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“I have no faith in the system anymore” – answers sought after damning report into women’s health failings
The recent Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) report further highlighted how the UK public healthcare system is failing to meet the needs of women—now they want to see solutions.
For many women, the WEC report published late last year revealed little they didn’t already know.
Women are constantly having their symptoms dismissed by healthcare providers, due to stigma, lack of education and ‘medical misogyny’, the committee found, often leaving them undiagnosed and in unnecessary pain for years.
The report is the latest to highlight how a historical gap in understanding and prioritisation of women’s-health related symptoms, is leaving them without access to appropriate care and treatment.
In November, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) revealed that waiting lists for gynaecology have doubled since 2020, with three quarters of a million now waiting for treatment across the UK.
Almost three years on from the launch of the Women’s Health Strategy, which was set up to address the inequities in women’s healthcare in the NHS, there is a sense that while more awareness is welcome, not enough action is being taken.
“People are now at a point of real frustration,” Gabz Pearson, co-founder of the Menstrual Health Project, a charity which was set up to educate women and girls about their menstrual and reproductive health, tells Femtech World.
“This isn’t new information, it’s something that people in the community have been advocating and campaigning for, for a long time. We’re now almost three years into the Women’s Health Strategy and I don’t see any real improvement.”
Gabz Pearson, co-founder, The Menstrual Health Project
Provide streamlined and seamless services
Pearson says reading the report was like reading her own story. From her symptoms starting at the age of 10, it took almost a decade for her to finally be diagnosed with endometriosis and adenomyosis.
To date she has had five surgeries, the last two of which she paid for privately, and the widespread pain she experiences has left her with mobility issues. At 32, she is planning to undergo a private hysterectomy next year.
“I’m still struggling in the healthcare system,” she says. “I have no faith in the NHS anymore…If anything, it’s just getting worse.”
Pearson is currently under the care of four different hospital trusts, the furthest of which is a two hour drive away. Some of the biggest frustrations for patients, she says, stem from the disparate pathways and lack of communication between services, particularly those operating under different care boards.
“It creates so much disparity and confusion for people,” she says. “We need to have continuity across the UK when it comes to pathways and treatment.”
While the women’s health hub model has the potential to be a ‘positive step towards providing the joined-up care and commissioning’, the WEC report raises concerns that it exists within a healthcare system which has ‘significant commissioning, funding, workforce and expertise problems, particularly in the area of reproductive health’.
Improve access to digital information
In 2023, Pearson attended A&E and was forced to wait six hours to see a general doctor, who told her “everything seemed fine”. Despite her diagnosis and insistence that she needed to be referred to a gynaecology specialist, staff weren’t able to access her medical records and refused to triage her to gynaecology. Two months later, a laparoscopy revealed that her bowel and ovary had fused to her pelvis, with adhesions detected from her hip to her ribs.
“Many women don’t want to go to A&E, they would rather suffer at home,” she says.
“There should be a more seamless system. It should be easier for patients and healthcare professionals to access your information digitally. In Wales patients don’t even have access to the NHS app.”
As well as improving training and education among health professionals, the WEC is calling for the NHS to improve its ‘digital and social media presence’ in relation to reproductive health conditions. It must ensure the NHS website and app are ‘comprehensive, accessible, inclusive, and highly-visible’ to ensure it is a ‘first-port-of-call to prevent misinformation’.
This was already addressed in the Women’s Health Strategy for England, which states that the NHS will transform its website into a “world-class, first port of call for women’s health information” by updating content, adding new content and including third-party content to create a “trusted and comprehensive guide to women’s health”.
Yet many women, the WEC highlights, continue to turn to online spaces and a ‘proliferation of femtech apps’ to self-diagnose and fill the gaps in their knowledge currently left by public health providers.
Explore collaborations and partnerships
Charities, such as the Menstrual Health Project, have also stepped in to provide the information and resources not currently delivered through the NHS. But these organisations continually face barriers such as access to public funding and a hesitance within the NHS to pursue partnerships and collaborations.
“A big reason why we charities and organisations exist is because the government and the NHS aren’t doing enough in a proactive way, especially when it comes to women’s health,” says Pearson.
“We created our menstrual health toolkits because it was really hard to find all the information in one space. The NHS should be working with organisations, co-production is the way forward. There are so many amazing startups and companies that are really trying to innovate and push the boundaries. It feels like the NHS doesn’t want to approve these resources, but they also aren’t willing to do anything themselves.”
Last month, Dr Sue Mann, NHS England’s first national clinical director for women’s health, told the WEC that the public sector must “keep pace” with innovation and “understand the [femtech] space better” to help people navigate it in a way which is helpful for their health.
The committee has also recommended the inclusion of an ‘interactive tool’ on the NHS website which can help women determine whether they might have a reproductive health condition.
Respondents to the Women’s Health Strategy for England’s call for evidence suggested a need for further research into digital technologies that help women understand their bodies better and to consider how the femtech sector could collaborate with the NHS. Meanwhile earlier this year, the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Healthcare issued a funding call for proposals from femtech companies.
However there remains concerns in the public health system that the femtech sector ‘may present a risk to women, especially in areas of data protection’.
Build a strong evidence base for innovative solutions
Dr Michael Watts, co-founder of Blum Health is an NHS clinician who now supports public and private sector organisations to bring innovative technologies to the NHS and international healthcare. Blum Health is now the software manufacturer for several NHS trusts across the UK, supporting them to build new technologies within the public sector ecosystem.
He says for companies looking to target this market, it is crucial to build a strong evidence base.
“Companies often overlook this,” he tells Femtech World. “They just look at the big, shiny end-solution, but they haven’t got a foundational evidence base to structure a fundamental solution roadmap.
“There’s two problems you have to tackle as a tech company; the clinical problem that you’re trying to solve and the patient experience (regardless of whether they are a direct user or indirect beneficiary). You have to demonstrate that it’s as safe as the current state-of-the-art, that it provides the same level of clinical care without compromising safety, and an equally, if not, better experience for the patient.
“If you can reduce resources, without compromising safety, and with a better patient experience, you’re much more likely to succeed as an innovation.”
He continues: “Someone’s only going to use something if it’s less painful than the pain of staying the same. For example, an eLeaflet mobile app has to be easier than having to trawl public health websites to learn about (for example) endometriosis. It has to be a better user experience, it has to be faster (by delivering information in a more digestible way) and more easily accessible (for example, delivered in the patients first language), and it has to deliver clinical grade information in a meaningful way, based on that patient’s age and demographic.”
Invest in people, as well as tech
Watts believes tech can play an important role in helping improve the support and information available to patients, and that the NHS could better utilise tools for telemedicine consultations, digital screening, self-referrals and access to content. But he’s wary of relying too heavily on certain technologies, especially for those seeking an initial diagnosis.
“It comes down to what information that solution has been built upon, and if that’s a non-representative data set, it could be subject to bias,” he adds.
“Whatever the solution is, at least for now – it will likely require a human in the loop, because you can never remove women’s access to a human clinician.”
Pearson agrees that while she will always welcome a telephone appointment if it means she gets seen quicker, she wants to see more investment in people, as well as technology.
“We need more women’s health nurses within GPs and hospitals. There are so few endometriosis specialists, but there also needs to be women’s health nurses who know about conditions like adenomyosis, PCOS, and fibroids,” she adds.
“There’s not enough resources or incentive for people to go down those specialist routes.”
Congress is being urged to invest US$20bn over 10 years to close the women’s health gap.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Women’s Health Research and the Women First Research Coalition have unveiled the National Strategy to Close the Women’s Health Gap.
The framework calls for a coordinated national effort to improve women’s health research, care and outcomes.
It says women make up more than half of the US population, but their health needs across conditions and life stages have been understudied and underserved for decades.
Kathryn Schubert, president and chief executive of the Society for Women’s Health Research, said: “The women’s health gap has persisted for far too long.
“This strategy offers Congress a road map to improve health outcomes, drive innovation, and build a healthier future for women, families, and communities.”
The strategy notes that Congress required women to be included in National Institutes of Health-funded clinical research through the NIH Revitalization Act in 1993.
However, it says major gaps remain in women’s health research, clinical care and how evidence is put into practice.
The plan proposes US$7bn for research and innovation, including expanded federal investment in women’s health research across the NIH, VA, DoD and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
It would also establish a Women’s Health Research Interdisciplinary Fund at the NIH and create a national network of Women’s Health Centers of Excellence.
The centres would aim to accelerate the translation of research into clinical care and serve as training sites for researchers and clinicians.
A further US$1bn would be used for regulatory coordination and modernisation, including cross-agency collaboration and work to address sex differences in drug and treatment approvals.
Sex differences are biological differences between females and males that can affect disease risk, symptoms, treatment response and side-effects.
The funding would also support updated NIH tracking systems for women’s health research investment and publication standards on how sex as a biological variable is considered in research.
The strategy calls for US$4bn for data and evidence infrastructure, including a public-private partnership focused on women’s midlife health data.
It would also convene a public workshop to review existing women’s health research datasets and develop common data elements to fill gaps and make datasets more widely available.
Another US$7bn would go towards strengthening the clinical and research workforce.
This would include career pathways, loan repayment programmes, a women’s health clinical workforce loan repayment programme modelled on the National Health Service Corps and interdisciplinary training.
The workforce measures would include particular emphasis on rural and underserved areas.
The final US$1bn would support public awareness and education campaigns to improve health literacy, preventive care and participation in women’s health research.
Health literacy means a person’s ability to find, understand and use health information to make decisions about care.
The campaigns would use digital and traditional media developed in consultation with patient advocacy organisations and relevant medical societies.
Sandra E Brooks, chief executive of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said: “Closing the women’s health gap requires not only funding research, but also investment in the people who conduct that research and those who translate research findings and discoveries into better patient care.
“Strengthening the women’s health research and clinical workforce is critical to accelerating the innovation needed to improve health outcomes for women.”
The strategy says women have higher annual out-of-pocket healthcare costs than men and live 25 per cent of their lives in poorer health.
Supporters say this strengthens the economic and public health case for long-term congressional investment.
The framework has been endorsed by organisations across women’s health, ageing, heart disease, autoimmune disease, cancer, reproductive medicine and neurological conditions, including the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement at Cleveland Clinic, the National MS Society and UsAgainstAlzheimer’s.
Stardust shared sensitive period tracking data with third-party analytics firms, according to new privacy research from Mozilla.
The findings expose a privacy divide in femtech, where users often trust apps with highly sensitive reproductive health information.
The research was carried out by Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included team, which tested several period tracking apps.
It found that Stardust, a period tracker used by millions, shared users’ reproductive health data with analytics companies, a practice the research said contrasted with its privacy-first marketing.
Analytics companies collect and examine information about how people use digital products, often to help businesses understand user behaviour or improve marketing.
The findings raise questions about whether privacy promises made by health apps match what happens to users’ data.
According to research reported by TechCrunch, one other period tracking app tested by Mozilla received what researchers called a “squeaky clean” rating, suggesting similar services can operate without sharing sensitive health data in the same way.
Period tracking apps have come under greater scrutiny in the US since the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, which removed federal constitutional protection for abortion.
Some users and privacy advocates have warned that menstrual and reproductive health data could potentially be sought in legal cases.
The research also points to a broader regulatory problem for consumer health apps.
In the US, many health apps are not covered by HIPAA, the health privacy law that applies to medical providers and some healthcare organisations.
That means some consumer apps may be able to collect, share or monetise sensitive health data under rules that differ from traditional healthcare privacy protections.
The femtech market, estimated in the report at US$50bn, has grown quickly, but privacy regulation has not always kept pace with app development.
Stardust had not publicly responded to Mozilla’s findings at the time of the original report, and its privacy policy remained live on its website.
The issue is particularly sensitive for period tracking because the data can reveal patterns around fertility, pregnancy, contraception and reproductive health.
Mozilla’s wider Privacy Not Included initiative has examined consumer technology products for privacy and security concerns since launching in 2017, including connected devices, children’s toys and health apps.
The findings come as US lawmakers continue to debate stronger federal privacy rules for sensitive health information collected by consumer apps.
The American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which has been stalled in Congress since 2023, includes provisions addressing sensitive health information collected by consumer apps.
Experts have also warned that anonymised health data can sometimes be re-identified when combined with other information, such as location data.
Re-identification means linking supposedly anonymous data back to a specific person.
A 2019 study found that menstrual cycle data combined with location information could identify individual users with high accuracy.
State-level privacy laws in places such as California, Virginia and Colorado have also given consumers new rights around personal data, although enforcement can vary.
Privacy advocates say the research underlines the need for clearer data practices, stronger safeguards and greater transparency in femtech.
For users, the findings are a reminder that health apps do not automatically protect health information in the same way as healthcare providers.
The report suggests period tracker companies that put privacy first may be better placed to build trust in a market where long-term use depends on confidence.
Mozilla’s investigation suggests privacy promises in femtech do not always match practice, and that period trackers can function without sharing sensitive user data in the same way.
Juno Bio has secured US$3.8m to expand its diagnostics platform for vaginal health and reproductive care.
The funding round was led by Ada Ventures, with participation from Artesian, Entrepreneur First and Illumina Accelerator.
The women’s health startup said the seed funding will support the launch of its first CLIA-certified sequencing laboratory in Oakland, California, and a new clinical vaginal microbiome and STI test for healthcare providers.
CLIA certification refers to US laboratory standards for testing human samples used in diagnosis, prevention or treatment decisions.
Dr Leighton Turner, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Juno Bio, said: “The vaginal microbiome is still one of the least understood systems in the body at a clinical scale.
“With our lab, we’re starting to build a measurement standard that clinicians can actually use.
“We believe the level of detail from this kind of testing can meaningfully improve how vaginal healthcare is provided.”
The company is developing precision diagnostics for vaginal health, where patients can experience recurring symptoms, inconsistent diagnoses and treatments based on trial and error.
Juno Bio said bringing testing in-house gives it greater control over the process, from sample handling to results, while allowing it to refine its technology and build what it says is one of the largest datasets focused on the vaginal microbiome.
The vaginal microbiome is the community of bacteria and fungi that naturally live in the vagina. Changes in this balance can be linked to infections, symptoms and wider reproductive health issues.
Juno Bio’s newly launched clinical test examines the wider vaginal microbiome and screens for four common sexually transmitted infections, or STIs.
Rather than looking for a single cause, the test is intended to give clinicians a broader picture of what may be contributing to symptoms.
Juno Bio says this matters because multiple infections can occur at the same time and microbiome changes may be linked to fertility, menopause or recurrent infections.
Dr Anna Powell of Johns Hopkins said: “Vaginal microbiome testing has the potential to significantly reshape how we understand and manage vaginal health, particularly for patients with recurrent or unexplained symptoms.
“While the field is still evolving, advances in sequencing and data interpretation are moving us closer to a future where more personalised, microbiome-informed care can complement existing diagnostic approaches.”
Check Warner, co-founding partner at Ada Ventures, added: “Juno Bio is setting a new standard for how vaginal health is understood and managed.
“What they’ve built at this stage, with this level of capital efficiency, is exceptional.
“We’re proud to support the team as they scale their clinical infrastructure and continue leading innovation in this critically underserved category.”
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