The future of the FemTech market

• The femtech market is forecast to grow significantly over the next three years
• Building the right foundational databases for women’s health innovation is particularly important given the rapid deployment of AI applications in the healthcare industry
• Healthcare data crowdsourced from women can identify gaps in diagnostics, therapeutics, and barriers to care

The Female Technology (FemTech) market is forecast to reach up to $60 billion by 2027, reflecting the booming femtech market as researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors tap into the growing demand for practical products and solutions aimed at supporting the health needs of women.¹

The global market, which was already pegged at $18.9 billion worldwide in 2019, is continuing to grow rapidly due to increased demands of female consumers for solutions that take their needs into account.¹ This has spurred a rise in the cultural conversation about women’s health and the importance of women’s health technology. and accordingly resulted in a burst of new technologies that focus on health issues that disproportionately impact women, such as menopause, gynecological conditions, and autoimmune conditions, as well as cardiovascular health and musculoskeletal disorders.

What exactly is meant by the term “FemTech” has been a topic of debate, but for the purposes of this article, we will take a broader perspective on the term. “FemTech” for the purpose of this article is defined as software, diagnostics, products, and services that focus on and support women’s health and/or biological needs. In addition to providing individual women with key insights that allow them to better manage their health and well-being, women’s health solutions are also helping to provide real-time, real-world datasets from diverse populations. As a result, researchers are gaining a crucial understanding of the trends in women’s health.

Oriana Kraft, founder of FemTechnology.org, shares her top FemTech picks with Healthcare Transformers and explains just how important these new products could be in terms of delivering real women’s health innovations.²

When it comes to scientific research and clinical trials, there is an egregious lack of data about women’s health. Therefore, apps that collect and analyze self-reported data about lifestyle and environment could help crowdsource information from women to help us pinpoint exactly what is making them sick. An example? 80% of Autoimmune conditions are determined by lifestyle and environment. This data could be leveraged to advance research that has been hampered in part by the fact that it has been very difficult to undertake sufficiently large studies and establish reliable estimates to answer these questions.³

Most biomedical artificial intelligence (AI) technologies do not currently account for sex and gender bias detection.⁴ Developing objective digital biomarkers will help ensure individuals are diagnosed earlier and receive optimal treatment. A study by the Women’s Brain Project and Altoida showed that AI and augmented reality could depict sex-based differences in cognitive, functional, and motoric performance using digital biomarker data collected from a cognitive assessment test.⁵

Another example is heart health tests, which are often not designed to accurately diagnose and determine women’s heart health. Smart Bras that track elements of cardiovascular disease could provide women and healthcare providers with crucial data that could allow them to take more timely corrective action.⁶

This FemTech technology, which captures a number of data points, including data from electrocardiograms, pulse rates, respiratory rates, and heart rhythms, could be used to generate digital biomarkers unique to women.⁶ Traditional biomarkers, like blood, are a snapshot in time, but the smart bra could offer a more continuous picture, enabling physicians and patients to devise more tailored treatment pathways that could also be adapted should the real-time data from the smart bra indicate this to be necessary.

Tidepool is a nonprofit organization that is working to help people with diabetes to “safely achieve great outcomes through more accessible, actionable, and meaningful diabetes data”.⁷ The team is now seeking to leverage data already being collected through diabetes devices to help women better understand how they can manage their blood glucose as hormone levels change throughout their menstrual cycle.

They believe that this will allow healthcare providers and women with diabetes to have more regular conversations that are based on hard data. It is also expected to be a valuable resource for stakeholders in the industry as they will have a starting point for the analysis of hundreds or thousands of donated datasets featuring diabetes and menstrual cycle data together. According to Tidepool, this could lead to an improved understanding around the relationship between hormone fluctuation and glycemic variability.⁸

Endometriosis is notoriously difficult to diagnose. It can take around seven to ten years on average and multiple tests to arrive at a diagnosis.⁹ A systemic and chronic condition occurring in women of childbearing age, it remains a highly enigmatic disease with unresolved questions. While biomarkers, questionnaires, and imaging techniques have been advocated as effective screening methodologies for endometriosis to replace diagnostic laparoscopy, none have been implemented routinely in clinical practice.¹⁰

However, several recent research FemTech projects have indicated that machine learning (ML) algorithms could serve as an effective preliminary screening method for primary care doctors, gynecologists, and other key healthcare professionals.¹⁰ Implementing ML algorithms in these contexts could lead to a significant shift in clinical procedures by potentially eliminating the need for diagnostic laparoscopy.

Additionally, this approach centered on the patient allows individuals with endometriosis to recognize and report their symptoms proactively, fostering conversations with their doctors about their diagnosis and treatment options, thus playing a vital role in the shared decision-making process.

Researchers have designed a wearable, ring-like biosensor for monitoring the hormone oestradiol in human sweat as a result of requests from people who were unsatisfied with the current fertility tracking methods. It has been noted by researchers that this technology could also be used to monitor women taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to ensure they are taking the correct dosage.¹¹

In March 2020, Isala, a citizen science project at the University of Antwerp, launched a call to find 200 women in Belgium willing to take simple swabs from their vaginas, skin,  and saliva in the privacy of their own bathrooms – more than 6000 answered the call. They used data and swabs to map the vaginal microbiome of women to get a better understanding of women’s reproductive health as well as insights into how these bacteria protect women from sexually transmitted infections and urinary tract infections.¹²

Organ chips are tiny models of human organs that accurately replicate the structure and function of in vivo organs (in this case female organs). Examples include the Vagina and Cervix on a chip to model health and disease in the female genital tract and to identify promising treatments faster.¹³

In vitro systems are limited in their capacity to recapitulate female-specific physiology and anatomy such as dynamic sex-hormone levels and the complex interdependencies of female reproductive tract organs. By adding a dynamic flow environment, organ-on-a-chip systems allow researchers to mimic endocrine signaling during the menstrual cycle and pregnancy.

Almost one in three people are estimated to develop a neurological disorder during their lifetime, of which 60% are women.¹⁴ However, most therapies targeting neurological conditions in recent years have failed. In part due to the fact that less than 2% of drugs enter the brain in therapeutic amounts.¹⁵  Indeed, 99.6% of Alzheimer’s disease trials have failed over the past 10 years in part because the drugs could not reach their optimal concentration in the brain.¹⁶

Brain Transport shuttles that are safe and effective and could increase the uptake of test drugs into the brain by 10 to 100-fold would revolutionize our treatment of neurological conditions.¹⁶ These shuttles will improve the transport of new drugs and will rescue drugs that failed to cross the Blood Brain Barrier in past clinical trials. The advent of efficient brain transport shuttles promises a transformative leap in treating neurological conditions that disproportionately affect women, addressing a critical gap in women’s health by enabling effective drug delivery where it was previously unattainable.¹⁷

An overarching theme of innovation in women’s health and the FemTech industry, particularly through femtech research, is the collection of meaningful data from key stakeholders in the ecosystem. In particular, data crowdsourced from women to identify gaps in diagnostics, therapeutics, and barriers to care, which can then be used to align patient, clinical, research, and startup perspectives to foster a holistic approach to women’s healthcare and innovation. This ensures that innovation, including various femtech solutions, is not only scientifically sound but resonates with the real needs of women. As we move forward, it will be crucial that we partner with stakeholders from across the system to maximize impact.Building the right foundational databases for innovation in women’s health solutions and the femtech industry is particularly important given the rapid deployment of AI applications in the healthcare industry and important work is ongoing at organizations to address this need.¹⁸