Wellbeing of Women launches partnership to advance women’s health

Wellbeing of Women and Maroon Venture Fund have announced a multi-year partnership to advance women’s health.

The AstraWell partnership is hoped to speed up innovation, venture development and product solutions in women’s health, accelerate deployment of catalytic capital to fund women’s health innovation and increase and strengthen AstraWell’s R&D innovation consortiums, commercial venture platforms, collaborations, and scaling opportunities in women’s health in the UK and abroad.

In the UK, despite living for longer, women spend more time living in poor health than men.

Research into diagnosis, treatment and preventative care is underfunded, with only 2.4 per cent of public research funding going to women’s gynaecological health and childbirth.

Janet Lindsay, chief executive of Wellbeing of Women, said: “We are delighted to announce this partnership with Maroon Venture Fund.

“By supporting exciting new ventures in women’s health, we can nurture great ideas and tackle some of the most pressing issues facing women today, from heavy menstrual bleeding to premature birth, gynaecological cancers and beyond.

“This is the first time we are offering our unrivalled expertise in women’s health to companies working to innovate in this space, and we hope that doing so will help drive forward initiatives to help all women.”

Lisa Lambie, managing partner of Maroon Venture Fund, added: “Through this exciting partnership with Wellbeing of Women, Maroon looks forward to materially advancing critical research and innovation in women’s health; execute this robust scaling catalyst to accelerate commercial launches to market in the US and UK; and tackle some of the most pressing issues in comprehensive women’s health today.

“The most effective health advances do not occur in silos, but are fostered from collaboration across geographies and by ‘best-in-class’ partnerships reflecting deep expertise.

“Maroon is focused on advancing innovation addressing key chronic conditions for population health. These areas also represent health conditions that disproportionately impact women.”

The first initiative under AstraWell is the launch of AstraWell Venture Studio to support the venture development and commercial scaling of early-stage ventures, addressing chronic health and climate conditions disproportionately impacting women’s health.

AstraWell Venture Studio will be a hybrid platform, primarily virtual, also offering optional on-site engagement and sessions in New York, Boston, Houston, Glasgow and London.

Ventures interested in applying to AstraWell Venture Studio are invited to complete the applicant questionnaire and also attend the Information Session on Wednesday 3 July by RSVP HERE.