Going into 2025, “it feels like we’re finally starting to understand how biologically different women are from men,” said Oriana Papin-Zoghbi, Co-Founder and CEO of AOA Dx.
Ideally, that understanding would have already manifested. Although women of child-bearing age weren’t allowed to participate in clinical trials until 1993, the field of healthcare has had more than 30 years to make up for that exclusion and collect data on this half of the population. And yet, since women remain underrepresented in clinical trials, their health remains understudied and misunderstood. As a result, men are the default for everything from calculating drug doses to recognizing heart attack symptoms to designing and testing car safety features. And, despite their biological differences, women are reduced simply to “small men”.
In the new year, however, Ms. Papin-Zoghbi of AOA Dx. and other women’s health innovators and investors are hopeful about the momentum in women’s health, the potential innovations that recognize and serve women’s unique biological differences, and women’s ability to start understanding – and driving – their healthcare.
Challenges: Accessibility and Education
2025 won’t be without its challenges, though. Already, prior to any potential future restrictions on women’s health, women today face limited education around and access to (quality) healthcare. For example, only 46% of 1,000 surveyed women knew that genetic heredity cancer tests are available to understand their family risk of cancer (such as for breast and ovarian cancer, among others), 32% of U.S adults – men and women – are unsure whether emergency contraceptives are legal in their state (emergency contraceptives are legal in all states), and 21% of women aged 40 and over reported that they’ve never had a mammogram (mammograms are recommended at least every other year for women between the ages of 40 and 74).
But, in the next year, Jamie Norwood, Co-Founder of Winx Health, predicts that accessibility, education, and transparency will be at the “forefront of women’s health”, saying that they “are more important now than ever before with the growing risk of further restrictions nationwide and the overall lack of education around women’s healthcare. 50% of counties in the US don’t have OBGYNs, new reproductive health regulations are further restricting access to care, and there is a massive education gap.” She cited Winx Health’s free sexual education platform and other education efforts as resources “to empower women to make informed, confident health decisions”. Katie Diasti, Co-Founder of Viv, and Laura McDonald, Co-Founder and CEO of Flora Fertility agreed that companies can fill in these gaps; Viv’s community turns to it “every day of the month to learn and understand their bodies in a world that fails to teach and support women’s health and reproductive health” while Flora’s fertility benefits solution helps upcoming generations “be better suited for accessing [fertility coverage and care], should they need it.”
As Samantha Diamond, CEO and Co-Founder of Bird&Be, summarized: a trend in 2025 will be this access to “verified, medically-sound education to support women who are navigating care”: for menstruation, sexual education and health, fertility, and more.
Challenges: Reproductive Health
But the regulations, restrictions, and rulings around reproductive health – a label that can include menstruation, sexual health, contraception, fertility, preconception, childbirth, postpartum, and menopause – are major causes for concern for women’s health consumers and advocates. Delphine O’Rourke, JD, healthcare lawyer and Lead Partner at Portfolia’s FemTech Fund, noted, “In the past two and half years since Dobbs [v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization], battles have been fought across the U.S. to further define – because Dobbs left the definition so unclear and wide open – reproductive care at the state and federal levels.”
Case in point: six states’ have concluded their abortion litigation and 12 have ongoing lawsuits, according to KFF. Since the Dobbs decision in 2022, 17 states have also voted on abortion. The public voted to preserve those rights in 14 states, including both swing states that lean red, such as Arizona and Ohio, and traditionally conservative states, such as Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Montana. The three states that didn’t vote to protect abortion access were Nebraska, South Dakota, and Florida (whose proposed amendment received 57% support but required a 60% supermajority to pass).
According to Ms. O’Rourke, Dobbs drew an “invisible line in the sand” that states are now testing, through their policies on abortion and otherwise. “Alabama tested [this line] with IVF and saw that it pushed too far…Mifepristone [the abortion pill] will be tested again, as will EMTALA [the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act], medical emergencies, IVF.” She continued, “We will continue to see this back and forth in the middle states – they are a testing ground for stakeholders to experiment with how far is too far in either direction.”
Positive Trend: Self-Advocacy
Among those “testing grounds” is some positive news: “the majority of the public is advocating for the rights of themselves, their loved ones, and women everywhere”, Cynthia Plotch, Co-Founder of Winx Health shared. Like Ms. O’Rourke, she foresees that reproductive health will “continue to remain a huge area of interest in the coming months and years”, but that, simultaneously, women, “are smart and savvy, and are acting swiftly in preparation of what they see coming as it relates to reproductive health by stocking up on emergency contraception, birth control and more”. For Ms. Diamond of Bird&Be, government legislation, such as around reproductive health, and health systems’ limitations, such as in education and access to care, mean that “women, more than ever, need to be in the driver’s seat of their own healthcare.”
Kian Sadeghi, CEO and Founder of Nucleus, echoed that language, saying, “In the coming years, we expect to see continued investments in women’s health as consumers are becoming more involved in their own health journeys, taking the driver’s seat and driving purchases in their own health monitoring: from testing to daily health tracking and more”. Ms. Norwood of Winx Health called this rising ownership and involvement a “movement” while Halle Marchese, Director at Nucleus, referred to it as a “revolution”. She shared, “Women are used to not getting answers from doctors, or even being gaslit by symptoms. In the next year, we’re going to see a revolution to put the power back in the hands of women so that they don’t have to rely on the system that’s already failed them”. She believes this “revolution” will manifest in at-home testing, such as through products by Oura, Evvy, Tiny Health, Everlywell, and Nucleus.
Positive Trend: Women-Centric Tech & Data
These technologies and this testing can provide much-needed data about women since, as Ms. Papin-Zoghbi summarized, “Women’s data is essential to advancing the field and driving meaningful research”. Lindsey Calcutt, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Incora Health, agreed that technologies, such as at-home tests and wearables made for women, can not only offer “more personalized and relevant health data” but can be “functional” and “beautiful” as well, like Incora Health’s smart earrings. But she cautioned female consumers against technology that still defaults to men. “Beware of bad insights,” she warned. “Tech that isn’t made specifically for women and is designed to default for men can provide poor or even dangerous recommendations for women.” Fitness trackers are one type of wearable that can potentially be “wildly inaccurate” for women because a woman’s resting heartbeat changes throughout her menstrual cycle. Dr. Calcutt explained, “When wearables don’t distinguish the difference, they may prompt women to over-exert themselves during their workouts.”
Likewise, consumers should be aware of how their data is being used. Some companies, according to Ms. Papin-Zoghbi of AOA Dx., have “robust legal frameworks, transparent practices, and clear communication” about data use while others do not. For both women’s health companies and consumers, the focus should be on “finding ways to actively contribute to research while being thoughtful and cautious about how your data is handled.”
In short, 2025 marks a “pivotal point” for technology, said Offer Yehudai, CEO and Co-Founder of Arya. He specified, “In the last half decade, we’ve seen technology used as a tool to invest in nearly every aspect of our wellness: from learning new skills, improving our sleep, to monitoring our health…In the next year, we’re going to see more tech infiltrate our lives, and we’re at a pivotal point to dictate how this will be implemented”.
While this technology and the data it provides can fill gaps in understanding women’s health, it is not the only valuable source of information for women; they can also support improvements in their own healthcare by speaking out about their health in the first place. Conditions like infertility, menopause, osteoporosis, and painful periods are common among women; infertility affects one in six couples, menopause affects all menstruating women, more than eight million American women have osteoporosis, and around 80% of women experience painful periods at some point in their lives. And yet, those conditions remain shameful: a societal silence that hinders the public’s understanding of just how common they are. For a quantified example, 15-20% of confirmed pregnancies end in miscarriage, but a national survey found that 55% of people, both men and women, believe that miscarriages occur in only 5% or fewer of all pregnancies.
Both “movement” (to use Ms. Norwood of Winx’s words) and “revolution” (to use Ms. Marchese of Nucleus’) describe this same phenomenon: women overcoming any shame and speaking out about their health issues. One recent manifestation of this trend is Naomi Watts, whom CNN recognized as one of its “Risk Takers” for 2024, because she was afraid of sharing her own menopause experiences – but did so anyway. She didn’t let the historical stigma associated around menopause keep her, and other women, silent, suffering, and without needed care.
Positive Trend: Private Sector Support
And this change is not necessarily dependent on the federal government and the new administration, which will likely move away from the unprecedented support for women’s health that the Biden Administration has shown: from November 2023 and the launch of White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research to December 2024 and the White House Conference on Women’s Health Research. Marissa Fayer, MBA, CEO of DeepLook Medical, was an attendee at the White House Conference and knows the change in administration “is a concern for all of us”. But she has faith that “women and women’s health will persevere irrespective of politics” since women’s healthcare is “not discerning of political choice”. Rather, women “will continue to develop cancer, endometriosis, and other diseases that affect us, regardless of who is in office.
Arianne Kidder, Partner at Seae Ventures, thinks that these challenges can actually fuel growth, opportunities, and this perseverance – just through the private sector rather than the public one. When restrictions limit access,” she said, “virtual or telehealth services see growth. For some companies, there has been an inverse relationship between the states implementing backwards policy and momentum in innovation.” In other words, the private sector in 2025 might be spearheading innovation in women’s health – or, as Ms. Fayer puts it, “will and must continue [its] work, regardless of the administration”.
Private investment in women’s health is already trending upwards: Mr. Sadeghi of Nucleus shared, “Venture-backed investments in women’s health are growing, charting a 5% YoY growth in 2023, despite overall healthcare investment dropping nearly $10 billion”. He noted that Nucleus is seeing this traction itself with month-over-month growth and over $18M in investments. Meanwhile, according to PitchBook Data, venture-backed companies labeled as “women’s health”, “women’s healthcare”, or “femtech” have seen an increase from 52 deals and $359M collectively raised in 2015 to 108 deals and $1.25B collectively raised this far in 2024.
Christy Lane, MD, Co-Founder and President of Flora Fertility, called it “critical” to continue investing in women “to drive new research, innovation and more that will meet the evolving demands of women today”. Mr. Sadeghi believed that this investment is not only critical but forthcoming, predicting that the coming years will bring “continued investments in women’s health”. Likewise, Alice Zheng, Partner at Foreground Capital, says that the women’s health space “will continue to gain investment and awareness”, that “state-level regulations will become more important [now than in the past] when it does come to reproductive health”, and that the country will see “opportunities within the private sector given regulatory shifts (e.g. OTC birth control)”.
To take advantage of these “opportunities”, innovators, investors, and consumers all must act. In the words of Ms. Fayer of DeepLook Medical, “As innovators, we need to innovate. As investors, we need to support the areas that personally affect us as women and areas that we are concerned about. As consumers, we need to put our money behind the products, technologies, and companies that align with our values”. Dr. Lane of Flora Fertility concurs that money talks, saying, “As advocates, consumers and entrepreneurs – our money matters.” And Ms. Norwood of Winx thinks that women’s health consumers can use their influence to “push for innovation by demanding increased access to women’s healthcare essentials, enforcing the importance of education, and combatting misinformation”. And these resulting increases in access, education, innovations, and investment won’t benefit only women; rather, they can have a ripple effect. As Mr. Yehudai of Arya explained, “When women are happy, the economy, society, and our health as a country is improved.”
To Ms. Papin-Zoghbi of AOA Dx., women’s health “should be a priority for anyone who cares about the well-being of women”. But that group that needs to include women themselves. Ms. Calcutt of Incora hopes that, in the new year, women’s own perspectives will change so that they “truly begin to prioritize their health. For too long, women have put their healthcare needs on the back burner (whether they be juggling their career, family, kids and more) to their own detriment.” For 2025, she said, “This needs to change.”