News
Opinion: Why women’s health needs transformational, not incremental, change
Hope Khoury, COO of product development firm Go Vertical ICM, urges faster and more prevention-focused improvement of women’s healthcare globally.
Women’s health has languished long enough in medicine, with millions underserved, misunderstood, and having to struggle with a system that too frequently doesn’t comprehend the entirety of female physiology.
Although recent years have brought us an onslaught of new awareness, how much further there is to ascend remains sizable, especially for diseases that are still underfunded, misdiagnosed, or altogether overlooked.
As a person who has struggled firsthand with the impact of uterine fibroids—a struggle that transformed my whole life—I understand intimately how incapacitating these conditions can be.
My personal ordeal started at 28 when I was diagnosed with a life-threatening 18 cm fibroid. It was not only a health emergency; it was an eye-opener to the systemic disregard for women’s reproductive well-being.
My mother had a hysterectomy at age 43, and I assumed that’s where I was going, too. Rather than accept limited options, though, I began making some choices of my own.
A silent epidemic
Uterine fibroids affect as many as 80% of women by the time they reach 50, and still, the condition is under-discussed and under-researched. Symptoms—chronic pain, excessive menstrual bleeding, infertility, and a reduced quality of life—are disabling, and yet treatments are too often limited to invasive surgeries or hormone therapies that introduce their own risks and side effects.
The bigger question is: why are we still dealing with women’s health on a reactive, rather than proactive, basis? Why is there so little emphasis on prevention? This is not a isolated problem to fibroids alone, but for a vast majority of conditions that affect only women, from endometriosis to PCOS, menopausal issues, and female-onset cancers.
The femtech revolution
One ray of hope lies in the rise of femtech. Yet here too, innovation is held back by a shortage of finance, regulatory hurdles, and the widespread problem of gender bias in medical research.
Even though women comprise more than half of the population, less than 1% of healthcare research funding is allocated to female-specific diseases. And although the femtech market is expected to be valued at more than $50 billion by 2025, the sector continues to attract relatively smaller proportions of investment compared to conventional health and wellness startups.
This inequality is especially troubling when we recognize that innovation in women’s health doesn’t just help women—it helps whole societies. When women are healthy, they’re more productive, more involved, and better able to contribute to their families, workplaces, and communities.
Prevention as the future of women’s health
Following my diagnosis and surgery, I leveraged my training in pharmacology to create a botanical-based supplement that would stop fibroids from growing in the first place.
Prevention needs to be a femtech principle, one that reframes the discussion from symptom management to the underlying causes of disease.
Women deserve solutions that harmonise with their bodies, not fight against them. That involves harnessing the strength of science-proven botanicals, augmenting diagnostic capabilities for early detection, and leveraging technology to provide personalised health information.
AI-powered menstrual tracking, hormone testing, and non-invasive procedures shouldn’t be the future; they should be the now. Alongside better technology, women also need access to trusted spaces where their concerns are taken seriously and treated with care. Resources such as dedicated support for women’s wellbeing play a meaningful role in ensuring that women can seek guidance, treatment, and reassurance without judgement.
I do think that by bringing together scientists, clinicians, and entrepreneurs, we can create a future where women do not have to suffer in silence. The change that we need is not incremental; it has to be transformational.
Hope Khoury is COO of Go Vertical ICM, a firm which helps to guide new products from idea to market.
Ovarian cancer cells quickly activate survival responses after PARP inhibitor treatment, and a lung cancer drug could help block this, research suggests.
PARP inhibitors are a common treatment for ovarian cancer, particularly in tumours with faulty DNA repair. They stop cancer cells fixing DNA damage, which leads to cell death, but many tumours later stop responding.
Researchers identified a way cancer cells may survive PARP inhibitor treatment from the outset, pointing to a potential way to block that response. A Mayo Clinic team found ovarian cancer cells rapidly switch on a pro-survival programme after exposure to PARP inhibitors. A key driver is FRA1, a transcription factor (a protein that turns genes on and off) that helps cancer cells adapt and avoid death.
The team then tested whether brigatinib, a drug approved for certain lung cancers, could block this response and boost the effect of PARP inhibitors. Brigatinib was chosen because it inhibits multiple signalling pathways involved in cancer cell survival.
In laboratory studies, combining brigatinib with a PARP inhibitor was more effective than either treatment alone. Notably, the effect was seen in cancer cells but not normal cells, suggesting a more targeted approach.
Brigatinib also appeared to act in an unexpected way. Rather than working through the usual DNA repair routes, it shut down two signalling molecules, FAK and EPHA2, that aggressive ovarian cancer cells rely on. FAK and EPHA2 are proteins that relay survival signals inside cells. Blocking both at once weakened the cells’ ability to adapt and resist treatment, making them more vulnerable to PARP inhibitors.
Tumours with higher levels of FAK and EPHA2 responded better to the drug combination. Other data link high levels of these molecules to more aggressive disease, pointing to potential benefit in harder-to-treat cases.
Arun Kanakkanthara, an oncology investigator at Mayo Clinic and a senior author of the study, said: “This work shows that drug resistance does not always emerge slowly over time; cancer cells can activate survival programmes very early after treatment begins.”
John Weroha, a medical oncologist at Mayo Clinic and a senior author of the study, said: “From a clinical perspective, resistance remains one of the biggest challenges in treating ovarian cancer. By combining mechanistic insights from Dr Kanakkanthara’s laboratory with my clinical experience, this preclinical work supports the strategy of targeting resistance early, before it has a chance to take hold. This strategy could improve patient outcomes.”
Nighttime temperatures during pregnancy may be linked to a higher chance of an autism diagnosis in children, a recent study suggests.
The research tracked nearly 295,000 mother-child pairs in Southern California from 2001 to 2014 and linked warmer overnight temperatures with higher risk in early and late pregnancy.
Children of mothers exposed to higher than typical nighttime temperatures during weeks one to 10 of pregnancy had a 15 per cent higher risk of an autism diagnosis.
Exposure during weeks 30 to 37 was linked to a 13 per cent higher risk.
Lead author David Luglio, a post-doctoral fellow at Tulane University, said: “A key takeaway is that we identified specific windows when a mother and her developing child can be most affected by exposures to higher nighttime temperatures.
“This is critical and hopefully can help mothers prepare accordingly.”
The study is described as the first to examine how temperature may affect fetal neurodevelopment, the process by which a baby’s brain and nervous system form during pregnancy.
Extreme temperatures linked to increased risk were classified as above the 90th percentile, meaning 3.6°F hotter than average, and the 99th percentile, 5.6°F above average.
The association held even after researchers accounted for factors such as neighbourhood conditions, vegetation and fine-particle air pollution.
The study could not account for other factors such as access to air conditioning. Researchers did not find the same association with daytime temperatures, potentially because people spend more time away from home during the day.
“Heat waves are becoming more frequent, and people may only think of the dangers of daytime heat exposure,” said Mostafijur Rahman, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Tulane University.
“These results indicate a strong association between high nighttime temperatures during pregnancy and autism risk in children and show that we need to think about exposure to heat around the clock.”
The study did not examine how higher temperatures at night might affect prenatal development, though Luglio said it is possible that warmer nights disrupt sleep for pregnant mothers.
Previous research has suggested insufficient sleep during pregnancy may be linked to a higher risk of neurocognitive delays in children.
“Extreme heat exposure during pregnancy has been linked to a range of adverse health outcomes, including prenatal neurodevelopment delays and complications with an embryo’s development of a central nervous system,” Luglio said.
“The goal of our study was to specifically explore the link between prenatal heat exposure and autism diagnoses for the first time.”
Kindbody has launched a fertility platform integrating AI with clinical care and patient support for employers and health plans.
The platform will enter a pilot with select Kindbody employer clients in 2026, covering over three million lives, ahead of wider availability in 2027.
Building on the company’s clinical model, the platform aims to improve outcomes and cost efficiency across family-building journeys. It connects Kindbody-owned clinics, partner clinics and an integrated clinical app.
The app offers virtual care across conception, pregnancy and reproductive health, extending through the menopause transition.
Launch features include updates in medication management, third-party reproduction, adoption, pregnancy, men’s health and global programme design.
David Stern, chief executive of Kindbody, said: “With our next-generation fertility platform, Kindbody is redefining what comprehensive, intelligent and affordable family-building care looks like for employers, health plans and patients.
“By unifying best-in-class clinical care, AI-driven intelligence and whole-person support, we are making it easier and more cost-effective for more people to build the families they envision.”
Kindbody has expanded access via its national network of IVF centres, including IVIRMA, Inception Fertility and Ivy Fertility.
A new Fertility Medication Portal is designed to streamline authorisations so medicines can be dispensed on time, giving patients visibility from prescription to coverage, pharmacy fulfilment and delivery tracking.
Through KindMan, men’s health education, digital resources and integrated clinical care are expanding, including hormone management programmes.
Services cover andropause (age-related testosterone decline), erectile dysfunction, low testosterone and other male reproductive conditions.
Specialist fertility care includes semen analysis, diagnostic testing, male hormone panels, genetic testing, surgical sperm extraction and sperm cryopreservation.
Launching in the second quarter, a pregnancy support app will act as a digital companion for expecting and new parents, with resources, interactive tools and clinical assessments to identify social drivers of health and mental health needs during pregnancy and beyond.
Kindbody’s physician-led menopause programme provides consultations with board-certified obstetricians and gynaecologists to diagnose, treat and manage menopausal symptoms, including hormone replacement therapy where appropriate, with support from nutritionists, mental health therapists and pelvic floor specialists.
AI and analytics will be embedded across the care journey. An AI care navigator will guide employees from benefit activation through intake, triage and scheduling.
Tools will track benefits and treatment plans, showing coverage and expected out-of-pocket costs at each step.
AI-supported scribing will assist clinicians with documentation, and a predictor tool will estimate a patient’s likelihood of having a baby across different treatment paths.
In 2027, Kindbody plans a savings model for eligible large employers that it says will guarantee lower total fertility spend while improving clinical efficiency and patient experience.
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