Digital Technologies Shape the Future of Women’s Health

Digital technologies are transforming women's healthcare by addressing disparities and improving accessibility. Femtech apps and wearables drive awareness and health monitoring, particularly for reproductive and mental health. Emerging technologies like AI, ML, and wearables enhance precision care, while digital therapeutics offer new solutions for pelvic floor disorders and depression. Increased investment and regulatory focus are crucial to fostering future innovations.

Key Points

• Digital tools improve women's health accessibility and empower self-management.
• AI/ML-enabled wearables offer personalised, proactive health insights for women.
• Next-gen wearables track menstrual cycles, predict fertility, and manage menopause.
• Digital therapeutics treat mental health and pelvic floor disorders with remote care.
• Femtech attracts increasing VC investments, boosting innovation in women's health.

According to a 2024 report by the World Economic Forum and the McKinsey Health Institute, women have a higher health burden. They spend an average of 25%more years dealing with debilitating health conditions than men. Throughout their lives, women experience several health issues and are at a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis or certain types of tumours. This disparity in health burden is due to several biological and social factors, such as hormonal differences or disparity in socioeconomic status, and the need for the hour is continuous monitoring and management of health and wellness in women. The industry is also realising that women’s health is much more than just maternal and reproductive health. The leading cause of death for women in the United States is heart disease. According to the Global Disease Burden Study 2019, in the European Union, the prevalence of depression in the EU is 1.7 times higher in women than in men, and anxiety disorders are twice more prevalent among women than in men (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation 2019). Everest Group is a leading global research firm helping business leaders make confident decisions through today’s market challenges and strengthen their strategies by applying contextualised problem-solving and offers below an in-depth overview of how digital technologies can help shape the future of women’s health.

Digital Technologies Empowering Women Through Care Accessibility And Disease Awareness

WHO reveals that digital technologies can improve women’s health by addressing social, economic, and cultural disparities. Digital tools have the potential to enhance care accessibility and educate and empower women to manage their health through self-management tools, making digital interventions an imperative tool for transforming women’s health.

The current adoption of digital women’s health technologies is heavily skewed toward the consumer health space. Most consumer women’s health digital products (mostly women's health apps/ Femtech apps) focus on improving disease awareness through educational materials and tracking and monitoring health and wellness parameters. Femtech apps that track reproductive parameters and fertility management provide telehealth or virtual consultation services and connect users to support groups or communities are gaining traction. Recent technological advances have expanded the scope of digital technologies beyond tracking and monitoring or information dissemination.

AI/ML-Enabled Wearables, Digital Biomarkers And Digital Therapeutics Transform The Future Of Care For Women 

As the healthcare industry moves toward precision and predictive care, there is a shift from mHealth applications and health monitoring wearables. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are transforming the future of women’s health industry. These AI / ML algorithms integrated into wearables and mobile apps provide personalised and proactive healthcare recommendations and insights to the female user, improving care outcomes.

Next-Generation Wearables for Monitoring and Therapy

Technological advancements in wearables have transformed them from simple monitoring and tracking devices to sophisticated personalised health management devices. The industry is developing next-generation wearables uniquely designed to address women's healthcare needs. These wearables can track menstrual cycles and irregularities, predict and monitor fertility windows, and diagnose perimenopause or menopausal symptoms. They integrate sensors with AI / ML algorithms and are used for preventive and predictive care. For example, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a wearable aptamer biosensor for non-invasive estradiol monitoring (in human sweat) for personalised reproductive hormone monitoring. Bloomlife received FDA approval for its prescription-based maternal and fetal monitoring wearable device€—MFM-Pro. The wearable patch has ECG sensors that remotely record all perinatal-related health signals for high-risk pregnancies. Dublin-based IdentifyHer is partnering with University College Cork to test its prototype wearable biosensor for detecting menopause symptoms.

AI / ML has become integral to improving diagnosis and personalising care. For example, Switzerland-based Ava fertility trackers' wearable sensors can track physiological parameters (pulse rate, breathing rate, sleep, heart rate variability, and temperature) and apply machine learning algorithms to detect fertility windows in real-time. Similarly, US-based Zepp Health Corporation, along with Wild.AI, is developing Amazfit smartwatches that use ML algorithms to provide personalised health recommendations and insights based on users’ hormonal cycles. Oura Ring by Oura Health Ltd., Finland, can track sleep and physical activity. Oura Health offers an AI assistant called Oura Advisor, which offers personalised wellness recommendations and uses generative AI to answer questions related to health parameters.

The collection, interpretation, and analysis of health data collected from these wearable devices can be translated into digital biomarkers, which gives critical insights into the health and well-being of the user/ patient. Digital biomarkers provide precise interventions or insights based on health status and can also provide predictive care. For example, researchers at West Virginia University and the experts at Boston, US-based wearable company WHOOP are evaluating maternal heart rate variability (HRV) as a digital biomarker for predicting the risk of preterm delivery. South Korea-based Samsung wearables, with a large pool of biomarker data, is working with one of the big consumer health companies, German consumer health company Bayer, to understand sleep disturbances during menopause better. The future of wearables for female health is expected to be much more than just tracking and monitoring. It will give more personalised, detailed health insights so that proactive measures can be taken to prevent health issues.

Next-generation wearables can also deliver therapy through noninvasive neurostimulation, such as noninvasive transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for period pain relief (Manchester-based Myoovi) or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex stimulation headbands for treating premenstrual symptoms and menstrual pain (London-based Samphire Neuroscience Ltd).

Digital Therapeutics and Immersive Digital Therapeutics To Gain Traction

Digital therapeutics are evidence-based digital interventions to treat various diseases affecting women. Digital therapeutics to treat mental health conditions offer behavioural therapy with psychoeducational materials for managing mood and depression symptoms. Digital platforms can also provide pelvic floor muscle training and rehabilitation for treating urinary incontinence. The next-generation digital interventions integrated with AR / VR help create an immersive environment. It has applications in reducing fear and anxiety for labour pain management. Researchers from Franco European Multidisciplinary Endometriosis Institute (IFEMEndo), France, are investigating the use of VR-based digital therapeutics, also known as immersive digital therapy, to reduce debilitating pelvic pain associated with endometriosis.

Digital therapy offers remote care and treatment to women, giving them much-needed flexibility and convenience while maintaining their privacy. These emerging digital interventions (both next-generation wearables and digital therapeutics) are expected to profoundly impact women’s health in the next 2-3 years (Table 1).

Emerging digital interventions are most impactful for conditions beyond general wellness tracking. For accurate menstrual tracking and for predicting fertility windows, the next-generation wearables and digital therapeutics have a high impact or high capability to improve (treat or manage) the disease or condition. Further, next-generation wearables have the potential to enable precise tracking of maternal health, detect the onset of menopause, or help manage its symptoms, and can also treat pelvic floor disorders. Digital therapeutics also play a crucial role in managing symptoms or treating these indications.

Cardiometabolics have a high impact potential in the next 4-5 years. Companies such as Hello Inside, Austria, focus on educating women with data and actionable insights to better understand the connection between glucose, insulin, and female hormones through continuous glucose monitoring and dynamic hormone testing.

Government Agencies and Funding Availability To Influence Research Activities And Technology Adoption

In 2023, the US government urged Congress lawmakers to pass an €11 billion fund toward women’s health research in the US. Earlier that same year, 90 million euros were allocated to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to launch the Sprint for Women’s Health to fund research for conditions affecting women, such as migraines, heart attacks, and menopause. In September 2024, the US Department of Defense committed 460 million euros toward women’s health research. Despite all efforts, women’s health remains a largely under-researched field. According to a 2023 study published in Nature, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for women’s health diseases is low, or research is underfunded compared with the disease burden (Smith 2023).

This scenario is also mimicked in Europe and the UK. The European Institute of Women’s Health, in its EU Strategy for Women's Health report, emphasises providing equitable health for all women. The report clearly states that women are under-represented in medical research but have a high health burden (Euro Health 2024).In the UK, as per 2023 reports, the Government has committed to around 30 million euros investment over the next 2 years to support women's health hubs. There are high expectations from the new UK Government to implement a women’s health strategy and expand women’s health hubs. It is imperative that government bodies work towards closing this gap.

However, the digital Femtech industry has started attracting the attention of VC investors. Femtech global VC investments in 2022 were 1.3 billion euros and despite a decline in 2023 to 1.2 billion euros, 2024-25 looks promising, with deal values close to 1.1 billion euros year-to-date (World Economic Forum 2024). Digital health technology companies such as Maven Clinic in New York (an on-demand virtual clinic) and London-based Flow Health (one of the leading consumer women’s health apps) are some examples of companies that received funding. In fact, Flow Health is said to be one of the first consumer health apps to achieve unicorn status.

Funding digital start-ups in women’s health can foster innovations that create a meaningful impact in the healthcare industry. While the US is one of the primary innovation hotspots, the surge in entrepreneurial initiatives has made Europe home to successful innovative start-ups such as Oura Health, Flo Health, Clue or Natural Cycles, making it a good innovation hub for digital women’s health. Emerging economies like India, China and Brazil are looking to venture into this domain with a focus on health monitoring, disease awareness, and access to care for women through digital women’s health solutions.

Medical devices, such as digital therapeutics and next-generation wearables, are establishing their market presence through regulatory approvals and growing scientific evidence supporting their efficacy. Some of the recent regulatory approvals include US FDA clearance for Bloomlife MFM-Pro wearable patch for maternal and fetal heart rate monitoring, Bone Health Technologies’s Osteoboost wearable vibration belt to treat low bone density for postmenopausal women with osteopenia, Curio Digital Therapeutics’ MamaLift Plus a prescription digital therapeutic to treat mild to moderate Postpartum Depression (PPD) symptoms and CE marked device (part of the German DiGA program) PINK! Coach (acquired by SideKick Health) a prescription digital therapeutics offering digital coaching to manage breast cancer’s physiological and psychological effects.

Strategic Imperatives to Boost Commercialisation

Overcoming Data Security Issues

A 2022 Femtech products privacy analysis published in IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society revealed that the data collected by menstrual cycle tracking apps is often shared with third-party data aggregators for personalised advertising or as a monetisation model (Erickson et al. 2022). This personal health information is not protected when shared with third parties. Over the last few years, the rapid growth of unregulated consumer health digital products for women has led to more common and problematic data privacy inconsistencies. We are also witnessing users exercising extra caution when using these apps, especially in regions with restricted access to abortion, contraception or voluntary sterilisation services, and this data could be used against them.

The regulatory agencies, primarily the US and UK, are closely monitoring potential harms and negative impacts on users. The agencies are reinstating the importance of complying with regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Europe goes one step further with its new EU Cyber Resilience Act, which will improve the cybersecurity of digital products such as software and Internet of Things devices.

To ensure data security, the platforms must adhere to regional regulations and ensure compliant data collection, storage, and distribution. To maintain the privacy of sensitive health information, digital health companies should implement true end-to-end encryption for data storage and strictly avoid sharing data with third parties. This can alleviate consumer fears and improve the industry’s adoption of new digital technologies.

Addressing the Gender Data Gap

Though the opportunities for women-centric care are huge, the data gap in women’s health creates blind spots in disease prediction and diagnosis. It was only after 1993 that women were included as a part of clinical research and trials. And even after 2 decades, women are still often underrepresented in several clinical research studies. Moreover, the underrepresentation of women of colour or another ethnic background further increases the data gap. This gap has led to a fundamental lack of understanding of the influence of the female gender on disease prevalence, presentation, and progress. This inequity can have an impact on the AI models. Accurate AI decision-making requires complete, correct, and unbiased datasets. Data inequalities can result in a higher risk of misdiagnosis for women. Evidence-based clinical studies of larger diverse cohorts can help address this challenge. Digital technologies can also drive better data collection on women’s health.

Future Outlook

Current women’s digital health products focus on consumer digital health solutions to improve care awareness and accessibility. There is a focus on patient education, awareness, and personalised insights and recommendations. Healthcare consumerism is driving the growth of these Femtech solutions, where patients are empowered to take control of their own health through self-management.

A January 2024 World Economic Forum report, in collaboration with the McKinsey Health Institute, suggests that reducing the women’s health gap could create an annual 925 billion euros GDP opportunity by 2040 (World Economic Forum 2024). Thus, government bodies should look into incorporating digital health solutions through digital inclusion initiatives to improve women’s health and well-being.

In the next 2-3 years, the role of digital technologies is set to expand beyond health and wellness. Maternal health monitoring and management, fertility and menopause management, therapeutic interventions such as treating pelvic floor disorders, and mental health management are expected to become mainstream.  With the healthcare industry expected to move from prescriptive to more predictive and proactive care, digital technologies for women’s health are expected to become integral for health management. AI and digital biomarkers show tremendous potential in predicting the risk of serious women's health conditions. Integrating AI into the devices will be critical for identifying the markers associated with high-risk women’s health conditions like cervical or breast cancer or risk of gestational diabetes or hypertension during pregnancy, to name a few use cases.

However, continuous innovation,addressing consumer pain points, customising features, and ensuring accessibility to all demographics can go a long way toward improving adoption prospects and reducing women's health burden.

Conflict of Interest

None