💌 Issue 63: Flo Health's $200m raise takes it to unicorn status | $50m for female sports performance | Bone Health Technologies acquisition

+ lots more in your weekly round-up of women's health news

Jul 31, 2024

Hi! Welcome to issue #63 of FutureFemHealth, here to bring you your weekly news about women’s health innovation and FemTech (w/c 29 July 2024).

🌟 Coming up today we’ve got:

🔥 Flo Health raises $200m Series C
📈 $50m launch for an innovation hub dedicated to female sports performance
🦴 Bone Health Technologies acquires exercise training company Wellen
👩🏽‍💻 Employers eye menopause benefits in 2025

Got news to share from the world of FemTech and women’s health innovation? Let me know at anna@futurefemhealth.com

🔥There’s a new Unicorn in FemTech..

unicorn inflatable toy — Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

The world’s most popular women’s health app, Flo Health, has just announced that it has raised more than $200M in a Series C investment from General Atlantic, a backer of companies such as Uber and AirBnB.

This minority investment propels Flo's valuation beyond $1 billion, making it the first purely digital consumer women’s health app to achieve unicorn status and the first FemTech unicorn in Europe (there are only six others globally).

Dmitry Gurski, co-founder and CEO of Flo Health said:

"Reaching unicorn status is a significant milestone for Flo and the entire femtech industry,"
"When we started Flo, we identified a huge gap in women's health services. Now, we're a leader in a global movement to make women's health a priority everywhere."

It’s a huge win that puts the FemTech sector on the map with real proof for sceptics that there is money to be made.

It will also turbo charge Flo’s dominance in the consumer health app sector. Already one in four(!) US women use Flo and that growth will continue as it plans to build out more capabilities in perimenopause and menopause, enhance its tech-driven health insights and pursue strategic expansion opportunities.

Those reputational woes, particularly on privacy, haven’t disappeared for Flo Health, but they haven’t slowed progress.

Of course, it also can’t go unnoticed that both of the founders of Flo Health are men. It’s a blow for female founders who fight so hard for investment and more evidence that ‘even in Femtech it still pays to be a male founder’

We can celebrate this moment for the spotlight it brings to women’s health innovation - and still call for change.

(Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

💰 Funding, deals and investment news

📌 GLOBAL: $50million launch for Kynisca Innovation Hub’s research into female sports performance. The rise of women’s sport is catalysing investment into research on female physiology. The businesswoman Michele Kang has just announced the creation and launch of Kynisca Innovation Hub (KIH), which will use science and data to improve how females at all levels train. The non-profit launches with a $50 million contribution from Kang in combined seed funding and matching funds and is targeting to raise $100 million in total. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Bone Health Technologies (BHT) acquires Wellen. One in two women and one in four men will suffer an osteoporotic fracture in their lifetime. Wellen’s evidence-based exercise programs are designed specifically to strengthen bones. The start-up will now join forces with BHT which is developing a prescription-only, FDA-cleared vibration therapy belt called Osteoboost for launch later this year. No deal terms disclosed. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 US: Hologic completes its acquisition of endomagnetics Ltd for $310million. The deal adds UK-based Endomag’s breast cancer surgery technologies to Hologic’s breast surgery portfolio. (Continue reading: Medical Device Network)

📌 US: Onsite Women’s Health investing $21m in growth. The breast-imaging and mammography company has 127 locations in 26 states. It now plans to expand and will invest to (using private-equity backed funding it raised last year) in another 42 facilities this year. (Continue reading: Biz Journals)

🌟 More news from this week

two women talking while looking at laptop computer — Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash

📌 US: Employers eye menopause benefits and GLP-1 coverage. Up to 18% of employers plan to offer specific resources for women going through menopause in 2025, up from just 4% in 2023. That’s according to a new survey of nearly 700 organisations by Mercer. Employers continue to add GLP-1s too - while around half of large employers already cover weight-loss medications, 27% said they may add coverage next year while 17% said they won’t, although there is growing pressure to do so. (Continue reading: SHRM)

📌 BRAZIL: LG tests AI air conditioning to help menopausal women. Hot flushes and poor sleep are common symptoms of menopause. LG’s ‘affectionate intelligence’ approach pairs a smartwatch app with an LG air conditioning unit to automatically cool a bedroom if body temperature spikes during the night. (Continue reading: Design Rush)

📌 UK: The best advice I’ve been given about startups…from my investors. The Lowdown’s founder Alice Pelton shares why the best investors on her cap table are ex-operators and founders who just ‘get it.’ In this piece she highlights some of the best advice they’ve given her on her journey.(Continue reading: Alice Pelton on Substack)

📌 GLOBAL: Five promising trends in women’s health. Innovation on women’s health is flourishing thanks to consumer demand. Maternal health innovation, the miniaturisation of medical devices and women-centric diagnostics are some of the key trends identified by Annie Theriault, Managing Partner at Cross-Border Impact Ventures (CBIV). (Continue reading: FemTech World)

📌 UK: Apricity Fertility launches egg sharing scheme. With egg freezing becoming more and more popular (increasing from 400 to 4,000 cycles in a decade), it can also be out of reach for others due to cost. Apricity Fertility becomes the latest clinic to offer Freeze & Share scheme to make egg freezing more affordable while also increasing availability of donor eggs. (Continue reading: Apricity)

📌 UK: More menopause ads banned from making misleading claims. Advertising rules prohibit food products from claiming that they can prevent, cure or treat human diseases. The UK’s advertising watchdog has stepped in after supplement MenoDaily made claims that broke those rules in paid-for Facebook ads. (Continue reading: MarketingWeek)

📌 US: Axena Health launches telehealth service for women seeking incontinence treatment. While urinary incontinence affects more than 60% of adult women in the US, there’s also a growing shortage of OB-GYNs. In this collaboration with UpScriptHealth, Axena has found a way to ensure its Leva Pelvic Health System will be more easily accessible for women as a treatment option - while also decreasing overall costs for the healthcare system. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)

📌 These Black FemTech startups are taking aim at medical racism. Start-ups such as Health In Her HUE, Irth App and KIMBRITIVE are using technology to address racial health inequities, particularly for women. As Irth app founder Kimberly Seals Allers explains: "I started this as a narrative shifting tool to counter the mainstream media's approach to Black maternal health, which is nothing but doom and gloom.” (Continue reading: Pop Sugar)

🩸 Research and women’s health news

📌 US: Barbie led to increase in online search interest for terms around gynecology. Pop culture influences our health behaviours. Case in point: a new study published in JAMA Network has highlighted the impact of the 2023 blockbuster film Barbie. A 51% increase for searches for “gynecology” and “gynecology” within just a week of the film’s release. (Continue reading: CNN)

📌 EUROPE: EU regulator rejects Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi (lecanemab). In trials, lecanemab was shown to slow cognitive decline by about a quarter in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. But the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it could not be sure the benefits outweight the risks. That’s despite the drug already winning approvals in a range of countries like the US, China and Japan. (Continue reading: Fierce Pharma)

📄 Govt & policy news

📌 UK: Black women are being let down by maternal healthcare - these are all the ways it could be better. The Government’s new Health Secretary has already admitted that he thinks the NHS is ‘broken’. And evidence confirms that Black mothers are far more at risk in the health system than their white peers - including that they are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth. Shockingly, women who do not speak English are 25 times more likely. (Continue reading: The Guardian)

✅ Jobs

📌 UK: Head of Licensing, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority

📌 UK: Head of Engineering, Fertifa

📌 US: Senior UX Research, Oura

📌 Remote: Senior Full Stack Engineer, Seven Starling

📌 US / Remote: Clinical Program Manager - Women’s Health, Aspect Health

And finally, this TikTok video of a blind woman asking for more accessible pregnancy tests so that she doesn’t have to ask someone to read her out her result stopped me in my tracks. I’d love to know if you’ve heard of any new innovation in this area.

That’s all for this week!

See you next time,

Anna