Opinion: Why women’s health needs transformational, not incremental, change

Hope Khoury, COO of product development firm Go Vertical ICM, urges faster and more prevention-focused improvement of women’s healthcare globally.

Women’s health has languished long enough in medicine, with millions underserved, misunderstood, and having to struggle with a system that too frequently doesn’t comprehend the entirety of female physiology.

Although recent years have brought us an onslaught of new awareness, how much further there is to ascend remains sizable, especially for diseases that are still underfunded, misdiagnosed, or altogether overlooked.

As a person who has struggled firsthand with the impact of uterine fibroids—a struggle that transformed my whole life—I understand intimately how incapacitating these conditions can be.

My personal ordeal started at 28 when I was diagnosed with a life-threatening 18 cm fibroid. It was not only a health emergency; it was an eye-opener to the systemic disregard for women’s reproductive well-being.

My mother had a hysterectomy at age 43, and I assumed that’s where I was going, too. Rather than accept limited options, though, I began making some choices of my own.

A silent epidemic

Uterine fibroids affect as many as 80% of women by the time they reach 50, and still, the condition is under-discussed and under-researched. Symptoms—chronic pain, excessive menstrual bleeding, infertility, and a reduced quality of life—are disabling, and yet treatments are too often limited to invasive surgeries or hormone therapies that introduce their own risks and side effects.

The bigger question is: why are we still dealing with women’s health on a reactive, rather than proactive, basis? Why is there so little emphasis on prevention? This is not a isolated problem to fibroids alone, but for a vast majority of conditions that affect only women, from endometriosis to PCOS, menopausal issues, and female-onset cancers.

The femtech revolution

One ray of hope lies in the rise of femtech. Yet here too, innovation is held back by a shortage of finance, regulatory hurdles, and the widespread problem of gender bias in medical research.

Even though women comprise more than half of the population, less than 1% of healthcare research funding is allocated to female-specific diseases. And although the femtech market is expected to be valued at more than $50 billion by 2025, the sector continues to attract relatively smaller proportions of investment compared to conventional health and wellness startups.

This inequality is especially troubling when we recognize that innovation in women’s health doesn’t just help women—it helps whole societies. When women are healthy, they’re more productive, more involved, and better able to contribute to their families, workplaces, and communities.

Prevention as the future of women’s health

Following my diagnosis and surgery, I leveraged my training in pharmacology to create a botanical-based supplement that would stop fibroids from growing in the first place.

Prevention needs to be a femtech principle, one that reframes the discussion from symptom management to the underlying causes of disease.

Women deserve solutions that harmonise with their bodies, not fight against them. That involves harnessing the strength of science-proven botanicals, augmenting diagnostic capabilities for early detection, and leveraging technology to provide personalised health information.

AI-powered menstrual tracking, hormone testing, and non-invasive procedures shouldn’t be the future; they should be the now. Alongside better technology, women also need access to trusted spaces where their concerns are taken seriously and treated with care. Resources such as dedicated support for women’s wellbeing play a meaningful role in ensuring that women can seek guidance, treatment, and reassurance without judgement.

I do think that by bringing together scientists, clinicians, and entrepreneurs, we can create a future where women do not have to suffer in silence. The change that we need is not incremental; it has to be transformational.

Hope Khoury is COO of Go Vertical ICM, a firm which helps to guide new products from idea to market.