Students are still struggling to access free period products in schools despite a government scheme designed to tackle period poverty, new research shows.

A study involving 77 teenagers in schools and colleges across Yorkshire found that while pupils welcomed the scheme, many faced barriers such as products being locked away, stored far from classrooms, or unsuitable for their menstrual flow.

The research was led by Dr Maria Tomlinson, a lecturer in public communication and gender from the School of Information, Journalism and Communication, who submitted written evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee alongside period equality organisation Irise International.

Focus groups revealed several challenges, with some pupils saying they struggled to concentrate during exams or experienced leaks because they were not allowed to bring products into exam rooms. Others avoided reusable options because they did not know how to use them.

The government’s free period products scheme is intended to ensure no pupils miss education because they cannot afford menstrual supplies. However, the findings suggest implementation issues are limiting its effectiveness.

Dr Tomlinson’s findings are published in her book The Menstrual Movement in the Media: Reducing Stigma and Tackling Social Inequalities.

She has worked with Irise International since 2020, and her research informed the UK Schools Toilet Policy Toolkit launched in 2024, which provides guidance on how to implement the period product scheme effectively.

Dr Tomlinson said: “Irise and I hope that our evidence will be discussed in parliament and will lead to improvements in menstrual education and access to period products in schools.

“Thanks to KE funding from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Irise, Belszki, and I will be training 10 schools to teach our menstrual education curriculum and implement the UK Schools Toilet Policy Toolkit.

“We have already seen the very positive impact of the curriculum on pupils’ knowledge, confidence, and wellbeing in one school and cannot wait to see its impact on 10 more schools.”

The evidence submitted to parliament included several proposed solutions.

One was a primary school menstrual health curriculum developed by feminist theatre performer Belszki, based on Dr Tomlinson’s findings. It allows pupils to learn about reusable products and test their absorbency using water.

Previous research by Dr Tomlinson titled Faith-Informed Menstrual Health Education was also cited.

It found that young women from ethnic minority and faith groups often feel most underserved by menstrual education.

Dr Tomlinson said: “Once we have gathered evidence of the impact of the curriculum and Toilet Toolkit in our ten schools, we will continue our dialogue with the government with the ultimate goal that all girls and young people with periods have access to the menstrual products, knowledge, and support that they need to achieve their potential.”

The Women and Equalities Committee called for evidence earlier this year on the period product scheme, menstrual education and related issues as part of a broader review of menstrual health provision.

By Naomi Magnus, psychotherapist and founder at North London Therapy

Women’s health is closely linked to our biology, hormones, and the way our brains are wired, all of which shape our life experiences.

From the teen years right through to adulthood, hormonal ups and downs can affect mood, thinking, and emotional resilience in ways that are uniquely female.

Oestrogen and progesterone, for instance, don’t just influence fertility – they also play a key role in regulating neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which affect mood and anxiety.

In your twenties, when careers, relationships, and life choices are all coming together, it’s perfectly normal to feel anxious or low at times.

Anxiety disorders can often be connected to women’s hormonal and neurological differences. Recognising this can be really reassuring – anxiety can simply be a reflection of a complex, finely tuned system.

A woman’s menstrual cycle can have a big impact on energy, focus, and mood throughout their life, yet many women aren’t taught to track or anticipate these changes.

Later on, life events like pregnancy, postpartum shifts, and perimenopause bring even bigger hormonal swings, which can trigger mood changes, brain fog, or longer-term mental health challenges.

Schools have a crucial role to play in helping young women understand their bodies and mental health.

While the current UK national curriculum covers basic reproductive biology and puberty, it often misses the full picture of hormonal cycles, mental health, and the connection between the two.

Comprehensive education should include tracking menstrual cycles, recognising mood and energy patterns, understanding stress and anxiety triggers, and helping young girls to develop healthy coping strategies.

Teaching these skills early on equips girls with self-awareness, confidence, and the tools to manage their physical and emotional wellbeing throughout life.

Menopause is another life stage that brings significant hormonal changes, which can affect mental health.

As oestrogen and progesterone decline, many women notice mood swings, anxiety, low energy, and brain fog.

                          Naomi Magnus

Lifestyle adjustments can help – regular exercise, a balanced diet rich in omega-3s and whole foods, good sleep hygiene, and mindfulness or meditation practices can all support mood and cognitive function.

Therapy, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) or counselling, is effective for managing anxiety or low mood.

For some, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may be recommended by a GP or specialist to stabilise hormones and alleviate both physical and psychological symptoms.

Women – at any age – can help themselves to feel better when hormone changes strike.

I am an advocate for mindfulness, good sleep, gentle exercise, socialising, and tracking your cycle alongside your mood.

Technology is stepping up – there are some amazing apps that make it easier to understand how your mental health and hormones interact.

It’s also worth acknowledging that times are tough globally – economic uncertainty, climate anxiety, and social pressures can all take their toll on our mental health.

While we can’t control everything around us, getting to know our own bodies and how we respond to stress can make a real difference.

By tuning into our cycles, moods, and energy levels, we can better anticipate challenging days and create a sense of calm amidst the chaos.

Understanding that women’s brains and mental health respond differently across life stages is really important.

Women should approach mental health proactively – because thriving isn’t just about surviving, it’s about knowing your mind and body inside out.

By Wolfgang Hackl M.D., Founder & CEO, OncoGenomX Inc., Switzerland

During my career as an oncologist and cancer drug developer, one question haunted me more than any other: Why do some patients respond to therapy — while others, with the same diagnosis, do not?

We have innovative treatments, biomarkers, advanced lab tests, and guidelines. But far too often, despite all that science, our treatment decisions come down to educated guesswork.

As medicine evolves, so do our data — but not always our ability to act on it with precision.

That enduring gap between what we know and what we can predict inspired me to found OncoGenomX, and to build PredictionStar™, a platform designed to redefine what precision oncology truly means.

From Biomarkers to Behavior: The Missing Link

Today, most molecular cancer tests focus on eligibility: they tell us whether a tumour expresses a particular target or carries a known mutation. This is useful, but it’s only half the story.

Eligibility does not equal efficacy.

Knowing that a patient’s tumour expresses the estrogen receptor (ER), or harbours a PIK3CA mutation, doesn’t mean it will respond to hormone therapy or PI3K inhibition. It simply means those drugs might work. And in oncology, “might” is not enough.

PredictionStar™ was built to close this precision gap — by answering not just which drugs can be used, but which will actually work.

We call this Precision Drug–Tumor Matching: the ability to segregate effective from ineffective treatments by connecting genomic and phenotypic insights into a coherent tumour profile predictive of therapeutic response.

Introducing PredictionStar™: Coherent Biomarker Intelligence

PredictionStar™ is a multidimensional tumour profiling and decision-support system powered by what we term Generative Clinical Intelligence™ — the synthesis of high-quality sequencing data and AI-driven interpretation into clear, actionable clinical guidance.

Traditional assays analyse biomarkers in isolation, treating each gene mutation or expression pattern as a separate clue.

PredictionStar™ instead identifies logically connected biomarker constellations — genomic enablers that reveal which response mechanisms are active, and phenotypic differentiators how likely the tumour will respond.

This networked approach replaces fragmented snapshots with an integrated, functional map of tumour behaviour.

It provides oncologists with something they rarely get from today’s tests: confidence. In clinical modelling, PredictionStar™ has the potential to reduce overtreatment fivefold and lower the cost of achieving one year of tumour growth control by 35 per cent.

But the numbers tell only part of the story. Behind them are patients spared from unnecessary toxicity — and doctors empowered to treat with precision instead of probability.

Built on the Technology of Giants

PredictionStar™ was designed for seamless integration into modern real-world workflows, harmonized and cross-validated to ensure reliability, and reproducibility.

The platform’s pre-sequencing tumor workup is fully standardised, minimizing inter-laboratory variability that can otherwise reach 70 per cent.

From tumour processing to data interpretation, PredictionStar™ enforces the same rigorous quality in every step, producing consistent and concordant results across labs.

As far as cloud architecture optimized for medical data privacy and global scalability we are privileged to work with world class-players of the health IOT industry
(F. Gaede, Oct 2025, Nordcloud).

A Femtech Focus: Personalising Breast Cancer Therapy

While PredictionStar™ has broad oncology applications, our first focus is hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, the most prevalent form among women.

It is here that the limits of current diagnostics are most evident — and the need for predictive and prescriptive clarity is greatest.

Even within hormone-dependent breast cancer, the most favorable form of the disease, patient outcomes vary widely. Some women respond beautifully to endocrine therapy for years, while others progress rapidly.

What makes the difference? The answers are buried in the tumour’s individual response profiles — but until now, we lacked the tools to decode them. PredictionStar™ offers that decoding ability.

Our non-interventional validation study, conducted in collaboration with clinical researchers from the Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and Miami, involves data from over 4,300 patients with hormone receptor-positive disease.

By correlating predicted responses with actual treatment outcomes, we aim to establish a new clinical standard for predictive accuracy.

Our roadmap includes RUO and LDT certification in 2026, FDA-IDE clearance in Q2 2027, first RUO test sales as early as Q1 2027, and clinical study use from Q3 2027 onwards.

Redefining Precision Oncology

To understand why this matters, we need to reframe what “precision” means.

Most tests today are prognostic or eligibility-based. They classify risk or confirm target presence. PredictionStar™ adds a third, transformative dimension: functional prediction. It asks, “Which therapies will this specific tumour respond to — and how strongly?”

This evolution turns diagnostics into a true decision-support tool, enabling oncologists to design treatment compositions optimized for efficacy, rather than constrained by averages.

The distinction may seem subtle, but its impact for individuals living with breast cancer is enormous: Prognostic and eligibility tests describe. PredictionStar™ guides.

Innovation Through Unity

Our strength lies in collaboration.

I’ve often said that OncoGenomX stands “on the technology of giants, powered by the ambition to transform.” That is more than a slogan — it’s our reality. We built PredictionStar™ not as an isolated product, but as a platform for partnership.

Its architecture invites integration — with hospital systems, sequencing providers, AI developers, and pharmaceutical R&D pipelines.

In the coming years, we envision PredictionStar™ evolving into a broader family of tools: PredictionStar DX™ for predictive diagnostics, PredictionStar GCI™ for data integration and generation of actionable clinical intelligence, and PredictionStar IOT™ for real-time connectivity. Each module serves the same purpose: to transform complexity into clarity.

From Data to Decisions: A Personal Reflection

At its heart, PredictionStar™ was born from empathy.

As a clinician, I saw too many patients fall through the cracks — not because we lacked treatments, but because we lacked foresight.

Data without interpretation is noise. Our mission is to turn that noise into understanding.

When I speak with oncologists today, I sense both excitement and relief: “We will no longer be limited to maybes.” “We can begin to quantify response likelihood, combine therapies more rationally, and give patients something we cannot give today: certainty”.

Technology can be transformative, but only when anchored in purpose. For OncoGenomX, that purpose is simple — to give every patient the best possible chance at lasting response.

The Road Ahead

Our journey is just beginning. We are validating, scaling, and expanding across cancer types — from breast to prostate, lung, and beyond.

But our guiding principle remains unchanged: wherever there is cancer, there is a need for precision drug–tumour matching.

The convergence of genomics, phenomics, AI, and clinical data is redefining healthcare.

PredictionStar™ is part of that transformation — proving that predictive precision is not a futuristic concept, but an attainable standard.

We owe it to patients, to clinicians, and to science itself to make that standard universal.

In Closing

When I founded OncoGenomX, I imagined a world where no cancer patient has to live with uncertainty — where treatment is guided by prediction, not probability.

Today, that world feels within reach. PredictionStar™ is more than technology. It’s a promise:

That every patient deserves clarity. That every tumour can be understood.

And that, together, we can end the guesswork in cancer care.

Contact: Dr. Wolfgang Hackl | Founder & CEO, OncoGenomX | E-Mail | LinkedIn WH | Company Webpage | LinkedIn OGX