BACKEER and Netalis Medical have won the Women’s Health × EmbryoNet-AI Startup Competition, an international initiative designed to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence solutions in women’s health.

The two winners will receive technical support worth up to €100,000, along with access to investors, to help them develop and validate their minimum viable products.

In total, the competition attracted 165 teams from Europe, Central Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. The field included early-stage startups, research laboratories and clinical groups applying artificial intelligence to solve women’s health challenges.

“We selected participants based on their potential impact on women’s health, scientific and commercial viability, data availability, alignment with EmbryoNet-AI’s capabilities, programme feasibility, as well as ethical and sustainability considerations. Both winning teams demonstrated outstanding performance across all these criteria,” said Elena Lipilina, co-founder of EmbryoNet-AI.

Kazakhstan-based BACKEER is developing a fibre-optic biosensor platform for the rapid and highly sensitive detection of biomarkers. The technology aims to improve the early diagnosis of breast cancer and increase the accuracy and speed of laboratory testing. The company plans to use the programme’s resources to build the AI-driven platform and interface for the biosensors.

South African startup Netalis Medical is building a solution for ultrasound diagnostics and maternal-fetal health monitoring. The product addresses the shortage of qualified healthcare professionals and diagnostic equipment in underserved regions by offering a more affordable and accessible alternative to conventional ultrasound systems. The company plans to use the support to build an annotated proprietary ultrasound dataset for use in ultrasound diagnostics.

The Women’s Health × EmbryoNet-AI Startup Competition was held in Portugal. It included a Mentor Sprint, where participants worked with experts in technology, marketing and clinical practice to refine their solutions and business models, and culminated in a Live Pitch Day.

The selected teams presented their solutions to investors and industry stakeholders, including femtech strategic advisor Rocsi Chereches; Dr Sabine Seymour, founder of the women’s educational platform Re.punk; Fabien Lanteri, head of health strategy and innovation; Alla Zarifyan, co-founder and head of strategy at Heartgene Science; Evgenia Zaslavskaya, founder and chief executive of communications agency Zecomms; and serial entrepreneur and angel investor Isabel Holguera Vera. They evaluated applications on their potential impact on women’s health, scientific and commercial viability, alignment with EmbryoNet-AI’s capabilities, programme feasibility, and ethical and sustainability considerations.

The winning teams will now enter a build period of eight to 10 weeks, during which EmbryoNet-AI will deliver a fully developed, services-first pilot at no cost. The companies will also gain direct access to investors active in women’s health and AI-driven biotech, as well as enhanced public credibility through investor-ready materials, including pitch decks, and media exposure.

The Women’s Health × EmbryoNet-AI Startup Competition is a first-of-its-kind programme for femtech startups and research labs, bringing together innovators working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and women’s health.

The initiative, launched by the scientific platform EmbryoNet-AI in partnership with FemTech Real Money Talks Media, a European media platform covering innovation in women’s health and femtech, aims to accelerate real-world breakthroughs by transforming early-stage ideas and clinical questions into working AI solutions.

By Somayeh McKian, a member of the clinical advisory board of Vea, the AI-powered mental health journal app

The danger of efficiency culture in women’s mental tech is that we are inadvertently optimizing the very patterns that drive our collective burnout.

When we look at the explosive growth of the femtech sector, the dominant narrative remains focused on speed, tracking, and passive compliance.

We build apps that treat a woman’s emotional state like a broken supply chain or a medical deficit that needs to be optimised, streamlined, or forced into submission.

But true psychological resilience cannot be quantified by a simple mood slider or an algorithmic checkmark.

As a psychotherapist and gender studies scholar, my research into the lived experiences of women, particularly how cultural mandates and bodily surveillance are pathologised, reveals a deep-seated form of suffering.

When women constantly say “yes” while meaning “no,” or ignore a chronically depleted body to maintain a rigid role, they are living out what I call an “inkless life.”

It is a blank manuscript in which their physical and emotional existence has been entirely authored by external critics, medical charts, and the “Discourse of the Other.”

They aren’t suffering from an efficiency problem; they have been stripped of the agency to author their own skin.

If femtech platforms simply digitise these rigid, externalised “shoulds,” they risk becoming high-tech tools of compliance rather than portals of liberation.

The investment community and health tech innovators need to realise that the next frontier of mental health tech isn’t about managing symptoms on the fly; it is about existential archaeology.

We must build digital spaces that serve as a “corporeal pen,” transforming self-reflection from a passive hobby into a defiant, existential act.

True innovation lies in helping women find the meaning, the latent metaphors, and the unique tasks already written into their struggles and transforming inherited pain into a human achievement.

This is exactly the structural paradigm shift we are anchoring at Véa. Instead of building superficial tracking logs, our architecture treats life as a manuscript.

We design clinical narrative journeys that help women decode where their internal boundary scripts were written, recognize how somatic depletion is a truth-teller, and wield phrases like “stop it” not as external policing, but as internal, defiant boundaries.

If we want to build a sustainable ecosystem for women’s health, we must stop funding platforms that merely help women endure their exhaustion more efficiently.

In the intersection of meaningful life and technology, we look at the human spirit not by its current restrictions but by its latent potential for change.

It is time to back technologies that give the fluent soul a sharp new set of instruments to rewrite its own narrative.

Somayeh McKian is a certified psychotherapist, in-training logotherapist, gender studies scholar, published author and part of Véa’s clinical advisory board.

Alexander Parker is head of wellness at packaging design and manufacturing company, Burgopak.

Burgopak is a world leader in design innovation, with a 25-year-history spanning entertainment, consumer tech and now health diagnostics, including an expanding range of at-home hormone and fertility testing kits.

We speak to Alexander to discover what goes into designing robust, functional but engaging packaging and the sometimes surprising considerations that can make or break a product.

Hi Alexander. Please tell us about your role at Burgopak.

My role is about driving our growth and direction in the healthcare and wellness space, which in practice means everything from packaging to client engagement, to partnerships, to developing the team.

I also sit on the company management committee and help manage our IP portfolio.

Before stepping into this role, I spent 20 years as a designer, 15 of them as head of design – so I bring a hands-on understanding of what it takes to deliver great packaging.

At-home test kits require the user to perform a medical procedure alone, without professional support.

How does that inform your design approach?

It’s a key pillar of a project, heavily influenced by the product and its intended use.

In the case of a test kit being used to collect a sample specimen and return it to a lab, there’s often plenty of opportunity for packaging to help or hinder the process and experience.

There are layers to effective packaging.

●       Structure – Physical interventions through the packaging.

●       Artwork – The visual identity, messaging and instructions across the pack and instructions for use.

●       Signalling – Sometimes-undervalued but what signals are communicated through the packaging – how this makes the user feel about the product, the company behind it and the task at hand.

Careful design of the instructions for use is universally appreciated and often a regulatory requirement.

However, the pack structure and artwork should also work together to communicate a clear user journey.

This could include presenting components in the order they’re used, aligning the pack layout with the IFU steps (Prepare>Test>Return), making the IFU immediately visible as a hero component.

We can also introduce physical aids, like collection tube stands, to help during the sampling process.

The packaging is often used in the return of the sample to a lab so this needs to be considered and intuitively designed.

The structure, materials and artwork are all communicating something to the user.

You want to reassure the user by signalling care, efficacy, trust and in the case of a paid product, value.

In your mind, compare these two pack examples.

One a simple carton with a sea of components loosely filled and rattling around inside. Poor quality print and seemingly damaged in the post.

Contrast that with a suitably robust piece of packaging, with the components arranged and labelled into steps 1, 2, 3.

They might both work, but you can imagine the second building a reassured user experience.

How often do you encounter brands that haven’t thought about the emotional and potentially anxiety-inducing moment of opening a testing kit, and what’s the first thing you fix?

Thankfully it’s not too often, in our case at least.

I think we tend to attract customers who sense there’s more to packaging than just being a container or functionally driven.

The start of a project for us is building a brief with the customer and aligning on values for the packaging – what we want people to feel when opening or using it – as well as defining the technical requirements.

So, if there’s going to be an early fix it’ll probably be here, establishing the emotional intent.

How has the rise in social media ‘unboxing’ videos and product reviews changed what you do?

Is there a tension between designing for social media shareability and designing for the privacy women often want around health testing?

I don’t think there has to be a tension, provided everyone is clear on what the goals of the packaging are, and they are aligned with the product type and its use.

We can’t influence the results of a test or the positive or negative emotional significance it has in someone’s life.

What we can do is design packaging that offers the best possible user experience.

If there’s a shareable moment at the end, packaging might be a prop within a photo or video. But equally it might be a very private experience.

If it’s a test offering a diagnosis or insights into a health condition – you can conceive of a range of emotional outcomes. As you could imagine for certain fertility products too.

The design needs to acknowledge all these possibilities in its structural design, visual identity and the signals they communicate.

For women using a fertility or hormone test, perceived quality signals trust.

How do you stop sustainable choices from reading as cheap?

Do the essentials well, look for small interventions that add value and use attention to detail to signal that the care taken over the packaging, and sustainability, extends to the user.

Material choice is incredibly important.

In the case of paperboard quality can be a spectrum so it’s important to take the time to find and qualify the right one.

One that offers the necessary performance characteristics, is verifiably from responsibly managed forests such as through FSC/PEFC, and from a mill whose activities are aligned with your sustainability targets.

Take care over the design of each touch point and detail. A fitment that holds a device should neatly cradle it. A closure should be intuitive to open and work every time.

If the pack is meant to stand up, then the proportions should be optimised to facilitate that. It’s attention to the details that’s important.

Print quality will have a big impact on perception, not just the messaging or visual identity it renders. If the print quality is poor, then it devalues the product.

Doing it well doesn’t mean using material resources – it’s careful vendor selection and quality assurance.

For some responsible premiumisation you can introduce embossing or debossing details to the artwork, a tactile three-dimensional finish.

This details-led approach is valuable across all packaging but if sustainability is driving a reduction to the essentials, then there is a heightened importance to the execution of what is left.

As at-home health testing moves into NHS and public health contexts, what does good packaging look like when the brief is scale and cost rather than aspiration?

Scale and cost often feature very heavily in the success of projects outside of these settings, so there are parallels between the public and private, but with greater imperative to strip things back.

What is important to understand is success is not a piece of packaging in isolation. It’s efficiency, kitting, quality, distribution, tracking, data management across all activities and partners. Packaging is one part of the bigger picture.

Central to all of this is the need for it to reliably and consistently encourage the correct use of the kit through structure, artwork and instructions.

It is materially efficient and from a robust agile supply chain.

Assembly and kitting might be automated so it will be designed for those production lines or in conjunction with the equipment development.

It is compliant with all transport regulations and the most cost-efficient postal streams to the patient and from them back to the lab.

So, what does good packaging look like? It’s the design that efficiently offers the best patient user experience through a robust, reliable, scalable supply chain.

How do you make the business case for investing in packaging design before the product itself is ready to market?

There’s an opportunity cost.

Packaging has the potential to be a valuable asset when someone invests time and resources into coherent design and development. By starting too late or under resourcing the process you risk having packaging that’s a commercial pain point.

At the earliest opportunity, you at least want to be selecting your packaging partners and have a clear understanding of the development timeline and milestones – structural design, prototyping, stakeholder feedback, artwork/labelling development, regulatory milestones, transit testing, stability testing, wetproofing, manufacturing, delivery.

You must complete these steps before your product can go to market.

What’s the cost to you of delaying launch because you didn’t get packaging underway sooner?

You need to spend time creating packaging that elevates your brand and is a marketing asset that works across ecommerce, retail, advertising, social media.

Engage with the other supply chain stakeholders.

One example would be involving kitting partners in the process to validate and input on packaging improvements. If it’s expensive to kit, your cost of goods go up and if it’s slow to kit you might not have a scalable solution.

You may also find packaging insights influence product decisions.

If you are defining components for a test kit, factor in that larger devices might in turn increase pack size and eventually incur higher shipping costs.

You might work with a device manufacturer on how a USB cable is wound so the packaging volume can be decreased – another potential packaging and shipping cost reduction.

Transit testing and design improvements ensure that products arrive in acceptable condition – reducing costs associated with replacements, damaged reputation and potentially the loss of repeat purchases.

Packaging done well is that opportunity realised – it’s value demonstrated across sales, marketing and operations.

For a founding team approaching a packaging partner for the first time, what does a genuinely useful brief contain, what do most brands leave out, and how much does coming in underprepared add to the timeline and cost?

At Burgopak we build a brief together with the customer and that usually happens in a few stages.

The initial conversation is a chance to learn more about each other, make sure we’re a good fit for one another and the project.

We like to learn more about you, your product, how it’s used and some headline information around timelines, volumes, budget, your packaging ambitions and likes/dislikes.

We explain what we do and how we typically work. This really is the kick-off point – the goal at the end of this stage is being excited to be working together on a project that looks technically and commercially feasible.

In the next stage we build-out a brief capturing the technical and brand-led requirements of the packaging.

It will cover product details, brand & experience, sales & delivery channels, fulfilment and distribution, budget and timelines, compliance and regulations.

The exact questions will vary by product and project, but they span those areas.

From this we can build the project plan – and this might involve working towards answers that aren’t yet defined.

It seems obvious, but knowing exactly what needs to be packaged is fundamental – the product, peripherals – and this can be one of the common missing puzzle pieces.

You can design a container to hold ‘something’.

But when you know exactly what the product is – its size, shape, weight, how it’s used – you can design a piece of packaging that is maximally efficient and effective in elevating the total product experience.

The risk to a successful project is not so much under preparedness at the start – we’re here to help build the brief and a realistic project plan – it’s a loss of momentum through the process.

The packager and the client must work together.

We can be very efficient and agile in doing the work but there’s also the responsibility from the client to keep momentum through rounds of feedback, coordinating product samples or technical drawings and so on.

If there’s a finite timeline and repeated delays within it there can come a crunch point – when delivery dates are pushed out or potentially avoidable compromises made.

Come prepared to collaborate on the brief – but know that the founding teams who get the best outcomes are the ones who stay engaged and keep momentum through the whole process, not just the kick-off.

Learn more about Burgopak at burgopak.com