FemTech refers to the range of digital health technologies that focus specifically on women’s health. A majority of the solutions include wearable devices, smartphone applications, connected medical devices, and digital platforms to address women’s health in the areas of reproductive health (menstrual health, fertility, menopause, pregnancy, and maternal care) and non-reproductive health (cancers of the breast, ovary, and cervix, chronic and autoimmune conditions, and general wellness).

Women are about 49.5% of the global population. However, in 2018, only 4.7% of the total healthcare funding in the US went towards developing products and services for women’s health! Why? Researchers were concerned that women’s menstrual and hormonal cycles would complicate research experiments for a long time. Only in 1994, the National Institutes of Health mandated the inclusion of women in clinical trials enabling a better understanding and research of women’s health data. Women and men are different in terms of anatomy and metabolisms. Therefore, there is a critical need to include women in clinical trials and develop products specific to improving women’s health. Gender-specific healthcare services and solutions are the need of the hour.

In recent years, the technological field has taken significant steps to address gender disparities giving rise to FemTech (short for ‘female technology’) solutions. It was a term coined by Ida Tin, the co-founder and CEO of the period tracking app, Clue. It comprises digital tech solutions (software, hardware, wearables, Internet of Medical Things, smartphone applications) to improve women’s health in the areas of general health and wellness, reproductive health (menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, prenatal and postnatal care, and sexual health) (Figure 1), cancers (breast, ovarian, cervical), and other chronic and autoimmune conditions (Figure 2). Frost & Sullivan projects that by 2025, FemTech solutions will have a market size of up to USD 50 billion.

It will be interesting to watch the growth in this space!