Why investing in women’s health innovation is a smart bet

By David Buller, Managing Partner at KELES

The macro opportunity: women are half of the population

In 2024 alone, women’s health start-ups raised a record $2.6 billion, up 55 per cent from the previous year.

In addition to increasingly recognised health needs in menopause, fertility and female-specific cancers, there are conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, to name a few, that affect women disproportionately as compared to men, which then leads to the creation of large care gaps.

Whilst conventional care pathways, medications, dosages and treatments are often geared to accommodate males, this has created gaps in clinical pathway guidelines for women and their health.

The opportunity for transforming and investing in women’s health is growing. Where should investors focus capital, and what will substantially improve women’s health for the future?

Venture Capital will back scalable, system-level solutions

Despite the growing attention on women’s health and FemTech, successful venture-backed companies need to attract the female healthcare population.

The technologies that do this will be those that are payor-reimbursed (government, insurance or employer), can embed into patient care pathways, address wide-scale unmet needs, and have a clear exit strategy. Women’s health companies, just like any other digital health venture, need to consider how they integrate with the health system as a whole and forge a clear route to market.

The best companies will drive the new standard of care and address critical needs, for example, those improving essential surgeries, or developing new therapies, and those that substantially increase quality of life for a significant number of women.

With these considerations about scaling and prevalence in mind, the opportunities for founders and investors are great. What kind of technologies should we consider?

1. Those combating major gaps in existing care pathways. For example, endometriosis affects an estimated 10 per cent of women, yet diagnostic delay still averages eight years. Technologies that shorten diagnosis transform millions of lives and are rapidly adopted by payers.
2. AI and platform technologies. Utilising the latest AI capabilities can improve accuracy and speed in health, especially in diagnostics and drug development, and support the vision of care for women. We must ensure that data is representative of women and female patient groups. Greater assimilation and integration of truly representative datasets can allow more informed care decisions, and can enhance female patient selection for clinical trials.
3. High-prevalence conditions and health issues. Some conditions affect a startling number of women and can contribute to significant strains on global health systems. Fertility and pregnancy, post-partum depression, endometriosis, menopause and osteoporosis, breast cancer and diabetes are just some examples of highly prevalent and widespread health needs. AI and tech enable a huge step change in addressing issues that were completely undertreated.

Building a women’s health ecosystem that thrives: future innovation will originate from women

Achieving a healthy ecosystem of market-ready innovations in women’s health requires more than collaboration between start-ups, healthcare providers and investors. It needs a momentum of female-led founders to break the barriers, and get the right tech, innovation and products to the women who need them.

Breakthrough ideas often come from those who have experienced the pain points firsthand. Yet, if we look at women’s health, fewer than one in five digital-health start-ups is founded by a woman, and the percentage drops further in med-tech and biotech.

Encouragingly, the raw talent already exists. Across Europe, women already dominate many healthcare practitioner positions and master’s level qualifications in health and life sciences, and in many EU countries, they hold a slight majority of PhDs in these fields. Cities such as Lisbon, Copenhagen and Barcelona are making progress on gender balance among principal research investigators.

The challenge is in the translation: channeling the expertise into biotech and health companies that will scale well and make a significant impact on women’s health. So we should continue:

• Encouraging women in the scientific and healthcare ecosystem to experiment and innovate, and bring new technologies to market.
• Building an inclusive environment for female founders.
• Investing in female-led companies producing scalable solutions for women’s health.

Measuring returns by better health: an investor’s framework

Adhering to strong ethical principles is a core foundation of any good investment in healthcare. By embedding these principles into an investment framework, we are more likely to see capital deliver sustainable, long-term value.

At KELES, we evaluate our portfolio companies against core criteria. Applying these criteria to solutions for women’s health, companies can drive significant innovation and progress to support equitable healthcare. Many women’s health companies have the opportunity to meet and exceed these principles, and drive significant innovation and progress to support equitable healthcare.

• Accessibility – does the solution broaden access and availability of healthcare for women?
• Ethical use of data – is sensitive health data handled with the highest standards of privacy and fairness, and includes truly representative data?
• Improved outcomes – does the technology enhance healthcare outcomes for women?

By tying capital to these measurable goals in women’s health, and prioritising investments in women-led ventures that show clear market value, we can accelerate innovation that truly meets women’s healthcare needs – and has real impact worldwide.