Women’s pain should not simply be endured, Wales’s first women’s health minister has said.

Delyth Jewell said she was determined to tackle the normalisation of pain in women’s healthcare and ensure women’s voices are listened to.

Speaking during a Women’s Health Summit at the Temple of Peace on Thursday, July 16, she said: “For too long, women’s health has been treated as an afterthought. No woman should be afraid to speak up about pain or things that don’t feel right.

“Women should be believed about their bodies, and I am determined to change the culture that has let too many women down.”

She added: “Women’s voices helped create the Women’s Health Plan. Now we’re making sure those voices continue to shape what comes next.”

The summit brought together clinicians, researchers and women with lived experience to tackle the normalisation of pain in healthcare and identify how women’s voices can better shape NHS services.

Lived experience means insight from people who have personally gone through a health issue or used healthcare services.

The event focused on pain linked to clinical procedures and long-term health conditions, drawing on research evidence, clinical expertise and women’s personal experiences.

Following the summit, minimum standards for service user engagement will be drafted to ensure women’s voices continue to influence the delivery and future priorities of the Women’s Health Plan.

Service user engagement means involving people who use health services in decisions about how care is designed, delivered and improved.

Work will also begin to refresh and strengthen the plan, including gathering feedback directly from women across Wales.

The NHS Wales Women’s Health Plan was developed after discovery work in 2022, when women across Wales shared their experiences of healthcare.

Many said they had not felt listened to, had symptoms dismissed or had lived with pain for years before receiving a diagnosis.

Hosted by Amanda Ducach, CEO, and Morgan Rose, chief science officer, EmaEQ

Healthcare companies have spent the last two years hearing the same advice: get AI into your product. Few have been told what that actually takes.

Most default to the fastest option. Plug in a general-purpose model, wrap it in a chat window, and call the box checked. It looks like progress on a roadmap slide. It rarely holds up once a real patient is on the other end of it.

We’ve spent years building AI specifically for healthcare, and the lesson that keeps repeating itself is simple: accuracy is not the same thing as trust, and trust isn’t something you bolt on after launch. It has to be part of how the system is built from the first line of code, not a feature added once regulators or users start asking questions.

That distinction is the whole reason clinical accuracy gets treated as a checkbox instead of a discipline. A model can sound confident and still be wrong in ways that matter enormously in a health context.

Knowing the difference, and building for it deliberately, is what separates AI that’s genuinely safe for care from AI that’s simply fast to ship.

On July 20th, we’re hosting a live conversation about exactly this: what companies should be paying attention to before they choose an AI to build with, what clinical accuracy really requires, and the pillars we hold every AI system to before it gets anywhere near a patient’s care.

The Healthcare AI Playbook Webinar: July 20th, 1:30-2pm EST, live on LinkedIn.

Register here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7482643171823509504?viewAsMember=true

If your team is building anywhere near healthcare, or evaluating what’s already in your product, this is the conversation we think the industry needs right now.

Women’s health companies raised a record $1.55 billion in disclosed equity in 2025, up 41 per cent year on year, according to W Group’s first Global Women’s Health Investment Report, The Road to the Era of Scale.

The report tracks over 500 funding stories and 164 equity rounds across 15 categories and 30+ countries.

Eighty-five companies raised equity in 2025, the highest single-year count on record. But according to the report, the headline figure isn’t the most significant one.

The bigger shift is in where that capital went and how concentrated it was at the top compared to the year before.

The report also points to a brand new investment category that didn’t exist twelve months ago.

SheMed closed a $50 million Series A this year to build a women-specific GLP-1 and metabolic health platform, the first dedicated raise of its kind.

Alongside the momentum, the report identifies one structural risk that could determine whether 2025’s growth holds: a bottleneck at Series A that’s leaving a number of promising seed-stage companies stuck.

Molly Taylor, head of content at W Group, said: “2025 was the biggest year women’s health has ever had, and the most important finding isn’t the headline number.

“It’s that the money has stopped pooling at the top.

“Capital is reaching more companies, more categories and more countries than ever before. The Era of Scale is real. It’s just not finished, and the Series A gap is where it could stall.

“Closing that gap is the highest-leverage move this ecosystem can make in 2026.”

Read the full report: https://wplatform.co/forms/womens-health-equity-funding-trends-report-2026?utm_source=advocacy&utm_medium=ext_email&utm_campaign=2026-q3-health-report-femtech-world