Why cardiovascular health deserves a spotlight in femtech

When we think about women’s health innovation, certain categories immediately come to mind: fertility tracking, pregnancy care, menopause management.

These are vital areas that have long been neglected, and the femtech revolution has brought much-needed attention and resources to them.

But there’s another area of women’s health that remains dangerously overlooked, despite being the leading cause of death for women worldwide: cardiovascular disease.

Heart disease kills more women than all forms of cancer combined, yet most women don’t know this.

For decades, cardiovascular research has been designed around male bodies, male symptoms, and male experiences.

The result is a healthcare system that often fails to recognise when women are having heart attacks, misdiagnoses their symptoms and prescribes treatments that were never tested on female patients.

Women are more likely to die from their first heart attack or stroke than men, and they’re less likely to receive life-saving interventions in time.

This is precisely why the Femtech World Awards have teamed up with Women As One to create a dedicated category for cardiovascular health innovation.

With this award, we want to shine a light on the entrepreneurs, researchers, clinicians and advocates who are working to close not just a gap in care but a gap in innovation, research and recognition.

The cardiovascular health innovation award is an opportunity to celebrate this work and to call for more of it.

If you know of a company, researcher, or organisation doing groundbreaking work in cardiovascular health for women, now is the time to nominate them.

Perhaps it’s a startup developing wearable technology that predicts cardiac events in pregnant women. Maybe it’s a research team uncovering the links between hormonal health and heart disease.

It could be a community health initiative bringing cardiovascular screening to underserved populations of women.

Whoever they, or you are, submit your nomination here.