Insight
2025: The year IVF innovation went from lab to life
By FinDBest IVF
The year 2025 will be remembered as a pivotal moment in reproductive medicine—a year when artificial intelligence moved from proof-of-concept to regulatory approval, when automation transformed from aspiration to clinical reality, and when genomic technologies began delivering on their promise of precision fertility care.
At FinDBest IVF, we’ve tracked these developments week by week through our Monday’s 5 news series, and as the year draws to a close, we’re taking stock of the innovations that defined 2025 and will shape the future of IVF/ART.
This review highlights the year’s most significant advancements across six key domains: AI-powered embryo selection, automation & robotics, male infertility solutions, non-invasive diagnostics & precision medicine, regulatory & industry milestones, and emerging research & clinical innovation.
Each represents not just technological progress, but tangible improvements in clinical outcomes, patient experience, and global access to fertility care.
- AI-Powered Embryo Selection: From Algorithms to Approvals
The Regulatory Breakthrough
2025 marked the transition of AI-powered embryo selection from research tool to clinically validated medical device.
The most significant milestone came in October when Alife Health, led by CEO Melissa Terán alongside Paxton Maeder-York and Dr. Emre Seli, received CE Mark approval under the EU Medical Device Regulation (MDR) for its Embryo Predict™ system.
This represented the first time an AI-based embryo selection platform achieved the stringent requirements of post-2021 European regulation, setting a new benchmark for transparency, clinical validation, and real-world performance.
The deep learning model, trained on thousands of time-lapse embryo videos, predicts implantation potential with precision that potentially reduces time to pregnancy and minimises failed transfers.
Federated Learning: Privacy Meets Performance
A groundbreaking study published in Nature Communications Medicine introduced federated task-adaptive learning for personalized embryo selection.
Led by Prof. Guangyu Wang, this approach allows AI models to learn across multiple IVF centers without centralising patient data—addressing one of the field’s most critical challenges: privacy-preserving collaboration.
The technology keeps data at individual clinics while building superior prediction models, achieving better live-birth prediction compared to centralised approaches while maintaining built-in data protection.
Metabolic Imaging: The Next Frontier
While morphology-based AI dominated headlines, Lumiris Technologies’ Metaphor™ system introduced a paradigm shift: using AI-driven hyperspectral imaging to assess embryo metabolic stress.
Unlike traditional time-lapse systems that evaluate visual development, Metaphor analyzes the metabolic “fingerprint” of embryos through hyperspectral microscopy combined with AI, offering insights into cellular health that are invisible to the human eye.
This metabolic stress assessment potentially identifies embryos with better implantation potential beyond what visual assessment can detect.
- Automation & Robotics: The Smart Lab Revolution
World’s First Robot-Born Babies
August 2025 brought a watershed moment: the birth of the world’s first babies conceived through AI-powered, robot-controlled IVF.
Columbia University Fertility Center, working with Conceivable Life Sciences under the leadership of Dr Zev Williams, CEO Alan Murray, and Chief Knowledge Officer Dr Stephanie Kuku, successfully delivered 19 healthy infants using an autonomous system that handled sperm selection, fertilization, and embryo culture with minimal human intervention.
The AI-driven robotic platform manages the full IVF workflow from sperm analysis to embryo culture, demonstrating that automated reproductive medicine can deliver clinical outcomes that match or exceed traditional approaches.
The 19 healthy live births validate that automation reduces variability, increases efficiency, and potentially democratizes access to expert-level IVF care.
Overture Life: Automation Reaches Critical Mass
Overture Life, founded by Martin Varsavsky and led by CEO Hans Gangeskar with scientific direction from Santiago Munné and contributions from Dr José A. Horcajadas, emerged as 2025’s automation leader.
The company’s DaVitri platform—the world’s first microfluidics-based automated vitrification system—launched European preorder waitlist in September and opened a Dallas clinical lab and robotics HQ in October.
DaVitri standardizes vitrification protocols for embryos and oocytes, reducing operator dependency and improving reproducibility across IVF labs.
Beyond DaVitri, Overture Life continues developing an integrated suite including automated sperm selection and ICSI modules toward a fully integrated smart lab.
AutoIVF Secures Major Investment
Vitrolife’s investment in AutoIVF signaled mainstream industry validation of automation technologies, positioning the Swedish giant to integrate automated solutions across its global distribution network.
The investment accelerates commercialization of AutoIVF’s automation platform, which enhances consistency and affordability while reducing outcome variability—making IVF more cost-accessible without sacrificing quality.
- Male Infertility: AI, Robotics & Precision Selection
AI Rescues 18-Year Infertility Journey
One of 2025’s most compelling stories came from Columbia University, where Dr Zev Williams and his team used the STAR system (Sperm Tracking and Recovery) to help a couple achieve pregnancy after 18 years of trying.
The AI identified 44 viable sperm in under 2 hours from an azoospermic sample—sperm that conventional methods had missed.
This technology transforms outcomes for severe male factor infertility by detecting sperm conventional analysis overlooks, developed over five years to address one of fertility’s most challenging clinical scenarios.
T’easy: AI Meets Testicular Biopsy
UZ Brussel introduced “T’easy,” an AI-powered system that detects sperm in testicular biopsies within minutes, dramatically reducing the time required for male infertility diagnosis and improving success rates in testicular sperm extraction procedures.
The real-time AI analysis of testicular biopsy samples completes in minutes instead of hours, improving TESE success rates while reducing patient time under anesthesia—a practical efficiency gain that directly benefits patient comfort and clinical workflow.
Research Debunks Antioxidant Myth
A major randomised clinical trial published in JAMA Network delivered important negative findings: antioxidant supplements (Impryl®) showed no benefit for male fertility in IVF cycles.
Led by researchers Wiep de Ligny and Jan-Peter de Bruin, the SUMMER trial found no statistically significant improvement in pregnancy or live birth rates, challenging widespread clinical practice and emphasising the need for evidence-based approaches over routine supplement prescription.
- Non-Invasive Diagnostics & Precision Medicine
First-Ever Footage of Human Embryo Implantation
Scientists achieved a historic first in August 2025: capturing real-time 3D video of a human embryo implanting in the uterus.
Published in The Guardian and detailed in Human Reproduction by Oxford University Press, this groundbreaking imaging revealed the embryo’s active, invasive role in implantation—offering unprecedented insights into one of reproduction’s most critical yet mysterious processes.
The advanced 3D imaging technology captured embryo-endometrial interaction dynamics that may inform new interventions to improve implantation rates.
Optical Genome Mapping for Pregnancy Loss
Optical Genome Mapping (OGM) emerged as a superior alternative to traditional cytogenetic methods for diagnosing chromosomal causes of recurrent pregnancy loss.
Highlighted in Contemporary OB/GYN, this high-resolution genome mapping technology detects structural chromosomal variants faster and with more detail than karyotyping or chromosomal microarray.
OGM outperforms traditional cytogenetics in identifying miscarriage-related genetic abnormalities, accelerating diagnosis in recurrent pregnancy loss cases and enabling earlier targeted interventions.
Spent Culture Media: The Non-Invasive Biomarker
A comprehensive review of 49 studies, published in EMJ Reproductive Health, highlighted spent embryo culture media as a promising source of non-invasive biomarkers for embryo viability.
Metabolomic analysis of culture media—examining glucose, amino acids, fatty acids, and other metabolites—offers embryo assessment without biopsy.
While the review emphasizes the need for unified methodologies to advance clinical application, the approach could reduce reliance on invasive PGT-A while providing complementary embryo viability insights.
- Regulatory & Industry Milestones
Australia Calls for National ART Regulation
A coalition of Australian researchers and legal experts issued a landmark call for national IVF/ART regulatory reform, recommending establishment of an independent commission, harmonised accreditation standards, and unified governance across fertility clinics.
The review, detailed in the Surrogacy & Fertility Bulletin by Sarah Jefford, highlighted system fragmentation as a key barrier to quality and safety.
The proposal reflects a global trend toward strengthened fertility clinic governance, addressing inconsistencies that currently exist across state-level regulation.
Monash IVF Leadership Transition
Monash IVF appointed Dr Victoria Atkinson, currently CMO at Healthscope, as its next MD & CEO effective May 2026.
The appointment reinforces Monash IVF’s commitment to clinical governance and patient-safety-led transformation as the group enters a new operational phase focused on quality outcomes and systematic improvement.
ASRM Framework for Embryo Testing Innovation
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) published a comprehensive framework in Fertility & Sterility outlining a staged pathway for embryo testing technologies from early innovation to validated clinical practice.
The framework emphasises evidence strength, reproducibility, and patient-centered outcomes—providing critical guidance for labs, regulators, and device manufacturers navigating the journey from innovation to clinical deployment.
Global Regulatory Tightening: MDR, FDA, NMPA
FinDBest IVF partnered with Femtech World to publish a comprehensive analysis of global regulatory shifts affecting IVF innovation in 2025.
The review examined how device and diagnostic regulation is tightening across major markets.
In the EU, MDR is in full effect with IVF consumables now classified as Class IIb or III, requiring stricter UDI compliance and post-market surveillance.
The FDA has increased scrutiny of AI/ML-based devices with updated premarket pathways. China’s NMPA now requires UDI cloud integration and cybersecurity risk reports for connected IVF devices.
These changes mean approval timelines have extended 6-12 months with significantly increased documentation requirements, affecting every manufacturer seeking global market access.
Professional Development & Industry Recognition
The ASRM Society of Reproductive Biologists & Technologists (SRBT) launched the Nexpring Health Diarmaid Douglas-Hamilton Memorial Scholarship, honouring a legendary figure in ART and supporting the next generation of embryologists and lab technicians.
The scholarship expands access to advanced reproductive technology education, ensuring continued innovation through professional development of emerging ART leaders.
- Emerging Research & Clinical Innovation
Organoids: Mini Placentas & Ovaries
Dr. Margherita Turco’s pioneering work with lab-grown reproductive tissues—including “mini placentas” and ovarian organoids—is reshaping fertility research.
Featured in Nature, these patient-derived cells grown into 3D placental and ovarian tissue models enable unprecedented study of implantation biology and early ovarian development.
The 3D cellular models allow research into implantation and ovarian biology previously impossible with traditional 2D cultures, potentially revealing new therapeutic targets for implantation failure and ovarian disorders.
Mitochondrial Replacement: Three-Person IVF
Research published in Science Daily reported successful live births using mitochondrial donation techniques (three-person IVF), preventing transmission of mitochondrial disorders.
The technology replaces mother’s mitochondria in eggs with healthy donor mitochondria, offering a reproductive option for women carrying mitochondrial disorders.
Early monitoring showed no adverse effects in infants, though long-term studies continue to track outcomes.
Polygenic Embryo Screening: The Ethical Frontier
Orchid’s embryo screening services gained attention—and ethical scrutiny—for offering polygenic risk score analysis for traits including IQ, heart disease risk, and longevity.
The Washington Post reported that high-profile individuals including Elon Musk are using the technology, raising significant bioethical concerns about embryo selection beyond medical disease prevention.
The multi-gene risk scoring for complex traits extends embryo screening from single-gene disorders to polygenic conditions, sparking urgent questions about trait selection, equity, and societal implications.
Cloud-Based EMR Revolution
eIVF, led by CEO Nimesh Shah, launched CloudFlex, a HIPAA-compliant cloud-based electronic medical record solution that eliminates onsite servers and large upfront investments.
The platform integrates EMR software with infrastructure management into a single hosted solution, reducing capital investment and IT maintenance burden for clinics while ensuring data security—accelerating digital transformation particularly for smaller fertility practices.
Next-Generation FSH Development
Granata Bio and Georgetown Equity Partners announced a joint venture to develop next-generation recombinant follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) formulations.
Led by Ali Hussein, Mark De Ridder, CEO Evan Sussman, Dr. William Schoolcraft, and researcher Dr T. Rajendra Kumar, the initiative aims to improve ovarian stimulation efficiency and affordability across IVF protocols through novel recombinant FSH with improved pharmacokinetics.
Validating AI: Clinical Variables and Morphokinetics
A significant study in Reproductive BioMedicine Online examined how clinical variables affect embryo morphokinetics and AI quality scoring.
The research, led by Jorge Ten and colleagues including M. Carmen Tio, Pedro Pini, Andrea Bernabeu, Rafael Bernabeu, and Klaus Wiemer at Instituto Bernabeu, provides critical insights into factors that influence AI-based embryo assessment systems.
The analysis helps embryologists understand when AI predictions may need clinical context adjustment, informing appropriate use and interpretation of AI embryo selection tools.
Predicting Oocyte Retrieval Outcomes
Research by Julia K Bosdou, Christos A Venetis, Leonidas Zepiridis, Katerina Chatzimeletiou, Grigorios Grimbizis, and Efstratios M Kolibianakis investigated whether minimum oocyte yield could be estimated from follicle diameter on trigger day.
The cohort study, published in Reproductive BioMedicine Online, provides practical insights for clinicians counseling patients on expected outcomes, helping set realistic expectations and optimize trigger timing.
Looking Forward: Implications for 2026
As we move into 2026, several clear trends emerge from 2025’s innovations.
Regulatory maturity means the AI and automation technologies that struggled for regulatory approval in previous years have now successfully navigated MDR, FDA, and other frameworks.
This regulatory maturity will accelerate commercial deployment and clinical integration, making 2026 the year these technologies move from early adopters to mainstream practice.
Automation as standard of care is no longer aspirational.
With 19 healthy robot-IVF babies born and major platforms like Overture Life’s DaVitri reaching commercialisation, automation is transitioning from experimental to standard practice, particularly for high-volume processes like vitrification and sperm selection.
Privacy-preserving AI addresses one of the field’s most significant barriers through federated learning and other privacy-preserving techniques.
These approaches enable multi-center collaboration without centralizing sensitive patient data, solving both technical and regulatory challenges.
Evidence-based medicine remains essential.
Negative findings like the SUMMER trial’s antioxidant results remind us that rigorous clinical trials are critical, even for widely adopted practices. The field continues maturing through careful validation rather than assumption.
Ethical frameworks become urgent as technologies like polygenic screening demand development of ethical guidelines, professional standards, and potentially regulatory guardrails to ensure responsible innovation.
The industry must proactively address these questions rather than reacting to public concern.
Conclusion
2025 will be remembered as the year IVF innovation achieved critical mass—when AI earned regulatory approval, when robots assisted in live births, when non-invasive diagnostics began replacing invasive procedures, and when automation moved from aspiration to commercial reality.
But perhaps most importantly, 2025 demonstrated that technological innovation alone is insufficient.
Success requires regulatory navigation, clinical validation, ethical frameworks, and—crucially—the distribution partnerships that transform laboratory breakthroughs into global patient access.
At FinDBest IVF, we’re proud to have chronicled these innovations through our Monday’s 5 series throughout 2025, and we’re committed to connecting the innovators shaping reproductive medicine with the global network that will bring their solutions to the patients who need them.
The future of family building is being written today. Join us in making it accessible to all.
About FinDBest IVF
FinDBest IVF is the leading B2B marketplace connecting IVF medical device manufacturers with vetted distributors and market expansion service providers worldwide.
Our platform serves manufacturers, distributors, and fertility clinics across 150+ countries, facilitating partnerships that accelerate innovation and improve patient outcomes globally.
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Peers have called for law reform after two House of Lords debates on fertility treatment, surrogacy, embryo research and declining birthrates.
The first debate was put forward by crossbench peer Baroness Ruth Deech, who previously chaired the UK’s fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
She discussed proposals from the HFEA to reform the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, along with proposals from the Scottish Law Commission and the Law Commission of England and Wales to reform the Surrogacy Arrangements Act.
She called for parliamentary scrutiny of possible changes to regulatory powers, consent rules, donor information and future scientific developments.
Baroness Deech said: “Parliament should plan by setting up a Select Committee to examine the HFEA’s proposals to expand regulatory powers, simplify consent rules, modernise donor information provisions and create a flexible framework for future scientific developments.”
Former fertility professionals were among those contributing to the debate.
Professor Lord Robert Winston, a Labour peer who founded the IVF service at Hammersmith Hospital in London, said: “Infertility is not a disease; it is actually a symptom of something wrong.”
Professor Baroness Geeta Nargund, a Labour peer, current HFEA member and former medical director of CREATE Fertility, disagreed.
She said: “Infertility is a disease, as stated by the World Health Organisation.”
Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Caroline Pidgeon highlighted regional differences in access to NHS-funded fertility treatment.
She cited figures from the Progress Educational Trust’s NHS Fertility Funding Tracker showing that only two of England’s 42 integrated care boards comply with the recently updated fertility guideline published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
Integrated care boards are local NHS organisations responsible for planning and funding healthcare services in their areas.
Baroness Pidgeon said many boards were offering only a partial IVF cycle rather than a full cycle as defined by NICE.
A full IVF cycle generally includes ovarian stimulation, egg collection and the transfer of all suitable fresh and frozen embryos created during treatment.
Crossbench peer Professor Baroness Clare Gerada, a former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: “The proportion of NHS-funded IVF cycles has fallen to just under 30 per cent, the lowest level since 2008.”
She added that, in relation to IVF, “the NHS system has collapsed”.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Monroe Palmer said it was “very ironic that it is difficult for many patients to access publicly funded fertility treatment in the very country where IVF was originally pioneered”.
Conservative peer Edward Howard, Earl of Effingham, also raised concerns about the NICE fertility guideline.
He said: “Access remains highly variable across England, because ICBs are not required to implement that guidance.”
He described the situation as “a clear gap between guidance and enforceable entitlement”.
Baroness Deech called for “automatic record sharing between clinics and the NHS central records system”.
Baroness Nargund supported this and linked the ambition to the Single Patient Record in the government’s Ten-Year Health Plan for England and the Health Bill currently before Parliament.
Baroness Pidgeon said such ambitions were at odds with the exceptional degree of medical secrecy that currently applies to IVF.
She also pointed to “a clear desire for the HFEA to be able to permit patients to give generic consent for the use of their embryos in research”.
Patients cannot currently give broad consent for unspecified future research involving their embryos.
Responding for the government, Labour peer Baroness Judith Blake said “immediate legislative reform” was not possible because “the legislative programme for this Parliamentary session is very full”.
Baroness Deech replied: “It might well take some years, but the Government really needs to set up that Select Committee and do the legislative scrutiny right now.”
A second debate on related issues followed immediately afterwards.
Baroness Nargund asked the government “what assessment they have made of the UK’s declining birthrates in an ageing population”.
She also said: “We still have a postcode lottery for IVF provision, with nearly 70 per cent of ICBs funding only one cycle of treatment.”
Responding for the government, Labour peer Lord Philip Wilson said: “The Government are committed to improving fair and equitable access to fertility services, recognising the significant emotional and health impacts of infertility.”
By the Health Innovation Exchange
For more than a decade, femtech’s scale gap has been treated as a funding problem. What if that diagnosis is incomplete?
Despite growing attention, women founders still receive just 2 per cent of global venture funding, and years of advocacy have failed to shift the needle.
This persistence is no longer just a concern; it signals a deeper structural failure.
This is not just a funding gap. It is a system failure.
As Pradeep Kakkitill, founder and CEO of the Health Innovation Exchange (HIEx), argues, the sector continues to operate on a flawed assumption.
The belief that better support to founders alone will unlock scale overlooks the deeper structural constraints that determine whether the innovation is adopted at all.
Barriers That Go Beyond Capital
These insights are not theoretical. Global research reinforces that these challenges are not isolated, highlighting structural, financial and systemic barriers that shape how women-led and under-represented ventures access funding, markets and pathways to scale.
Importantly, these findings are not draw from research alone, but from the lived experiences of women and under-represented founders themselves.
Across HIEx-led interviews and focus group discussions conducted as part of the Reckitt Catalyst Programme, founders repeatedly described the same challenges: fragmented financing, unclear adoption pathways, repeated cycles of proof, and systems that lacked clear routes from validation to procurement and scale.
These experiences suggest that the barriers facing women-led innovation are not simply financial. They are structural.
Many high-potential ventures are not failing because funding is absent.
They are failing because the systems that determine scale, including public procurement, regulation and financing, are not built to move proven solutions beyond pilots into widespread adoption.
This is not a founder problem. It is a system design failure.
Beneath these structural constraints sits a more persistent challenge. Entrenched attitudes shaped by unconscious bias continue to influence decision making.
Across investment and public-sector systems, innovation led by women and underrepresented founders is still frequently perceived as higher risk.
These perceptions shape how opportunities are evaluated, increase the burden of proof placed on founders, and slow decision making. In practice, this results in systematically higher barriers to both funding and adoption.
Systems Unable to Absorb Innovation
Dr. Abas Hassen, lead executive officer for health innovation and quality at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health, underscores this point.
The primary constraints are not about innovation quality, but about the systems that determine adoption and scale, including procurement, regulation, financing and delivery.
He identifies three persistent challenges: institutional resistance to change, “pilot purgatory” where solutions are repeatedly tested but not integrated into public systems, and a disconnect between what external funders support and what governments can sustain.
Ethiopia’s response reflects a broader shift. Innovation is no longer treated as isolated pilots, but as a structured component of system design.
The country’s system-led innovation model combines regulatory pathways, prioritisation frameworks and structured testing environments to embed innovation directly within the health system.
The implication is clear.
Scaling innovation is not only about accelerating individual ventures alone. It is about strengthening the systems that determine whether innovation is adopted at scale.
The Missing Middle: From Pilot to Procurement
In many low- and middle-income countries, public systems remain the largest market for health and WASH solutions, accounting for the majority of service delivery and procurement.
Yet capital is deployed through models that do not reflect this reality, as scaling depends on public-sector adoption, long procurement cycles and regulatory integration rather than rapid returns.
This creates a misalignment within the financial ecosystem, where capital is structured for faster high returns, while impact depends on long-term system integration.
At its core, the challenge is the absence of clear adoption pathways.
Without structured routes from validation to procurement and system-wide use, even effective solutions struggle to move beyond pilots.
This is the “missing middle”, the gap between early validation and large-scale adoption.
The consequences of this “missing middle” are perhaps best illustrated by the founders trying to navigate it.
Temie Giwa-Tubosun, founder and CEO of LifeBank, describes her decade-old company as an “orphan” within existing financial structures, too commercial for impact investors and too impact driven for venture capital.
Businesses operating within health systems often fall between funding models that were not designed for them.
Thato Schermer, co-founder of Zoie Health, describes a similar challenge.
Even companies with strong revenue and clear demand struggle to secure funding at the right stage, as they are assessed through frameworks that do not reflect the healthcare markets.
Across interviews and focus group discussions, these patterns were consistent.
Founders described fragmented financing, unclear adoption pathways, and repeated cycles of proof, where they are asked to keep proving their solutions without a clear route to scale.
These are not isolated challenges. They reflect how innovation is funded, evaluated and integrated across the system.
The barrier to scale is not a lack of viable solutions. It is about the systems and models that are not designed to support them.
Reducing Risk Through System Design
From an HIEx perspective, a different approach is emerging, one that focuses not on fixing founders, but on designing how systems manage risk and adopt innovation.
Rather than avoiding risk, Ethiopia is working to manage it through structured processes.
The system is “risk-aware, not risk-averse.” It uses innovation sandboxes, structured testing environments within public systems that allow new solutions to be evaluated under controlled conditions.
These mechanisms, generate decision-grade evidence while limiting system-wide exposure, creating clearer pathways from validation to adoption.
When innovations are tested within public systems, they gain institutional legitimacy. This reduces perceived risk for both governments and investors and enables more confident decision making.
From Fragmentation to Coordination
Within this context, initiatives such as Reckitt Catalyst, a multi-partner platform supporting women-led health and WASH innovation to scale, play a critical bridging role.
By connecting entrepreneurs with governments, investors and technical partners, and aligning solutions with national priorities, the programme helps to create clearer pathways from pilot to procurement and scale.
But alignment alone is not enough.
As Pradeep Kakkattil notes, the climate movement offers a useful parallel. Climate progress was not driven by evidence alone. It accelerated when investors, governments, and institutions began treating inaction as the greater risk.
Sustained pressure exposed the cost of doing nothing, redefined how risk was assessed and ultimately reshaped capital allocation and policy decisions.
Women’s health and WASH innovation is now at a similar inflection point.
Despite years of evidence and advocacy, outcomes such as women receiving a fraction of global funding persist.
This is not due to a lack of solutions. It is because the systems governing investment, adoption and scale have not been sufficiently challenged.
What is required is not incremental progress.
It is a shift in what the system tolerates – how risk is defined, how capital is allocated, and how accountability is enforced.
A System at an Inflection Point
The implications are clear.
Investors must move beyond rigid funding models and deploy capital aligned to how health systems scale. Governments must build clearer pathways for testing, procurement and adoption.
Ecosystem actors must shift from supporting individual ventures, to enabling system-level integration.
The persistent funding gap is not a result of slow progress; it reflects a system operating exactly as designed. Incremental change will not shift outcomes.
What is required is a fundamental reset of how femtech is financed and scaled: from passive investment to active market-shaping, where capital, policy, and procurement work together to create real pathways to adoption.
Until that shift happens, the sector will continue to produce innovation that the market is not structured to absorb.
British women are among the angriest in Europe, a global health survey has revealed.
More than 20 per cent of women in Britain said they had experienced feelings of rage for much of the previous day.
British women were also 47 per cent more likely to say they felt angry than a year earlier.
The findings were published in the Hologic Global Women’s Health Index, a yearly league table based on polling of more than 76,000 women and girls aged over 15 worldwide.
Anna O’Sullivan, co-founder of women’s health awareness group CensHERship and founder of the FutureFemHealth news platform, told the Daily Mail: “These figures reflect years of long waiting lists, delayed diagnoses and women’s health being treated as an afterthought.
“We’ve seen a significant increase in awareness and discussion about women’s health over the last few years, but access to care has not kept up with that.
“These findings should be a wake-up call that it’s time for long-term, sustainable investment to ensure women can access timely healthcare, trusted information and earlier diagnosis before conditions become more complex and costly to treat.”
The data suggested anger levels among British women have risen sharply.
Rates across the rest of Europe, however, remained broadly the same.
The survey, which involved more than 140 countries, found three in 10 UK women said they felt sadness, compared with the EU average of 25 per cent.
The data, collected in February 2024 and released this week, also showed that around four in 10 women in both the UK and EU felt worry.
A third of women in the UK reported being in pain, up 10 per cent on the previous year.
Three in 10 women also said they lived with chronic health problems, up seven per cent on the year before.
Chronic health problems are long-term conditions that may need ongoing care or management.
Health experts said women in the UK were increasingly frustrated by the gap between the NHS care they expected and the care they received.
The report took a snapshot of the national mood, with participants asked about the emotions they had experienced “during a lot of the day yesterday”.
The UK placed sixth among 37 European countries for anger.
The highest levels were recorded in Malta, where 26 per cent of women reported feelings of rage, followed by Greece at 25 per cent, the Czech Republic and Albania at 23 per cent, and Spain at 22 per cent.
Ireland ranked at 18 per cent, while Germany, France and Switzerland each reported 17 per cent.
Britain has also slipped in Hologic’s overall global rankings for women’s health.
The UK is now 48th, close to dropping out of the top third of countries worldwide, after ranking 40th out of 142 countries last year.
Taiwan ranked first, followed by Latvia, Japan, Vietnam and Poland. Singapore, Germany and Austria were also among the leading countries.
Tim Simpson, a senior manager at Hologic, said: “Women are telling us they want earlier diagnosis and faster access to care.
“Improving women’s health will take continued commitment from policymakers, the NHS, clinicians and industry working together to deliver the changes women are asking for.”
A separate Hologic survey carried out last month found that almost 70 per cent of women had faced delays seeking NHS care in the past five years.
Two in five said difficulties accessing healthcare had left them feeling frustrated or anxious.
The survey’s findings reinforced official figures showing that Britain has become more anxious since before the pandemic.
The Office for National Statistics said 22.5 per cent of UK adults reported “high anxiety yesterday” between July and September 2024, up from 20.4 per cent in the same period in 2019.
Among women, the figure was 26.3 per cent, compared with 18.5 per cent among men.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “It is unacceptable that the UK continues to lag behind other countries when it comes to women’s health.”
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