Insight
Recession is looming, but it’s not all bad for femtech start-ups
Although opportunities in women’s health accelerate, investors remain cautious

As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is signalling the unofficial start of recession, digital health funding slows amid investment uncertainty.
The past six months have brought new challenges for both investors and entrepreneurs. With higher-than-expected inflation, global financial conditions are becoming tighter and the world economy is on the brink of facing one of its weakest years since 1970.
The outlook for the global economy has “darkened significantly” in recent months, said IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, predicting a tough 2022, and an “even tougher 2023”.
IMF officials announced that inflation was higher than forecast with prices in the US raising at a 40-year high of 9.1 per cent in June. In Britain inflation has jumped from almost zero during the pandemic to 9.1 per cent and is expected to top 11 per cent by October.
Although modest inflation can be attractive to consumer goods companies, very high inflation rates could make planning and investment decisions harder, analysts say.
Femtech has been a growing area of interest with funding reaching US$2.5bn in December 2021. However, experts believe that investment in the buzzy sector will slow down.
“Femtech is still a very immature market in many ways,” says Becky Warnes, business consultant and NHS advisor. “Getting tech into health systems is going to be very difficult for all start-ups, but particularly for those in femtech.”
According to data from the venture fund, Rock Health, digital health start-ups banked over US$29.1bn in 2021, but femtech companies enjoyed three per cent of the funding.
“Women’s health is a very specific investment vertical,” says Priya Oberoi, angel investor and founding general partner at Goddess Gaia Ventures. “However, women are starting to realise the need for differentiated health care and the demand is going up.
“We are in an era where entrepreneurship has been slightly glamorised and for that reason alone, more start-ups and entrepreneurs will emerge. The process will remain the same. What is going to change is the speed of the investment.”
Indeed digital health funding fell in the first half of 2022, according Rock Health, suggesting that a drop in funding could be caused by start-ups looking to trim costs and reduce positions.
The report has shown that investment fell significantly in the first quarter of 2022, with digital health start-ups raising US$6bn compared with US$7.3bn in the fourth quarter of 2021.
The funding slowdown means the environment is shifting and start-ups need to learn how to navigate the new economic landscape and adapt to competition.
“Investors will be willing to invest where there’s historical return on their investment and where there is going to be a real profit,” says Warnes.
“Femtech has certainly many values-driven driven businesses, but I think when it comes to putting money on the table, investors will look for start-ups with valid solutions to valid problems.”
For Tess Cosad, former research analyst and founder of the London-based femtech start-up, Bea Fertility, the economic consequences of the pandemic are complex.
“At the seed stage, we are all having to figure out how to contend with smaller rounds, lower valuations and longer runway.
“Any business that was going to take longer to get to profitability is now going to struggle to raise more capital. There is definitely potential for some incredible companies to come out of this and I’d love to see more investors ‘taking a risk’ and backing more women’s health companies.”
Oberoi advises entrepreneurs to start talking to investors earlier on.
“Make sure your pitch deck is very clear and that your lexicon illustrates what you are trying to solve with much more clarity. Find out what’s the economics of solving those problems and use those statistics to build a global picture.
“Start-ups are doing a brilliant job. Now they need to adapt and think more carefully about their numbers, their unit economics and ultimately, about what they are trying to achieve.”
News
Condé Nast to close women’s health magazine after 47 years

Condé Nast will close its women’s health publication Self after 47 years, with unprofitable editions of Glamour and Wired also set to shut.
In a memo published on the magazine giant’s website on Thursday, the media company’s chief executive, Roger Lynch, said: “As audience behaviours shift, we have not seen a path for Self to continue in its current form as a digital publication.”
“Going forward, health and wellness content will be integrated into our other brands, including Allure and Glamour,” Lynch said, referring to Condé Nast’s other beauty and wellness titles.
Self, which moved to an online-only format in 2017, still reaches more than 20m people each month.
The publication has also earned significant recognition over the years, including a National Magazine award and a Webby’s People’s Voice award.
The closure is part of a wider set of operational changes across the company. Lynch also announced the end of Wired’s Italy edition, noting that while the brand “remains a strong global brand, the Italian edition has not kept pace with growth in our other markets”.
Condé Nast will also wind down Glamour’s publishing operations in Germany, Spain and Mexico.
Lynch said: “Taken together, Wired in Italy, Self and the affected Glamour markets represent a little over 1 per cent of our overall revenue.
“They also remain unprofitable, and continuing to operate them in their current form limits our ability to invest in the ideas and areas that will drive future growth.”
Beyond editorial changes, the company is also restructuring internally to adapt to technological shifts.
Lynch said Condé Nast would make “changes within our technology organisation, reflecting the rapid advancement of AI and its impact on our ability to innovate and build products faster”, adding: “Teams will be restructured to be more agile and to work more closely with our brands and customers, reducing barriers to execution.”
The latest moves follow a series of transformations at Condé Nast in recent years.
Glamour ended its print edition in 2018, followed by Allure moving to a digital-only format in 2022.
In 2024, music publication Pitchfork was folded into GQ, the company’s men’s style magazine.
More recently, last November, Vogue, one of Condé Nast’s key revenue drivers, announced it would absorb Teen Vogue to create a more “unified reader experience across titles”.
The media industry has been shrinking steadily over the years.
From 2010 to 2017, the industry lost an average of 7,305 jobs annually, according to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas published in December 2025.
Since 2018, the average number of job cuts in the industry has risen to 14,298 a year.
Insight
GSK ovarian and womb cancer drug shows promise in early trial

GSK said its ovarian cancer drug shrank or cleared tumours in more than 60 per cent of patients in an early trial as CCO Luke Miels pushes faster development.
The company said that in an early-stage trial, Mocertatug Rezetecan, known as Mo-Rez, shrank or eliminated tumours in 62 per cent of patients with ovarian cancer after chemotherapy had failed, and in 67 per cent of those with endometrial cancer.
Hesham Abdullah, GSK’s global head of cancer research and development, said: “Treatment of gynaecological cancers remains a major challenge, with a pressing need for new therapies that offer improved response rates.
“With Mo-Rez we now have compelling evidence of a promising clinical profile.”
GSK acquired the Mo-Rez treatment, an antibody-drug conjugate, from China’s Hansoh Pharma in late 2023 and has trialled it in 224 patients around the world, including the UK, over the past year.
Only a few patients needed to stop treatment because of side effects, the most common being nausea.
It is given every three weeks by intravenous infusion, meaning directly into a vein.
Combined with data from a separate intermediate trial in China, the results have given the British drugmaker the confidence to go straight to late-stage trials, with five clinical studies planned globally in the next few months, including on patients in the UK.
Speaking to journalists before the conference, Abdullah described Mo-Rez as a “key asset” in the company’s growing cancer portfolio.
It is expected to be a blockbuster drug, with peak annual sales of more than £2bn, which GSK hopes will help it achieve its 2031 sales target of £40bn.
A few years ago GSK did not have any cancer drugs on the market, but it now has four approved medicines and 13 in clinical development.
Last year, oncology generated nearly £2bn in sales, up 43 per cent from 2024, with sales of its endometrial cancer drug Jemperli rising 89 per cent.
News
Self-employment linked to better cardiovascular health outcomes in Hispanic women

Self-employment is linked to lower rates of high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, poor health and binge drinking in Hispanic women, research suggests.
The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Ethnicity & Disease, suggest work structure may be related to cardiovascular disease risk among this group.
Dr Kimberly Narain is assistant professor of medicine in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, senior author of the study, and director of health services and health optimisation research for the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center.
She said: “Hispanic women experience a disproportionate burden of heart disease compared to non-Hispanic women. This is the first study to link the structure of work with risks for heart disease among this group of women.”
The researchers examined 2003 to 2022 data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to assess the association between self-employment, cardiovascular disease risk factors and health outcomes for Hispanic women.
The data included 165,600 Hispanic working women. Of those, about 21,000, or 13 per cent, were self-employed rather than working for wages or a salary.
Overall, the researchers found that self-employed women were less likely to report cardiovascular-disease-associated health problems.
They were also about 11 per cent more likely to report exercising compared with their non-self-employed counterparts.
Specifically, they found that self-employed Hispanic women had a 1.7 percentage point lower chance of reporting diabetes, roughly a 23 per cent decline.
They also had a 3.3 percentage point lower chance of reporting hypertension, roughly a 17 per cent decline.
The study also found a 5.9 percentage point lower chance of reporting obesity, roughly a 15 per cent decline.
It found a 2.0 percentage point lower chance of reporting binge drinking, roughly a 2 per cent decline.
It also found a 2.5 percentage point lower chance of reporting poor or fair overall health, roughly a 13 per cent decline.
The relationship between heart disease risks and the structure of work among Hispanic women was not driven by access to healthcare or differences in income, Narain said.
In fact, the decrease in high blood pressure linked to self-employment was nearly as large as the decrease in high blood pressure linked to being in the highest income group.
The study has some limitations.
The researchers relied on self-reported outcomes, which might be less reliable among ethnic and racial minorities and those from a lower socioeconomic background.
In addition, the researchers’ definition of poor mental health does not entirely match the accepted definition in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
They also did not have data allowing them to examine the specific types of occupations held by the women.
The study design also cannot prove any causal relationship between self-employment and cardiovascular disease risk, which is a subject the researchers will explore.
“The next step in the research is to conduct studies that are able to better assess if the structure of work is a cause of higher heart disease risks among Hispanic women.”
Narain said this.
Study co-authors are Lisette Collins, who led the research, and Dr Frederick Ferguson of UCLA.
Grants from the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center-Leichtman-Levine-TEM program and the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program supported the research.
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