FemTech: Closing the healthcare gender gap

Recent reports show that addressing these gaps is not only a moral and clinical imperative, but it also represents an economic opportunity. Estimates suggest that closing the women’s health gap could add more than $1 trillion to the global economy by 2040 by facilitating better female health and enabling women to get into, and stay in, work. As around half of the global population is female, we need to shift our focus in order to close the gaps – and that’s where FemTech (feminine technology) comes in.

At CPI, we recognise that innovation in health must be inclusive by design. To accelerate progress, we must first understand the needs, gaps, and challenges still shaping women’s health today. 

What is FemTech?

Experts note a need for ​“deep FemTech” science-first technologies that apply bioengineering, advanced diagnostics, and AI to detect and treat chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, cancers, endocrine disorders, and autoimmune conditions that are disproportionately affecting women. 

Some progress has been made on FemTech to date, with global adoption of the following technologies: 

• Period and flow trackers – such as Flo, Clue and Ovia. 

• Fertility support apps – also Flo, as well as Natural Cycles, Ovia Fertility and Glow. 

• General feminine wellness tools – such as Formula, Headspace and MenoLabs. 

Although this is a good start, these technologies are limited to fertility and cycle-tracking technology and so there’s still a long way to go. 

What are the gaps in women’s health?

Better representation in research and data 

Women have historically been excluded from, or underrepresented in clinical studies, as women’s hormonal cycles and reproductive physiology introduce ​‘complexity’ into research. Although policy changes have improved inclusivity, the consequences persist today. Many diagnostics and treatments, especially in cardiology, pain management, and mental health are still based primarily on male physiology and we still lack robust data on how they affect women differently, despite biological differences influencing conditions ranging from cardiovascular disease to mental health. 

Understanding differential presentation is key. Women were rarely considered autistic historically, due to early research focusing almost exclusively on boys, creating a male-centric, stereotypical definition of autism. Female presentations often differ with more internal, subtle, and socially camouflaged ​‘masking’ behaviours and nearly 80% of women with autism are misdiagnosed. 

Improved understanding of female-specific and female-predominant conditions 

Conditions such as endometriosis, menopause, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), pregnancy and maternal health complications contribute significantly to women’s overall disease burden. In fact, nine key conditions account for one-third of the women’s health gap, creating both personal and societal costs. However, we lack scientific understanding and reliable biomarkers to create diagnostics and inform clinical practice. 

Holistic approaches to lifespan health 

Women’s health needs to evolve throughout life, from adolescence and reproductive years through menopause and later life. Growing up, topics such as menstruation, menopause and dysmenorrhea were common taboos in school and teenage life, which hindered open dialogue and investment in the wider world.

However, it has been observed that efforts are increasing to break this taboo with high-profile programmes, including the UK Government’s first Women’s Health Strategy for England published in 2022 and the Gates Foundation $2.5 billion commitment to women’s health. Davina McCall’s 2021 TV programme Sex, Myths and the Menopause also made menopause a topic of national discussion. 

These initiatives reflect growing recognition of the need for a life-course approach, one that supports both girls and women with targeted, appropriate care at every stage of life. 

How do we address these needs?

Research, evidence and funding 

Historic evidence gaps directly hinder FemTech product development. Women’s hormonal cycles and reproductive physiology should not be reasons for exclusion but instead provoke deeper study. There are fewer validated biomarkers, fewer female-specific datasets, and a shortage of clinical trials designed around women’s physiology. 

Only around 5% of global R&D funding is directed toward women-focused health conditions, often with an overemphasis on fertility and pregnancy (75% of total FemTech research funding) and women’s cancers. This leaves major conditions like menopause (only 0.55% of total FemTech funding), sexual health, autoimmune disorders, PCOS, and chronic pain under-researched relative to their prevalence. This has widened the data gap over decades and created treatments that do not fully account for female biology. 

More medical research is required, which is inclusive of (or centred around) women and girls, with substantial, long-term funding shifts required to reverse decades of imbalance. Funding models must expand beyond high-mortality diseases to include chronic and quality-of-life-impacting conditions affecting millions of women. 

Delayed diagnosis and misdiagnosis 

Women face significantly longer diagnostic delays for conditions such as endometriosis, rare diseases, and cardiovascular illnesses. Many symptoms are normalised rather than investigated. Endometriosis alone has an average delay of more than seven years before diagnosis — a reflection of systemic oversight in female health screening. 

More female-biology-focused diagnostics – and women-centric care pathways – are required to stop this from happening. 

Inequities across demographics 

Women from marginalised backgrounds experience poorer access to care, dismissal and trivialisation, reduced diagnostic accuracy, and ultimately worse outcomes. Black women are four times more likely than white women to die in pregnancy or childbirth.

Women, particularly older women, often encounter challenges such as limited mobility, caregiving responsibilities, lower income, and reduced access to long-term care. These social determinants disproportionately affect women’s ability to seek and receive timely care. 

Global frameworks are increasingly calling for solutions that include all women, regardless of geography, socioeconomic status, or demographics. 

A call to action for everyone

Closing the gender gap in women’s healthcare will require collaboration across research institutions, innovators, industry, and policymakers. The FemTech blueprint is becoming clearer: count women, study women, care for women, include all women, and invest in women across their entire lives. 

At CPI, we are committed to enabling the next wave of FemTech innovation that supports these goals, from more inclusive research design to technology development that reflects the needs of women worldwide. 

Our commitment is reflected not only in our project portfolio, but also in the experiences of the innovators we work alongside. Lucy Hope, Founder of The Daughters of Mars, shared ​“CPI has been an outstanding partner to work with. Their team brings deep scientific and engineering expertise, but always with a clear focus on how ideas translate into real-world manufacturing and commercial scale.” She continued, ​“As founder of The Daughters of Mars developing novel women’s health technology, it has been incredibly valuable to work alongside scientists who are both rigorous and pragmatic in their thinking.” For her organisation, CPI’s support has provided a bridge between scientific ambition and practical deployment: ​“CPI has helped us explore practical pathways for translating our menstrual product coating innovation for proactive vaginal health into something that can ultimately reach millions of women.” 

Experiences like this underscore the momentum building across FemTech, and the role CPI plays in advancing it. Here are some of the ways that we have had a positive impact on FemTech in the marketplace: 

• Supported female entrepreneurs and FemTech products, for example our work with BoobyBiome and LBN Innovations.

• Working on initiatives to implement personalised medicine and move away from the traditional, ​‘one size fits all’ approach to healthcare. 

• Create dedicated development and testing facilities including anatomical phantoms, enabling innovators to explore sex-specific innovations. 

• Deploy advanced materials, pharmaceuticals and formulations expertise to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and monitoring technologies tailored to female physiology. 

• Creating wireless communication and data-rich testing environments that integrate advanced sensors, non-invasive wearables and digital health technologies, supporting continuous and remote measurement of conditions that have historically been understudied in women such as chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations. 

Key takeaways

There’s currently a big gap in the HealthTech market for FemTech and women’s health solutions. CPI has the know-how and capabilities to address these market gaps, by supporting innovation where female-specific research is lacking. 

With support from CPI, FemTech and women’s health companies across the globe can design, develop and fabricate new HealthTech products; as well as generate robust, clinically relevant data for conditions with known diagnostic delays such as pregnancy, endometriosis and menopause-related disease. 

By combining engineering biology, advanced materials, data-driven technologies and scalable manufacturing, CPI helps innovators move from concept to clinic faster, turning promising ideas into impactful solutions for women’s health.