News
Inside UK’s “gynaecology care crisis”: RCOG calls for ring-fenced funding, innovation and research
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has called for urgent government funding for women’s health and care in the UK, as research shows gynaecology waiting lists have doubled since 2020.
A new report, published this week by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) finds that three quarters of a million (755,046) women across the UK are now waiting for gynaecology treatment— enough to fill Wembley stadium eight times over.
Waiting lists have increased by a third since 2022 and additional BBC research shows they are now almost double that of 2020. Just before the pandemic 360,400 women were waiting for treatment.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg, according to the RCOG, which believes thousands more are waiting for other forms of care, including diagnostic tests to confirm their condition.
In order to track the state of gynaecological care in the UK, the RCOG collaborated with LCP Health Analytics, to develop an Elective Recovery Tracker tool, bringing together publicly available datasets in one place for the first time. It also surveyed over 2,000 affected women and over 300 healthcare professionals.
A quarter of women reported that they had attended A&E as a result of their symptoms, with more than 1 in 10 of those going on to have emergency interventions.
Over three quarters (76 per cent) of women waiting for care reported worsening mental health and over two thirds (69 per cent) reported being unable to take part in daily activities including work.
Healthcare professionals also reported being deeply concerned for their patients and the majority of primary (65 per cent) and secondary care clinicians (69 per cent) surveyed reported their own health and wellbeing has been affected by managing pressure in their clinics.
Additionally, over 90 per cent of primary care professionals reported a severe impact on general practice due to longer waits for hospital gynaecology services.
“No part of life left untouched”
Kerry Briggs, a patient in her early 50s from near Manchester, has been waiting for treatment for fibroids since January 2023.
“During this time, I’ve experienced severe bleeding, back pain, hip pain and had to manage challenging symptoms of anaemia as a result of my blood loss,” she says.
“The anxiety I’ve felt whilst waiting has been all encompassing. I can’t book anything in advance and I feel completely stuck in the house. If you don’t have cancer, your condition is given less urgency and importance but there is no part of my life left untouched by this. It has to be taken more seriously.”
Meanwhile, India Weir, 27 from near Edinburgh has also been on and off waiting lists since being diagnosed with endometriosis in 2017. She is currently waiting for surgery to manage my deep infiltrating endometriosis and ovarian cysts.
“Physically, being in pain every single day takes a huge toll on me whilst I have to get on with day-to-day life. Also, living with the uncertainty of when I’ll undergo surgery makes it hard to plan ahead,” India says.
“It impacts every part of my life and my quality of life. My relationships, friendships, social life, career and mental health are all affected – and my condition is getting worse without treatment and relevant care.”
A way forward?
The RCOG’s Waiting for a way forward report, funded by Theramex, sets out recommendations for the government to support patients and healthcare professionals now, while improving the future of women’s health and care.
This includes increasing the amount of funding for health services, considering targeted funding to expedite the longest waits, and providing resources to protect gynaecology services against operational pressures.
The government is also urged to consider building on existing digital initiatives, such as the Elective Recovery Tracker, expanding data collection and to commit to ring-fenced funding to enable research, patient participation, innovation and pilots to improve understanding and experiences of gynaecology.
The Elective Recovery Tracker provides regular updates on the backlog in gynaecology elective care and provides visualisations of the size, scale and nature of waits in gynaecology services across the UK.
According to Rebecca Sloan, Women’s health lead at LCP Health Analytics: “The analysis should help healthcare professionals and policymakers to identify where additional resources and focus is likely to have the greatest impact on patient outcomes and health inequalities.”
Last week the Women and Equalities Select Committee continued an inquiry on Women’s Reproductive Health Conditions, which looked at how the NHS can leverage femtech to improve treatment and care.
Dr Sue Mann, the first National Clinical Director for Women’s Health at NHS England and a consultant and lead for women’s health in City and Hackney, North East London, highlighted the importance of “keeping pace” with innovation in women’s health, but said the NHS must “get better” at producing its own digital information too.
Innovative pathways for gynaecology
However, the NHS can also tap into existing “innovative pathways” such as telemedicine to reduce waiting lists, according to some experts, who say many of the needs of those waiting could be met outside of acute hospital care.
Kat James, director of new projects at the telemedicine company, Consultant Connect, told Femtech World: “There is a history of women’s health being ignored and 750,000 patients waiting for hospital treatment is worrying. The truth is that a large majority of these women do not need hospital-based care, if only the right virtual and community-based alternatives were available.
“Face-to-face hospital-based care is the right place for those that need acute care, but for many conditions, often in the context of menopause related symptoms, community care is the faster way to help women. And this includes innovative pathways like telemedicine, where a patient can be given an immediate treatment plan without having to set foot into a physical healthcare setting.”
Consultant Connect runs a network of NHS consultants who review gynaecology referrals remotely, virtually triaging thousands for NHS trusts around the country. Its data shows that around one third to half of gynaecological referrals don’t need to be on hospital waiting lists.
“On average 30-40 per cent of patients receive treatment plans written up by ‘virtual’ NHS gynaecologists that their GPs can enact immediately, and another large cohort is directed to community-based care like women’s’ hubs if available in their area,” explains James.
“Not only does this deliver faster care, but also reduces stress, anxiety and unnecessary time of work, childcare and travel that comes with months long waits and hospital appointments.”
Long-term funding and investment
Commenting on the latest figures, leaders from the RCOG, as well as the Royal College of GPs have called on the government to act “urgently” to tackle the UK’s “gynaecology care crisis” with “long-term sustained funding”.
Dr Ranee Thakar, president of the RCOG, said: “A way forward is urgently needed to tackle the UK gynaecology crisis. Our new report shows too many women are waiting too long with serious conditions that can devastate their lives. NHS staff are also deeply concerned and distressed that they do not have the necessary resources to deliver good care, affecting their own wellbeing.
“UK governments must act now. The RCOG is calling on them to commit to long-term, sustained funding to address the systemic issues driving waiting lists, alongside delivering an urgent support package for those currently on waiting lists.
“This investment will not only benefit thousands of individual women but the wider economy too, because the evidence shows that healthy women are the cornerstone of healthy societies. Get it right for women and everyone benefits.”
Our sister publication Health Tech World brings its first live event to London this summer, gathering the people building, buying and regulating healthcare AI for a single afternoon. With a full line-up confirmed and two months to go, tickets are open now, and this first edition is one to book early.
Health Tech World Live, the debut live event from FemTech World’s sister title Health Tech World, makes its first appearance on Friday 21 August, bringing clinicians, founders, developers, NHS commissioners and investors together at Teesside University London in Stratford for an afternoon on where healthcare AI goes next. The programme is confirmed, and with two months to go, it is worth booking your place while the diary is still clear.
The line-up for this first edition reads like a who’s-who of UK health AI. Speakers include Dr James Harmsworth King, Chief Medical Strategy Officer at Numan, fresh from the MHRA’s AI Airlock; Dr Sonia Szamocki, founder and CEO of 01Health; Hugo Dragonetti of NHS London Procurement Partnership; Mikael Kågebäck, CTO at Sleep Cycle; Max Gattlin, Commercial Director at X-on Health; and Marcus Vass, Head of Digital Health at Osborne Clarke, with proceedings chaired by Alastair MacColl.
Across six sessions, the afternoon moves from scaling specialist care and smarter NHS procurement, through responsible delivery and consumer AI, to fair access to GP care and the regulation underpinning all of it. Between the talks, delegates get time with the speakers and the Health Tech World editorial team, the kind of access that is hard to come by anywhere else.
It is shaping up to be one of the summer’s standout dates in health tech, and a launch worth being part of from the start. If you are planning to be there, now is the time to get it booked.
The future of healthcare AI: strategies, opportunities and vital insights
When: Friday 21 August 2026, 12 noon to 4pm
Where: Teesside University London Campus, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, 14 East Bay Lane, London, E15 2GW
Tickets: £99
Immunotherapy may temporarily restore fertility in women with autoimmune premature ovarian insufficiency, a pilot study suggests.
Three of the 10 women who received treatment later gave birth to healthy babies.
Premature ovarian insufficiency, or POI, affects just over three per cent of women worldwide and occurs when the ovaries stop functioning before the age of 40.
The condition significantly reduces fertility and can have several causes, including autoimmune processes and genetics.
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet examined whether immunotherapy could make the ovaries temporarily responsive to hormonal stimulation in women with POI caused by autoimmunity.
The study included 12 women aged between 18 and 35 with autoimmune POI.
Two withdrew before treatment began. The remaining 10 underwent ovarian hormone stimulation before receiving rituximab and again four to six months after treatment.
Rituximab is an approved and well-established medicine used to treat several autoimmune conditions and cancers.
None of the women responded to ovarian stimulation before receiving the drug.
After treatment, six developed follicles that made it possible to retrieve eggs in response to ovarian stimulation.
Follicles are small sacs within the ovaries where eggs develop.
Professor Angelica Lindén Hirschberg, the study’s first author and a professor at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, said: “The results show that in some women there remains an egg reserve that can be activated when the autoimmune process is suppressed.”
In five women, mature eggs could be frozen or fertilised.
Three later had embryos transferred and all three gave birth to healthy babies.
For safety reasons, the embryo transfers took place no earlier than one year after treatment.
One serious side effect was reported and was linked to the hormone stimulation rather than the immunotherapy.
Women with autoimmune POI commonly have other autoimmune diseases.
All six women who responded to the treatment also had autoimmune Addison’s disease, a condition in which the immune system destroys the adrenal glands.
The study was a proof-of-concept investigation without a control group and involved a small number of participants, meaning the findings must be interpreted cautiously.
A proof-of-concept study is an early investigation designed to assess whether an approach could work before it is tested more widely.
Professor Lindén Hirschberg said: “This is a first step. To determine whether the method is effective and safe, larger, randomised studies are required.”
The research team has launched a larger randomised study.
The work was carried out by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital and the University of Bergen.
It was funded by organisations including the Swedish Research Council, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation and Region Stockholm.
The researchers reported no conflicts of interest.
POI is also linked to long-term health risks caused by oestrogen deficiency, including osteoporosis, an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline and poorer mental and sexual wellbeing.
Hormone replacement therapy can relieve menopausal symptoms and reduce many of these risks, but no treatment has been reliably shown to restore fertility in women with POI.
Egg donation was previously the only option for women with the condition who wanted to become pregnant.
Xella Health has launched what it calls the first AI precision health platform built for the XX chromosome.
The company says it aims to address a lack of diagnostic precision and clinical research focused on female biology.
Women make up half of the population and account for 80 per cent of consumer healthcare decisions, but research into women’s health has historically received less funding than male-focused studies.
Kelly Lacob, Xella Health co-founder and chief executive, said: “Women have been trapped in a diagnostic dark age experiencing debilitating symptoms like severe period pain, bloating and GI issues, exhaustion, and brain fog, routinely dismissed by the healthcare system.
“This dismissal results in women being diagnosed four years later than men, on average, for the same conditions, and a seven-to-10-year delay for women to receive an accurate diagnosis for conditions like endometriosis.
Stalling necessary care and treatment results in prolonged suffering with chronic pain, heightened infertility risks, and declining mental health.
Xella is here to replace the systemic medical gaslighting women have endured for generations.
We are handing women the evidence and information they need to advocate for themselves and secure faster, accurate diagnoses before early-stage conditions spiral.”
Xella says its AI examines billions of data points from clinical information and multi-omic biomarkers to assess the probability of more than 130 conditions specific to female biology.
Multi-omic data combines information from several biological areas, including genes, proteins and hormones.
The conditions assessed include polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS, formerly known as polycystic ovary syndrome, as well as perimenopause and endometriosis.
Xella was founded by Lacob, Adriana Dantas and Dr Jesus Ching, who developed the concept while working together on molecular diagnostics at Mammoth Biosciences.
The founders say the platform is designed to provide information about possible underlying causes through advanced testing and long-term care of a kind often available only through expensive concierge services.
They drew on personal experiences to build a service intended to identify small changes in a woman’s biological baseline.
Members complete an initial health questionnaire before having blood taken at a local partner laboratory such as Quest or Labcorp.
A phlebotomist can also visit a member’s home for an additional charge.
The company’s AI analyses biomarker data from genomics, proteins and hormones alongside symptoms, lifestyle risks and medical history.
Xella says this information is used to screen for more than 130 female-specific conditions, including PMOS, Hashimoto’s disease, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, endometriosis and perimenopause timelines.
Hashimoto’s disease is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the thyroid gland.
Premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, is a severe form of premenstrual syndrome that can cause significant emotional and physical symptoms.
The results are processed through Xella’s own dry laboratory, which the company says is certified under the US Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments and accredited by the College of American Pathologists.
A dry laboratory analyses data using computing and other non-experimental methods rather than carrying out traditional laboratory procedures.
The findings are turned into a personalised healthcare plan and reviewed with a certified telehealth doctor.
The doctor may recommend immediate clinical action, including personalised hormone therapy or referrals to genetic counsellors, pelvic floor physiotherapists and reproductive endocrinologists.
Reproductive endocrinologists are doctors who specialise in hormones, fertility and reproductive health conditions.
Dantas, co-founder and chief operating officer, said: “Women’s health data has historically been treated in isolated silos – a hormone test here, an ultrasound there – but no one was connecting the dots across the entire biology.
“By tracking unique biological patterns longitudinally across cycles and life stages, we aren’t just providing data, but a clear path forward.”
Xella’s clinical advisers include Dr Allison Kurian, director of Stanford Women’s Clinical Cancer Genetics Program and professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health at Stanford.
They also include Dr Lynn Westphal, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist and chief medical officer of Kindbody.
Xella has received US$4.7m in angel and pre-seed funding from Precursor Ventures, Capital F, Ulu Ventures and Swizzle Ventures.
Other funds and angel investors from healthcare, diagnostics and consumer technology also participated.
Margaret Coblentz, co-founder and general partner of Capital F, said: “Women’s health is one of the highest-momentum categories in the market today, driven by a US$15tn female economy.
“Xella represents exactly how Capital F sees women’s health evolving: deep clinical expertise paired with a consumer-first mindset, and a genuine opportunity to unlock the next generation of healthcare.”
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