Entrepreneur
‘Patients don’t have a voice’: how this start-up wants to redefine OB/GYN care
The term “gynaecologist” often carries an ominous stigma, conjuring images of awkward visits, cringe-worthy conversations and an overall less-than-pleasant experience within the office walls.
Many patients dread the invasive procedures and often leave with unanswered questions. The data confirms this.
According to a 2020 report published in the Commonwealth Fund, 75 per cent of women in the US are dissatisfied with their OB/GYN care.
In a study of 11 high-income countries, including the UK, Germany and France, American women reported the least positive patient experiences. They were also less likely to rate their quality of care as excellent or very good compared to women in all other countries studied.
Accessibility is also an issue. The average wait time for an OB/GYN appointment is 31.4 days, a 19 per cent increase from 2017.
Tara Raffi, an ex-McKinsey from California, waited six weeks to get an appointment. When she did get to the doctor, she waited over an hour for a five-minute visit and she walked out of the room with no answers. She would go on to see four more OB/GYNs about her recurrent UTIs.
“It exposed for me a fundamental flaw in the US healthcare system, which allows big healthcare players to make decisions and where patients don’t really have a voice,” she says.
“Nobody was building for the patient.”
Wanting to make a change, Raffi and her childhood friend, Carly Allen, launched Almond, a full-service OB/GYN care provider that combines traditional western medicine and integrative medicine to deliver better outcomes to patients and reduce the amount of time it takes to get their problems resolved.
“I left McKinsey and started Almond because I wanted to make it easy to get great OB/GYN care,” the founder explains.
“Our aim is to modernise the full-service experience and provide care differently.”
Their holistic approach is a big part of that. According to Raffi, the current patient experience is incomplete and, while traditional western medicine is great in some cases, it is not great for more complicated, socially involved care journeys.
“A great example is in pregnancy care, where women [in the current healthcare system] end up feeling like they’re not getting what they need and they don’t know why,” she says.
“Integrative medicine solutions, however, present a lot of solutions for some of the deepest, most painful moments in the pregnancy journey. At Almond, we are trying to integrate midwives, doulas and lactation support into the Almond experience so that women can have access to all the support they need.
“We believe that by being a source that brings together medical doctors and different types of practitioners to give a truly holistic view, we can bridge that gap for millions of women.”
Accessibility is also a big differentiator, says the entrepreneur, who believes everyone should find a provider they could talk to when they need to.
“Having that accessibility and convenience of booking care sends a message that we care about you. It’s what, I think, tells patients that their health is important to us.”
Currently, Almond charges users a US$250 annual subscription fee and bills insurance for the visit and labs. The subscription gives patients access to the company’s platform, care team and personalised plans.
Prior to their appointment, women have to fill out a health questionnaire and detail the reasons for their visit. They have the possibility of scheduling next-day telehealth appointments and message their care team whenever they need to.
With more than 130 million American women in need of better OB/GYN care, Raffi says the opportunity for growth is huge.
“We’ve started with our first location in Los Angeles, but we’re looking to expand this year,” she says smiling. “Seeing that we’re able to make even just a small difference for patients makes it all worth it.”
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Women’s Health Week USA 2026 has unveiled its first populated agenda, anchored by an opening keynote from Kate Ryder, Founder and CEO of Maven Clinic, and featuring a cross-sector lineup shaping the next phase of scale in women’s health.
You can view the full agenda here.
Taking place May 13–14, 2026, at the New York Academy of Medicine, Women’s Health Week USA brings together the full women’s health ecosystem to focus on one central question: what does it take to move women’s health from innovation to institutional scale?
Kate Ryder will open Day 1 with a keynote drawing on her experience building Maven Clinic into the world’s largest virtual clinic for women’s and family health.
Under her leadership, Maven has partnered with employers and health plans to deliver care across fertility, maternity, postpartum, paediatrics, and menopause at scale.
Her perspective sets the tone for a program centered on commercialisation, partnership, and sustainable growth.
Beyond the opening keynote, the newly released agenda reflects the sector’s growing maturity.
Across two days, the program features 70+ speakers, with representation from leading organizations including the FDA, Planned Parenthood, CVS Health Ventures, Samsung Next, NIH, WHO, and Maven Clinic.
Sessions span investment and deal flow, clinical innovation, regulation, data and technology, and market expansion, alongside dedicated pitch sessions and curated 1:1 matchmaking designed to turn insight into action.
The agenda has been built to facilitate meaningful connections across the ecosystem, with partnerships positioned as the primary driver of scale.
As women’s health continues to attract institutional capital and global attention, Women’s Health Week USA 2026 offers a clear snapshot of where the market is heading, and who is shaping it.
The full agenda is now live, with additional speakers and partners to be announced in the coming months.
View the full programme here.
Calla Lily Clinical Care has partnered with Merck to support the intravaginal drug delivery platform Callavid in an effort to improve how vaginal medicines are given.
The collaboration will continue development of Callavid, described as a leak-resistant device that addresses challenges with self-administered vaginal therapies.
Callavid uses a small, tampon-shaped device with an integrated absorbent liner. It is inserted, remains in place during drug absorption, then is removed.
The platform is intended for use with medicines in fertility treatment, oncology and hormone therapy. Administration via the vaginal route can prompt patient anxiety about positioning, dosing accuracy and leakage.
The partnership is the first industry collaboration for the Callavid technology, which was developed by Calla Lily Clinical Care.
Thang Vo-Ta, co-founder and chief executive of Calla Lily Clinical Care, said: “This collaboration with Merck marks an important milestone in the development of Callavid, our novel vaginal drug delivery platform.
“Merck’s scientific heritage and forward-looking approach to innovation make them an ideal partner as we work to address long-standing unmet needs in women’s health.
“By improving how vaginal therapeutics are delivered and experienced, Callavid has the potential to enhance both patient outcomes and quality of life.
“We see this collaboration as a meaningful step towards translating our technology into real-world clinical and patient impact.”
Calla Lily Clinical Care is seeking to develop what it describes as the world’s first drug-device combination product to prevent threatened miscarriage and for IVF luteal phase support, the phase after ovulation when the body produces progesterone to support early pregnancy.
The device is also being developed to deliver therapeutics for oncology, menopause, infectious diseases and live biotherapeutics to reduce repeated antibiotic use.
Dr Lara Zibners, co-founder and chairman of Calla Lily Clinical Care, said: “Our initial engagement with Merck through the Merck Innovation Challenge in October 2024 was an important moment of alignment around the need for more patient-centric innovation in women’s health.
“As both a clinician and a patient, I have seen how profoundly drug delivery can shape treatment experience.
“This collaboration builds on that early dialogue and reflects a shared interest in rigorously exploring new approaches that may improve how therapies are delivered and experienced by patients.”
Stanford graduates’ startup Clair is building a wearable hormone tracker for women, offering continuous, non-invasive monitoring.
The company, Clair, founded by Jenny Duan and Abhinav Agarwal, aims to build what its founders describe as a research-led, privacy-focused tool to help women see how hormone levels affect daily life.
Duan and Agarwal met in spring 2025 and began working on Clair shortly after. Over the past six months, they have been developing the technology and refining the company’s mission.
The device is designed to address gaps in women’s healthcare. Women remain underrepresented in medical research and clinical trials, leading to limited data and slower progress in understanding women’s health conditions.
According to Clair advisor and Stanford Medicine professor Brindha Bavan, hormone tracking in reproductive healthcare “improves our understanding of the function of and communication between the brain’s pituitary gland and ovaries or testes.
The pituitary gland is a small organ at the base of the brain that produces hormones regulating many bodily functions. The ovaries and testes are the primary reproductive organs that also produce sex hormones.
Hormonal health affects not only fertility and reproduction but also mental health, metabolism, energy levels and overall wellbeing.
Bavan said hormone tracking can “provide insight into menstrual cycle patterns and can aid with both diagnosing and assessing treatment for [various] conditions.”
“[Clair enables] patients [to] gain insight into their personal hormone fluctuations over different time periods,” Bavan said, “and share this information at healthcare visits to better understand and correlate any medical issues they are facing and avoid repeat blood draws.”
The device, which resembles a bracelet worn on the wrist, will connect to a mobile app, allowing all data processing to occur directly on the user’s phone rather than in external data centres.
“The device connects with an app so all of the processing happens on the app itself, not in a data centre like other devices. This is especially important given the current political climate around data privacy,” Agarwal said.
Clair also plans to pursue FDA approval and position itself as a medically credible device rather than solely a lifestyle product. The company is planning to launch a clinical trial at Stanford Medicine this spring.
Duan’s interest in women’s health and technology began as a Stanford undergraduate. At TreeHacks in 2024, she built apps focused on endometriosis, a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows outside of it.
She said a course on Philanthropy for Sustainable Development was particularly influential. “It was this class that sparked my interest in building a solution in [the women’s healthcare] space,” Duan said.
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