FemTech Resources & Moving Virtual
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.
A few items I wanted to highlight:
1) Weekly Facts: Kathrin Folkendt has a GREAT newsletter about femtech called Femtech Insider. I highly recommend checking it out and signing up. She does a great job of making sure you don’t miss out on any of the latest investments or news articles that have been published each week about femtech. It’s a wonderful source and exciting that such a great resource exists.
2) Moving Virtual: Covid-19 has increased the need for virtual services in every part of healthcare. There’s been some commentary about whether we need yet another women’s telehealth company as more and more digital services pop up. I expect at some point we’ll see some consolidation, but in the meantime a few key highlights from the additional (huge) investment in Maven earlier this year, to a new Motherhood Center in New York that is providing telemental services to women with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. I appreciate their efforts as an out of network provider to verify insurance eligibility and handle the majority of correspondence about benefits with women to reduce the hassle of getting this necessary care. As digital services are becoming more and more acceptable across the board, one of the areas where I'm missing seeing creative and innovative developments is regarding domestic violence/sexual abuse solutions. The lack of access to supportive resources has been highlighted (and increased) during the COVID-19 pandemic and looking to see new ideas and solutions in this space.
3) Tech to Drive Outcomes: Women’s Health CT is going to use a solution that combines Dorsata’s maternity management solution and Wildflowers personalised digital experience to better support women’s health outcomes. This is an exciting partnership as it really connects the data between visits with ob-gyns that are meeting women at visits.
4) Industry Brief: if you’re new to women’s health technologies and looking for a resource or two to learn more general facts about the field, check out this FemTech Focus podcast with Alice Zheng or this PitchBook Femtech analysis from August 2020 that has a brief industry summary. As the Pitchbook summary highlights, we're still behind in menopause, endometriosis and other high-cost women-focused diseases.