Techie Reads

Although 2020 was a disappointing year for FemTech investment, accounting for 1.8% of all digital health investment, it seems 2021 is was a much brighter year. Pitchbook’s report, All In: Female Founders in the US VC Ecosystem, paints a slow but positive picture for female founders.

Two very exciting things happened in the past two months, that made me feel like progress is being made in getting women’s health into the press through a traditional lens! It’s about time! Small feats, and the journey ahead is long, but very exciting nonetheless.

It’s been a crazy few months for digital health in general, with interesting new investments and movement in the women’s health space as well. Although there’s still a lack in evidence-based solutions, there seems to be a better awareness of the importance of measuring outcomes in women’s health and beyond.

This week Women of Wearables hosted its first virtual conference about FemTech. The format was panels-only, with female founders, investors and journalists discussing a variety of different topics. I enjoyed the panel format as it fostered more a conversation and less of lectures plugging certain companies or services.

I recently sat down with Cathy Sebag and Gal Brenner from Hela Health for a cup of coffee in Tel Aviv. It was inspiring to hear about their journey and decision to start Hela Health and their thoughts related to the biggest challenges they’ve faced thus far. I was excited to see their passion and commitment to take all their expertise and channel their energy into a product that is hoping to increase access for women to both educational content and gynecologist approved products’ related to women’s health. As a big believer in awareness making a big impact on women’s health as well as the treatment and research about women’s health, I’m more than a big fan and looking forward to seeing where future leads them.

I have heard before that Tel Aviv is one of the four FemTech hubs (the informal list includes New York, Tel Aviv, Paris & Berlin). Upon hearing this statement I've always been a bit surprised and felt that if Tel Aviv is considered to be a hub for women's health, then there is a very long way to go. Despite my cynical view, there are a lot of great initiatives happening in Israel. Last month I was at an amazing event organized by Keren Briah (led by Sara Tancman) that made me feel that Tel Aviv is truly a women's health hub and setting an example for hubs worldwide.

The popularity of health apps, particularly menstrual health apps for women, can potentially provide researchers with massive datasets from millions of women. As with all clinical research using big data, these datasets can be used to discover new insights about women's health and validate/contradict previous studies on smaller populations. Although there are downsides to data from apps (i.e. they are designed for consumers not for scientific studies) and the fact that data sharing can be abused (i.e. sharing with Facebook and not with scientists) there is a big opportunity for promoting research on women's health by using this data.

I hosted the first Women of Wearables (WoW) Tel Aviv meetup at Urban Place last week. I gave an overview of FemTech, discussing leading companies in a variety of different categories in the FemTech space.

One of the characteristics of the FemTech space is that companies are targeting consumers directly. This DTC (direct-to-consumer) approach is leading to very cool marketing techniques by companies and organizations in or promoting the FemTech space. Leading FemTech companies have cool Instagram accounts, active twitter accounts, YouTube channels, podcast channels, and are even including customers in their user testing.

Insurance companies (payers) are great candidates for supporting hospital at home because they have an incentive to keep patients out of care and reduce their costs. In pure economic terms, hospitals, doctors, & clinics make more revenue the longer their patients are in care. In the US private insurers pay about 80% of their revenues to providers and in 2018 the total direct written premiums by private insurers reached over $870 billion. By working with providers and pushing for more value-based care payment plans, insurers have the potential to become advocates for more hospital-at-home services.

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) the vast majority of the 142.8 Million ER visits in 2015 were "treat and release" and did not result in admission to the hospital.

• Only 3.3% of the 30 Million ER visits by patients 0-18 resulted in admission to the hospital.

• Only 11.0% of the 86.1 Million ER visits by patients 19-64 resulted in admission to the hospital.

• Only 34.1% of the 26.7 Million ER visits by patients 65+ resulted in admission to the hospital.

Takeaways from Day 3:

• As cannabis market is currently very hyped & 27% of cannabis companies have women executives, it looks like there is a potential for much needed research and innovation for cannabis related female products

• Doesn't look like male-led VCs or pharma companies are going to start investing in femtech very soon

• The emerging market is growing but VCs are not investing because it's longer term

• We need to completely reinvent sexual wellness solutions for women (particularly those having painful sex) and it's necessary to take a "for women by women" approach

My key takeaways from Day 2:

• Women are not like men when it comes to basically everything that has to do with health and medicine

• Women (and men) need to come together to push forward inclusive research & products to leap-frog in women's health and close the gap

• We need to get more investment into the field, whether it be from women or crowdfunding and stop waiting for the system

WHII was the first conference in the world to concentrate on women's health and it was certainly impressive. As opposed to big conferences where the action occurs on the exhibition floor, WHII was filled with interesting content and the action happened in the lecture and panels. Some highlights from Day 1.

With the big $10M raised by DotLab lats week, I took a deeper look at some of the interesting things happening in the women's health "Diagnostic" side of things. Although most of the products are still under development, here are some of the startups in the field:

How did handpicked responses by the Google, Apple, Amazon teams end up with voice bot responding "I'd blush if I could" to "You're a slut" or "You're a bitch"? Why is the fact that only 20% of AI workers female concerning?

Sound plays an integral part of our surroundings and environment. It's been getting more and more attention, and in the past year or so a whole field of voice UX for apps (not just in the health world) has been taking off. Below are a few articles I found interesting to think about - how sounds can improve medical teams' work in hospital, the future of hearing aids, and the future of hearable technology in general.

With the announcement of Apple WatchOS 6’s period cycle tracker, I found myself reading a bit more about the Apple Watch as well as other wearable sensors in developments. This IEEE Spectrum article gives a peak into the future of wearables (not just wrist bands). I’m hoping that in the relatively near future we’ll be able to find technologies found in the Ava bracelet, EMBR Wave, and other wearables all in one band.

Medical testing is becoming even more convenient. In-home health tests and testing devices are soon to be found in retail stores such as Target and Best Buy. These partnerships bring up some legitimate concerns about patients becoming "consumers", but will also make in-home testing more accessible (and many times affordable) to people across the US.

Tampon-news has been increasing recently. I was surprised to learn that in Europe, although tampons are used by women and placed inside their body, they are less regulated than band-aids and hand sanitizer because they are considered to be personal care products and not medical devices. Due to little product differentiation, women are unlikely to switch tampon brands, and most continue to use the first brand they used as a young women.