Female health is complex and is governed by several physical, emotional, and socioeconomic factors. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of medical things, wearables, social media, and virtual digital platforms have a significant role in helping us understand the underlying variables that cause differences between health outcomes in women and men. Below are THREE key areas and some general recommendations to improve applications and platforms in the FemTech space.

A. Technology

• Validation: Data is a critical component in the design of any digital health technology. Predictive algorithms used in any FemTech solution should be adequately validated regularly through standard clinical trials and using the real-world evidence data collected.
• Design: Wearables and smartphone-based solutions should have a design that is unobtrusive, minimal, and aesthetically pleasing to allow for comfortable wear in social settings. Solutions with mobile applications and web portals should have a user-friendly interface that is intuitive and captivating to maintain patient engagement.
• Cost: Currently, most FemTech solutions are sold to women directly. The cost of the solution should be affordable to users in all communities to provide value-based care.
• Technical Support: Any FemTech solution should be integrated with adequate technical support, customer support, and clinical support. Both the patients and providers should have access to training to use the solution with high confidence.

B. Solutions

B1. Solutions based on SDOH

Examples of Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) that impact healthcare delivery and outcomes include age, race, housing conditions, work, living conditions such as access to transportation, good food, childcare facilities, exercise, etc. FemTech solutions should leverage technology to incorporate SDOH in all phases of development to reduce racial health disparities and provide improved outcomes to all members of society equally. For example, companies like Wildflower Health (https://www.wildflowerhealth.com/) have developed powerful digital engagement platforms to provide value-based care to moms who have problems maintaining clinic appointments due to a lack of adequate transportation facilities and childcare.  The platform leverages the data collected from remote monitoring and risk assessments, and applies analytics to predict user behavior and determine insights into the user’s health.

Socio-cultural traditions in many parts of the world treat some women’s health issues such as infertility, menstrual health, sexual wellness, and contraceptives as taboo subjects. Such norms prevent women from seeking timely and adequate care leading to physical complications and mental health issues. Socio-cultural barriers to healthcare are highly prevalent in rural settings. FemTech solutions should leverage the transforming digital landscape to provide adequate healthcare to women in rural areas via virtual telehealth services, remote monitoring, and AI-empowered clinical decision support systems.

B2. Solutions for caregiver support

More than 60% of caregivers in the US are women. They provide care to both children and aging parents. A few platforms such as Maven Health (https://www.mavenclinic.com/) and Cleo (https://hicleo.com/) are offering support to parents (working or not) by providing virtual personalized guidance on topics such as family planning, fertility, maternity, return-to-work and childcare, mental health support, etc. The widespread adoption of telehealth and remote monitoring services that use AI to perform predictive and retrospective analytics is also a boon to caregivers.

B3. Solutions for mental health and sexual violence

Women are about two times more likely to suffer from depression than men. Though many FemTech virtual platforms provide mental and behavioral health support for women in all stages of life, only very few solutions have mental health as the core component. More solutions are needed to help women manage mental health issues arising from miscarriage, gender discrimination, eating disorders and poverty, domestic and sexual violence.

Nearly one in five women experience some form of sexual violence during their lifetime. While digital health solutions are emerging for screening and providing emotional health support for survivors of sexual violence, privacy and confidentiality should be critical components in designing such solutions to protect vulnerable women

B4. Integrative women’s health solutions

More work is needed in developing FemTech solutions that provide an integrative approach to healthcare. Such an approach is designed to discover the root cause of diseases and not just treat symptoms. It requires a multidisciplinary collaboration among a range of providers and the patient. For example, Tia provides a Whole Health Exam that includes annual primary care, gynecology exam, and mental health check-in to assess nine core health factors (reproductive health, genetic and family history, chronic stress, personal and social wellness, mental health, exercise, nutrition, sleep, and metabolism) (https://asktia.com/). The assessment helps to generate a personalized care plan for each woman.  Predictive Analytics algorithms will play a critical role in studying patterns in such large diverse datasets.

B5. Alternative Medicine based solutions

Science-backed alternate medicine approaches such as Ayurveda, Yoga, and Traditional Chinese Medicine could also become part of these integrative approaches for providing preventative wellness services and treatments. For instance, Gynoveda uses technology and Ayurveda to provide solutions for menstrual issues (https://gynoveda.com/). Tia also includes Acupuncture sessions to help women manage headaches, stress, pre-menstrual symptoms, etc.

C. Regulation and Privacy

Digital solutions always come with issues surrounding data security and privacy. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) defines personal health information categorized as Protected Health Information (PHI). Most FemTech companies that collect and store personal health data fall outside the purview of HIPAA. HIPAA should be amended to minimize the potential data and privacy risks associated with FemTech solutions. There should be better transparency of data use, and the users should have the ability to control how their data is used. Privacy and security should be considered while designing the technical architecture of any FemTech solution. If done correctly, it is possible to balance protecting users’ personal information and promoting innovation.