perimenopause. It then connects women to a clinician for diagnosis and treatment where needed. The launch follows the company’s $3.7m pre-seed round announced earlier this year, and comes with a reported waitlist of more than 15,000 women. (Continue reading: Xella Health)
📌 CANADA: Dynacare launches at-home hormone blood testing. Over the past few years we’ve seen hormone testing steadily moving out of the clinic and into the home. Dynacare has launched what it says is Canada’s first self-collect whole blood hormone test kits, allowing women to measure fertility-related hormones from home before samples are analysed in the company’s accredited laboratories. (Continue reading: Dynacare)
📌 EUROPE: BrightHeart secures CE mark for AI-powered prenatal ultrasound platform. BrightHeart’s B-Right AI platform is designed to support sonographers in real time by improving scan completeness, consistency and helping identify fetal abnormalities during routine ultrasound examinations. The CE mark paves the way for commercial rollout across Europe and reflects growing momentum behind AI tools that aim to standardise prenatal care and improve diagnostic consistency. (Continue reading: BrightHeart)
📌 US: ŌURA partners with LillyDirect to support people using GLP-1 therapies. Women are already the largest users of GLP-1 medications, and we’re now seeing an ecosystem emerge around what happens after a prescription is written (our recent deep dive explores this). This new partnership gives LillyDirect users access to ŌURA’s GLP-1 Insights tools, which combine wearable data with medication tracking, side effects and behavioural support. It’s another sign that the biggest opportunities around GLP-1s could lie in the support infrastructure developing around them. (Continue reading: ŌURA)
📌 GLOBAL: Most IVF add-on treatments found to offer little or no proven benefit. IVF patients are often offered extra tests, procedures and treatments designed to improve their chances of success - but a major review published in The Lancet found that most either have no effect on fertility or lack sufficient evidence to support their use. More than 70% of IVF patients in the UK, Australia and New Zealand purchase at least one add-on, often at significant cost, which raises big questions about how patients are informed about the benefits and evidence of these and the commercialisation of fertility care. (Continue reading: The Guardian)
📌 US: Merck partners with Mae to expand the doula workforce. We’ve written before about the growing evidence supporting doula care and investor interest. Now one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies is backing it. Through its Merck for Mothers initiative, Merck is partnering with maternal health platform Mae to expand and strengthen the doula workforce across high-risk US markets, combining technology, workforce development and care coordination to improve maternal outcomes. (Continue reading: Mae)
📌 AUSTRALIA: Monash IVF found to have breached privacy law through tracking pixels. Data privacy is a defining issue in women’s health. Now Australia’s Privacy Commissioner has found that fertility provider Monash IVF and telehealth company Medmate interfered with individuals’ privacy by using third-party tracking pixels to collect sensitive health information without consent. The ruling confirms that tracking visitors to health-related websites for advertising purposes can amount to collecting sensitive health information under privacy law. (Continue reading: Cyber Daily)
🔒 ICYMI: The GLP-1 support economy
Women are already the largest users of GLP-1 therapies. But the biggest opportunity may not be the drugs themselves. In this FutureFemHealth Pro deep dive, we explore the emerging ecosystem of startups and established companies helping women navigate everything that happens after a prescription—from nutrition and muscle preservation to fertility, menopause and long-term maintenance.
💡 Perspectives
📌 We’ve started talking about perimenopause - but are we getting it right? According to Flo Health’s Chief Medical Officer Anna Klepchukova, the conversation has shifted from too little information to too much misinformation. While awareness has grown rapidly, Anna argues many women are now navigating a flood of social media advice, quick fix solutions and unverified claims, leaving them confused about symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. Her argument is that women need better support: medically verified, personalized information that reflects the complexity of perimenopause rather than reducing it to a one-size-fits-all experience. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
📌 Your new hormone tracker generates 10,000 data points. Your doctor has 7 minutes. As continuous hormone monitoring starts to attract significant investment and debate (we explored the field in our recent FFH Pro analysis) Dr Lara Zibners points out that generating more data is only half the challenge. If clinicians don't have the time, tools or evidence to interpret it, the promise of hormone intelligence risks outpacing its practical value. So, as this new generation of hormone monitoring technologies emerges, the bigger question Dr Lara says is - how on earth do we use all that data? (Continue reading: Lara Zibners on Substack)
📆 Save the date
The Nexus Collective Kick Off - Day 2: London, 9 July 2026. Watch 20 women’s health founders showcase their startups, five expert talks across fundraising, GTM and commercialisation and one investor panel. There’s also practical workshops for founders and plenty of time for networking.
🎟️ Secure your ticket here
✅ Hiring now
📌 UK: Head of B2B Sales, Ovum
📌 US: Principal, Life Sciences, Amboy Street Ventures
📌 GERMANY: VP of Product
That’s all for this week! If you’ve missed any previous newsletter issues catch them all at futurefemhealth.com and do make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and you can connect with me directly.
Anna
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical or financial advice.