💌 Two acquisitions | Natural Cycles launches sleep insights | Spanish Government invests in women's health
The global weekly briefing on women's health innovation and Femtech
Welcome to issue #151 FutureFemHealth, (w/c June 15 2026) — the global weekly briefing on women’s health innovation, written and edited by me, Anna O’Sullivan.
🌟 In this week’s briefing:
🧠 Women’s mental health platform Mavida Health acquired by health insurer WPS
🤝 Intimate health brand FemiClear acquired by Venture Life Group
🌙 Natural Cycles launches sleep insights feature
🇪🇸 Spanish Government commits €18m to women’s health research.
Share your news: anna@futurefemhealth.com
This week’s newsletter is powered by The Longevity Show:
The UK’s first longevity festival takes place in London on 26 & 27 June.
Women’s health will be central - with a dedicated Women’s Health Summit led by Hertility, as well as an 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
💰 Capital flows
📌 US: Women’s mental health platform Mavida Health acquired by health insurer WPS. A deal that shows appetite in incorporating maternal mental health into women’s healthcare rather than as a standalone service. Mavida Health is a virtual care platform founded by reproductive psychiatrist Dr Sarah Oreck that provides therapy, medication management and mental health support across fertility, pregnancy, postpartum and parenthood. These phases can be some of the most emotionally challenging periods in a woman’s life, yet specialist mental health support remains difficult to access. (Continue reading: WPS)
📌 UK/US: Women’s intimate health brand FemiClear acquired by Venture Life Group. Venture Life is expanding its women’s health portfolio - it already owns menopause brand Health & Her (acquired in 2024) and vaginal health brand Balance Activ. Now, in a deal worth up to $28 million, it’s adding FemiClear which sells over-the-counter products for bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections and genital herpes symptoms. (Continue reading: Drug Store News)
📌 FRANCE: Wellness app studio Rocapine raises €11.2m to build products designed to “hold instead of hook”. Rather than betting on a single app, Rocapine tests hundreds of concepts each year across areas including women’s health, mental health and behaviour change before scaling those that gain traction. The company’s women’s health portfolio includes pregnancy support app Eve and cycle tracking app Harmony. (Continue reading: EU-Startups)
🌟 Industry moves and strategic shifts
📌 GLOBAL: Natural Cycles launches sleep insights feature designed around the menstrual cycle. Natural Cycles has long partnered with Oura, one of the best-known names in sleep tracking. So it's fascinating to see Natural Cycles take a step into Oura's territory with its own sleep insights feature. The new tool combines sleep and cycle data to help women understand how hormonal changes throughout the menstrual cycle may influence sleep, recovery and overall wellbeing. And of course, it still integrates with Oura as well as Natural Cycles' own wearable. The lines really do seem to be blurring: wearables are moving into cycle tracking, while cycle tracking apps are moving into sleep. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
📌 US: Wearable startup The90 launches UV-tracking pendant aimed at healthier skin ageing. Most of us know we should wear sunscreen, but few of us know how much UV exposure we’re actually getting throughout the day. The90 has created a necklace to help with that. The90 Gem is a $299 jewellery-style wearable for women that measures real-time UVA and UVB exposure and provides personalised guidance on sunscreen use, sun exposure and long-term skin health. Backed by investor and The Skinny Confidential founder Lauryn Bosstick, this launch shows how just how specialised the wearables market is becoming. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
🔥 Did you know that FutureFemHealth now offers FutureFemHealth Pro - our new paid layer focused on deeper analysis on where women’s health is going.
Founders, investors, operators and healthcare leaders across the space are already joining FFH Pro. In the coming weeks FFH Pro will publish our Q2 funding tracker, a deep dive into the GLP-1 support economy and what you need to know about continuous hormone monitoring.
If you’d like to go deeper, you can join FutureFemHealth Pro here and receive our next piece later this week:
🩸 Research and women’s health news
📌 UK: Lupus patients in England in remission after pioneering NHS trial of GM therapy. About five million people worldwide are thought to have lupus - and most of them are women. It’s a chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks healthy tissues, causing widespread inflammation and damage to organs such as the kidneys, lungs and heart. Now doctors say that therapy that genetically modifies a person’s T-cells could potentially offer a cure for it. Medics in London have successfully used the technique to effectively cure five NHS patients with severe lupus. (Continue reading: The Guardian)
💡 Perspectives
📌 GLOBAL: How Qatar is introducing global women’s health startups to the Middle East region. When Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) launched a new women’s health accelerator earlier this year, applications arrived from 47 countries, with 240 startups applying across fertility, hormonal health, chronic disease, diagnostics, AI and preventative health. In this interview, QSTP President Rama Chakaki explains why Qatar sees women’s health as both a healthcare challenge and an economic opportunity, and how the programme is helping startups explore pilot and expansion opportunities across Qatar, Egypt and the wider MENA region. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
📌 GERMANY: What it takes to get reimbursed in women’s health - the Hello Inside story. 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 distribution and institutional credibility. It’s a big deal. In this interview, 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. (Continue reading: FutureFemHealth)
📄 Policy watch
📌 SPAIN: Government to invest €18m to tackle gender bias in health research. Spain has unveiled a new programme, Somos, Contamos, aimed at tripling investment in women’s health research to around €18 million and addressing what it describes as a historic gender gap in biomedical innovation. The initiative will support research into areas including endometriosis, autoimmune diseases, chronic pain, menopause and pelvic floor disorders, while also backing women’s health-focused biotech innovation and talent development. It is a clear - and hopefully precedent-setting example - of a national government framing women’s health as an innovation, research and industrial growth opportunity rather than solely a healthcare issue. (Continue reading: RTVE)
📌 UK: First GLP-1 weight loss tablet approved by UK regulator. Removing one of the biggest barriers for some patients, the UK’s medicines regulator has approved the first tablet version of semaglutide for weight loss and weight management, giving patients an alternative to weekly jabs. The once-daily pill can be prescribed to adults with obesity, or those who are overweight with at least one weight-related condition, alongside diet and exercise. (Continue reading: UK Government)
📆 Save the date
📌 Women’s health founder days, London, 26 June and 9 July. Join one of two founder days with the Nexus team. Choose between regulated sectors on 26 June (register here), or consumer tech/products + B2B on 9 July (register here).
📌AI in women’s health, London, Thurs 25 June, 1pm-6.30pm. A half-day showcase on how AI is being applied to clinical challenges in women’s health. Bringing together clinicians, academics, founders, tech experts, investors and regulators driving change in the field. Hosted at the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering and sponsored by MEGI Health. Register 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
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical or financial advice.