What happened to the women’s health market for women 65+?

Few companies have built specifically for older women. But that doesn't mean the market isn't emerging.

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Women’s health companies have a habit of following their customers through life.

Take Flo and Clue, which both started life as period trackers. Years later, as some of their original users reached midlife, both have expanded into perimenopause - following their customers into a new life stage.

Which raises an interesting question about the current wave of menopause companies.

What happens when their customers get older?

Women can spend another 30 or 40 years living after menopause. Their health priorities don’t disappear when hot flashes stop: they broaden into bone and muscle health, cardiovascular and metabolic risk, cognition, sexual and genitourinary health, cancer screening, mobility and maintaining independence.

Yet despite the extraordinary growth of menopause as a women’s health category, there has been remarkably little equivalent company creation specifically around women in their 60s, 70s and beyond.

A few years ago, I started tracking Herself Health, which looked like an early signal of what might come next. The US primary care company launched specifically for women aged 65+, raising $7 million in seed funding and a $26 million Series A, both in 2023.

The backdrop to this was a huge demographic opportunity. There are already 664 million women aged 60+ globally, rising to a projected 1.13 billion by 2050.

Women already account for over half (54%) of the world’s 60+ population - and 62% of those aged 80+.

Except, since 2023, the wave of dedicated 65+ women’s health companies has never really followed.

The clinical need is still there. The demographic opportunity has only grown. So where is the market?

For this week’s FFH Pro, I spoke to Herself Health, midlife care platform Midi Health and a European post-menopause startup Silvie Health.

What they are each doing suggests the 65+ market may be developing quite differently from what we expected.