How femtech is closing the gender gap in healthcare and research

By Dr Amina Hersi, GP and Founder of Polybiotics

For too long, women’s health has been treated as an afterthought.

Funding remains limited, particularly when our conditions are framed solely as reproductive.

 

Ask any woman living with PCOS, endometriosis or adenomyosis if their experience begins and ends with fertility.

They will tell you about the chronic pain, mood swings, fatigue and the years spent navigating an often dismissive system that affects their work, education and relationships as much as their physical health.

Research into these conditions often relies on male-centred data or models that do not reflect female physiology.

This means the so-called “evidence base” guiding care for millions of women is often incomplete or misleading.

A new era of data and discovery

This is where femtech has the power to transform everything.

By making data more accessible, analysable and applicable, femtech tools can highlight trends and patterns that traditional research has long overlooked.

A recent study by Flo Health found that the psychological symptoms of menopause, such as anxiety, low mood and irritability, often appear years before the more stereotypical hot flushes.

This insight, derived from real-world user data, challenges long-held assumptions and shows how technology can uncover what clinical research has missed.

Women are also more likely than men to engage with and consistently use digital health tools, particularly apps related to tracking cycles, fertility, mood and wellbeing.

This creates a large, engaged data source.

Now, with plug-ins that connect to wearables measuring everything from heart-rate variability to sleep quality, the data becomes not only self-reported but also objective.

This integration of lived experience with measurable biometrics takes the science to another level, bridging the gap between personal insight and clinical evidence.

We are entering a new phase of evidence generation.

With femtech, it is possible to run retrospective studies based on real-time, real-life data.

We can map the pathways that lead to diagnosis, identify risk patterns and connect dots that were once invisible.

It is not just data collection; it is data empowerment.

Ethics, equity and representation

This progress comes with responsibility.

The same technology that empowers women can also be used to exploit them if not managed carefully.

Hormones influence mood, cognition and even impulsivity, which means poorly regulated data could one day enable targeted advertising based on a woman’s menstrual phase.

That is a line that must not be crossed.

Femtech can also help bridge the gap for Black, Asian and other ethnic-minority women who have historically been excluded from research.

People will only feel comfortable sharing intimate health data if they see tangible outcomes from it.

Collecting information is not enough; it must lead to meaningful improvements in care and policy.

Diversity must also exist within the companies creating these products.

A product is only as inclusive as the people who build it. Homogeneous teams produce limited solutions.

From the lab to real life

As the founder of a women’s health brand, I have seen first-hand how biased or flawed research can distort understanding.

When researching inositol, the hero ingredient in our supplements, I discovered that many of the “physiological” ratios cited in studies on women were based on samples that included male participants.

This was highlighted in a paper examining the ratio of myo-inositol to D-chiro-inositol in the treatment of PCOS.

Including men in these studies is not a small detail.

It can shift the average ratios used to guide clinical decisions and marketing claims, leading to conclusions that do not accurately reflect female physiology.

It shows how evidence that is meant to guide women’s health can be built on foundations that were never designed for us in the first place.

Beyond bias, there is another uncomfortable truth.

Research fraud is common in the women’s health sphere (5).

Questionable methodologies, undeclared conflicts of interest and even fabricated data have all contributed to shaky conclusions that shape clinical practice and public perception.

Femtech can help override this by decentralising evidence collection and validation.

Real-world, large-scale, anonymised datasets gathered through apps and wearables are harder to manipulate and easier to verify.

They offer transparency, traceability and reproducibility, three things that traditional research often lacks.

Femtech places power back into women’s hands.

It makes health tracking and data collection non-invasive, affordable and accessible.

By capturing real-world experiences from diverse populations, it has the potential to create a more complete picture of women’s health that is representative, inclusive and credible.

A future built on real women’s data

We are only scratching the surface of what femtech can achieve.

From improving early diagnosis to personalising treatment pathways, it is redefining how we understand and support women’s health.

More importantly, it gives us the chance to correct historical biases and rebuild the evidence base on women’s terms.

Femtech gives us the tools to rewrite the narrative, close the data gap, diversify research and finally place women’s experiences at the centre of healthcare, combining technology with equity, understanding and lasting change.