England's Women's Health Strategy to include £1.5m femtech fund as refresh focuses on patient voice and waiting lists
UK Government announced the refreshed strategy
The UK government has announced a £1.5 million femtech challenge fund as part of its refreshed Women’s Health Strategy, alongside wider reforms aimed at tackling long waiting lists, improving pain management, and embedding women’s voices at the centre of NHS care.
Framing the need for reform, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS is a system that “too often gaslights women, treating their pain as an inconvenience and their symptoms as an overreaction,” adding: “women’s voices must be central to delivering effective, respectful and empathetic care.”
Published today, the strategy sets out a system-wide reset for women’s health services - focused on addressing entrenched cultural and structural failures in how women are listened to and treated.
Femtech funding and innovation measures
The headline measure in innovation is a modest £1.5 million FemTech challenge fund, intended to support adoption of technologies targeting unmet need in women’s health. This grant-based awards will encourage community service models addressing health inequalities. Examples will be evaluated as part of the programme, helping FemTech developers generate the evidence needed to spread their products across the NHS.
This sits alongside plans for a new accelerator for female founders, delivered through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), offering funding, mentoring and commercial support for innovations aligned with NHS priorities.
The strategy also outlines a new NIHR R&D Innovation Catalyst to support high-priority innovations across development stages
There are also efforts to improve women’s participation in clinical trials, including integration with the NHS App. Notably there is also a requirement that publicly funded research must now account for sex-based differences in order to be funded.
The strategy also commits to trialling wearable technologies for women in areas of deprivation - working with innovators and providing devices for free in areas where health need and deprivation are highest. An initial focus will be on the detection and monitoring of cardiovascular disease.
A new collaboration will also launch with the Indian Department of Biotechnology on FemTech Research and Innovation.
Listening to women - and acting on it
While innovation features in the strategy, its core focus is on culture and accountability.
A key proposal is a new trial linking patient feedback to provider funding, where women will be asked whether services should receive full payment based on their experience. The aim is to ensure providers are held accountable for listening to women.
Additional measures include:
Rolling out patient-reported outcome and experience measures (PROMs and PREMs)
Establishing a Women’s Voices Partnership to inform policy
Introducing new standards to ensure women are offered appropriate pain relief during procedures
The strategy highlights evidence that women are less likely to receive adequate pain treatment and more likely to have their symptoms dismissed.
Cutting waiting lists and improving access
Reducing delays in care - particularly in gynaecology - is another central pillar.
Women face long waits for diagnosis and treatment, with average gynaecology waiting times still standing at more than 565,000 and conditions such as endometriosis taking nearly a decade to diagnose.
To address this, the strategy proposes:
A single point of access for gynaecology referrals
Redesigned pathways for conditions including heavy periods, menopause and urogynaecology
Expansion of community-based women’s health hubs
Greater use of digital and online services to streamline care
The reforms aim to reduce repeated appointments and delays, and ensure women are directed to the right specialist more quickly.
Wider reforms across care and prevention
The strategy also includes a range of additional measures, including:
A £1 million programme to improve menstrual health education
Expanded access to contraception and abortion services
New support for fertility services and pregnancy loss
Integration of menopause support into routine NHS Health Checks
NHS England’s clinical director for women’s health, Dr Sue Mann, said:
“Too many women are still dismissed for serious symptoms that impact on every part of their lives.”
The first Women’s Health Strategy for England was published by the Department of Health and Social Care in 2022. The ten-year strategy followed a call for evidence in 2021 and introduced new measures such as the launch of women’s health hubs and the country’s first women’s health ambassador, Dame Lesley Regan.