Menopause
“Exciting innovation is taking place in the menopause care sector, but considerable room for development remains”
By Sara Jones, business director and founder of Free The Birds
There is a golden opportunity for femtech companies to take the lead when it comes to raising awareness and starting helpful conversations around the menopause.
The term “femtech” was coined in 2016 and the industry has been steadily expanding with a forecasted value of US$50bn by 2025.
While many start-ups have built products and services around fertility or periods, one neglected category is the menopause.
Even though it is experienced by half of the population and potentially affects 100 per cent of it, menopause is one of those areas of female health that has suffered for being considered taboo and therefore invisible.
Thankfully, all that’s beginning to change now. A new focus on workplace policies, TV shows such as The Split, Grace and Frankie, and films like Good Luck to You, Leo Grande with Emma Thompson are shining a spotlight on the emergence of women owning their experience. However, more needs to be done.
We need a full-scale attitude change towards the menopause: building awareness around the symptoms and educating from a young age about what it is and what women will experience, the negatives and the positives.
Self-care through technology
With thousands of health enquiries on the internet every minute, the need for reliable and credible information could not be greater.
With self-care comes self-education. And organisations face an increased pressure to ensure patients and caregivers receive accurate and appropriate guidance when taking their health into their own hands through the digital space.
With women struggling to get the required help from GPs, who cannot recognise most of the menopause symptoms through lack of training, the healthcare industry should help women get back control of their lives.
A prime example of this is the Balance app developed by Dr Louise Newson, which provides expert content, a symptom tracker and personalised health reports, aiming to empower women, trans and non-binary people to take control of their health.
If we look at the apparel market, Become clothing provides a solution for tackling hot flushes. This clothing has four effects: cooling the skin, evaporating sweat away, releasing heat back to the body, and reducing odour. The fabric and the different aspects of coating work together to alleviate hot flushes and their effects.
Symptom management
During menopause, women may suffer up to 48 different symptoms including hot flushes, mood changes and difficulty sleeping. Particularly prominent are devices aiming to instantly alleviate hot flushes.
Among these is Embr Wave, a bracelet which uses patented technology to cool a user’s wrist on demand. It implements varying thermal stimulation which provides a cooling effect over steady state thermal stimulation and prevents adaptive desensitisation of the skin.
Another area of notable development is that of wearable symptom trackers. These trackers can provide users with treatment suggestions.
Operating in this area is digital health company IdentifyHer which provides an app-activated sensor to be worn on a user’s chest to record the frequency and severity of menopause symptoms. Crucially, the data recorded by the sensor is objective data which removes the inaccuracy of user self-reporting. AI-driven technology is then used to suggest treatments and to examine the effectiveness of existing treatments based on the objective sensor data.
Bringing the community together
Digital tools and in-app experiments enable people to share their personal experiences around symptoms, and thus bringing the community together. Something that the traditional healthcare sector is failing to do currently, whilst gathering accurate data to help shape future innovation.
For example, Olivia is a digital therapeutics app providing knowledge, individual guidance, and tools for how to thrive through menopause.
The programmes are based on the principles of lifestyle medicine – a holistic approach to health which focuses on treatment beyond doctor-led interventions like prescriptions and embraces the idea that positively changing behaviours and habits leads to health and happiness.
Another example is Peanut, an app connecting women throughout all stages of motherhood or menopause. By introducing users to women nearby who are at a similar life stage, Peanut provides access to a community of women who are there to listen, share information and offer each other advice.
Unlocking the femtech menopause market
Evidently, exciting innovation is taking place in the menopause care sector, but considerable room for development remains.
Women themselves are becoming much more vocal about the need for better menopause care, which is slowly eroding the stigma associated with menopause. Therefore, brands that listen to those specific needs and consumers’ expectations will automatically be more in tune with how they can help.
There is a golden opportunity for healthcare and technology brands to take the lead when it comes to raising awareness, starting helpful conversations around the menopause and delivering products that are much more relevant, personalised and memorable.
Femtech companies revolutionising the menopause space are providing sought-after solutions for a long-ignored life stage. Not only are these brands improving the daily lives of an enormous segment of the population, but they are changing cultural perceptions and taboos around menopause.
Free The Birds is a London-based creative agency working with femtech companies to understand challenges, explore opportunities and create better experiences for women.
Women with primary infertility may face a higher risk of early menopause and reach it about a year earlier, a study suggests.
The findings suggest women with primary infertility may be more likely to enter menopause before the age of 45.
The increased risk appeared most notable among women with unexplained infertility or a history of endometriosis.
Dr Stephanie Faubion, medical director for The Menopause Society, said: “This study shows that women with primary infertility, specifically those with unexplained infertility or a history of endometriosis, were at risk for early menopause.
“Given that early menopause is linked to adverse long-term health consequences, these women may benefit from counselling that they are at risk of early menopause.
“This will allow them to monitor for early menopause and to seek treatment with hormone therapy, if indicated.”
Early menopause is usually defined as menopause before age 45, while premature menopause is menopause before age 40.
Women who experience menopause earlier may face symptoms for longer and have a higher risk of long-term health problems.
These can include cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and neurocognitive disorders. Osteoporosis weakens bones, while neurocognitive disorders affect memory, thinking or brain function.
The study, highlighted by The Menopause Society, involved nearly 700 people, roughly half of whom had been diagnosed with primary infertility.
It found that women with a history of primary infertility underwent natural menopause about one year earlier than those without such a history.
Researchers found no association between infertility and premature menopause.
Infertility affects around one in six people globally and can have consequences beyond family planning.
Previous research has linked infertility with higher rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease, although causes vary and may involve genetic, hormonal, in-utero or lifestyle factors.
In-utero factors are influences that occur while a baby is developing in the womb.
Earlier studies looking at links between infertility and early or premature menopause have produced mixed results, with some not accounting for different types of infertility.
The new study suggested that women with unexplained infertility or a history of endometriosis may have an increased risk of early menopause.
Endometriosis is a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows elsewhere in the body. It can cause pain, heavy periods and fertility problems.
Known risk factors for early or premature menopause include tobacco use, low body mass index, not having given birth and starting periods at a younger age.
Women who have had more childbirths and those with a history of oral contraceptive use have previously been linked to later menopause.
The researchers said women with primary infertility may benefit from additional counselling because of the systemic and long-term health effects of early menopause.
They also said women should be encouraged to seek evaluation and treatment if they experience a new loss of menstrual cycles.
Smartwatch data may help track menopause sleep changes after researchers analysed more than 94,000 nights of Apple Watch sleep records.
The study analysed more than 94,000 nights of sleep data from 338 participants in the Apple Women’s Health Study.
It found that many participants spent more time awake during the night in the 12 months before and after their final logged menstrual period.
For the past several years, Apple has used the Apple Watch to support large-scale health studies through the Apple Research app.
These include the Apple Women’s Health Study, the Apple Heart and Movement Study, and the Apple Hearing Study, which launched in 2019 with research partners including Harvard, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the American Heart Association and the University of Michigan.
In February 2025, Apple said those studies had grown to more than 350,000 participants across the US.
Recently, researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published results on how sleep patterns change during perimenopause.
The study looked at wake after sleep onset, or WASO, which measures how much time a person spends awake after first falling asleep.
In the 18 months leading up to menopause, 60 per cent of women with sleep tracking data showed increased WASO compared with the previous six months.
The average increase was 7 per cent.
Researchers also found that, in the 12 months before and after the last logged menstrual period, participants spent about 0.8 per cent more of their sleep time awake after menopause than before.
However, the findings varied widely between participants.
Some women had much larger increases in time awake after menopause, while others had no meaningful sleep change at all.
The researchers said this reflects the fact that each person experiences perimenopause and menopause differently.
Participants who tracked sleep also logged menopause symptoms.
Hot flushes were reported by 82.3 per cent of participants, irritability by 68.1 per cent, mental exhaustion by 65.7 per cent and sexual symptoms by 65.6 per cent.
Among participants with more severe menopause symptoms, the symptoms most closely linked with worse sleep were bladder symptoms, joint symptoms, heart discomfort and depressive symptoms.
The researchers also shared recommendations that may help women sleep better during perimenopause.
These include maintaining a cool sleeping environment, keeping a consistent sleep schedule, getting regular movement, avoiding common bladder irritants and limiting fluids in the hours before bedtime, and prioritising relaxation or mindfulness techniques as part of a bedtime routine.
Women are still being failed by menopause care despite a surge in online advice, with experts saying symptoms are too often minimised or dismissed.
The researchers exposed a gap between the surge of menopause information available online and the quality of medical care women receive.
A team of anthropologists and psychologists explored the physical and emotional toll of menopause, including its impact on work and personal lives, through interviews with 60 women aged 45 to 61 between March and June 2021.
The findings were published in a new book, We Need to Talk About Menopause.
The interviews showed how women continue to “needlessly suffer” as they sort through misinformation from influencers, celebrities and so-called experts.
The authors said: “You would think in an age where humans are developing commercial space flight, self-driving cars, and AI personal assistants who can project movies onto the palm of your hand, we would understand more about menopause, something a little over half of the population is guaranteed to experience in their lives.”
The interviews revealed wide variation in women’s experiences of doctors.
Some felt they could have an open dialogue, while others said they were “shut down”, including being told they were too young for menopause.
One woman said she bled heavily for a year before she was taken seriously.
The authors said menopause is still poorly understood, with disagreement over whether it should be seen as a medical condition or a natural part of ageing.
There are more than 100 recognised symptoms, although some women experience none.
Among those interviewed, 78 per cent reported weight gain and redistribution, particularly around the belly area, which was resistant to diet and exercise.
Fifty-eight per cent experienced mood disturbances including anxiety, depression, irritability and unprecedented levels of rage.
Many women said they were blindsided by symptoms they had never known existed.
One participant said she only realised rage was a menopause symptom after seeing it mentioned in a television commercial.
Women also described severe memory problems and brain fog that colleagues mistook for incompetence, leading successful professionals to question their abilities at the peak of their careers.
Brain fog can include problems with concentration, memory and clear thinking.
According to Statistics Canada, 70 per cent of women turn to the internet as their primary source of menopause information.
The authors said this information vacuum has spawned a £14.7bn global “meno-tech” industry, with influencers, celebrities and telehealth companies offering products ranging from £98 creams to unnecessary blood tests.
They said: “The growth of interest in menopause has also been accompanied by a wave of unsubstantiated information.
“Many websites market expensive creams, supplements, and weight-loss schemes that promise to keep women youthful and attractive, with little evidence to support their claims.
“Reliable, accessible information about menopause and perimenopause is still lacking. Despite increased attention to the importance of physician training and the search for menopause specialists, the medical profession as a whole continues to provide limited support in this area.”
The authors also highlighted the effect of menopause in the workplace.
The House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee has warned that Britain is “haemorrhaging talent” because of menopause, with 14 million workdays lost each year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Despite this, studies have shown 80 per cent of UK employers have yet to implement proper support measures for menopausal women.
Some women said simple workplace adjustments made a significant difference.
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