25 March 2024
Louisa Ghevaert had the pleasure of attending FemTech Lab’s Spring ‘24 Connect event at 22 Bishopsgate venue in London on 14 March 2024. It brought together creative minds, leaders, experts and entrepreneurs from across the digital and female health and consumer spaces. Its mission is to foster vision, inspiration, change, solutions and impact across the women’s health and technology sectors. This resonates in many ways in terms of building a better and brighter future and movement to address the gender health data gap, build trust and provide solutions and not just diagnostics at all stages of women’s lives.
Images: venue at 22 Bishopsgate London
FemTech Lab’s Spring ’24 Connect’s focus was (and continues to be) improving the lives and health of women around the world. Since its inception 4 years ago, FemTech Lab reports seeing continued growth in the women’s digital and health space, with more consumers and innovators wanting to join its programme and collaborate with innovative founders, investors, experts and leaders to deliver transformative results. It looks for visionary people who are passionate and committed to delivering solutions and a better future for women. At the core of its work, it challenges everyone to think about how best to anticipate the future female consumer and what drives her needs and wishes. Looking at women’s intimate health, discussions took place about the need for greater access, removal of shame and discomfort and more evidence upon which to create solutions. This raised searching questions about how to deal with the gender data gap and how best to re-frame the data we already have given the challenges and long timeframes associated with addressing big health studies from the top down. Discussions therefore focused on the value of starting to build small data sets and then scaling up sustainably and strategically to achieve impact.
Images: Louisa Ghevaert CEO and Founder Louisa Ghevaert Associates and Lucy Hope Founder of Daughters of Mars
Discussions at FemTech Lab’s Spring ’24 Connect event acknowledged that in future there are going to be bigger gaps between the haves and the have-nots. This will bring with it tough challenges. It will therefore be important to gather and drive differentiated data to build trust, since trust will drive the way forward. There also needs to be greater trust in data collection and protection for that data and ultimately the consumer. Discussions went on to highlight that women will continue to prioritise their mental and physical health at all stages of life from menstruation, pregnancy, birth through to menopause. Women will want to know whether something will work and she will look to her peers to find out what they think and are doing as well. There were also searching questions about what is “trusted science”? Discussions ensued that this involves trusted content, community and steps that get from a problem to solution as the end goal.
Images: venue at 22 Bishopsgate London
FemTech Lab’s Spring ’24 Connect event also looked at the role of technology in improving women’s lives and health. Technology has to be patient centric and something which looks to improve women’s experiences of healthcare and fertility treatment. Technology will be leveraged to deliver diagnostics quickly and online so they are readily available. Technology will also increasingly be integrated into businesses with increasing emphasis on digital health. Added to this, its not just a question of producing diagnostic information, since this alone can be difficult for people to know what to do with it, creating frustration, fear, anxiety and lack of engagement. Instead, there needs to be a focus on delivering the next action and step towards a solution.
Discussions also focused on women’s mental and holistic health. Women often carry most of the responsibility in their home for caring for others as well as themselves, which can cause high levels of stress in managing “inter-generational care”. Looking ahead, there will be greater demand and need for support for underlying areas of women’s lives including nutrition, hormonal health, beauty and wellness and a movement to a position of “beauty from the inside out”. As such, people should think in terms of cross-category and should think bigger, not least because there is now more interest in longevity for women and the differences in this compared with longevity in men. For example longevity in women encompasses menopause, post-partum depression, incontinence and intimate women’s health and poses questions about how best to help people age well.
Images: venue at 22 Bishopsgate London
FemTech Lab’s work in the female digital and health space shines an important light on areas which have been massively underserved in the past. It also brings together a community of talented and dedicated people who seek to improve the lived experiences and health of women around the world. It also reminds us that there is still a great deal of work yet to be done to address the gender health data gap, build trust and provide solutions and not just diagnostics at all stages of women’s lives.
Need Advisory & Consultancy, a Fertility, Surrogacy, Donor Conception or Modern Family Lawyer?
If you need advisory, consultancy or legal assistance to put in place effective strategies to manage fertility issues and preconception, fertility treatment and global family building, pregnancy, birth and family life contact Louisa Ghevaert by email louisa@louisaghevaertassociates.co.uk or telephone +44 (0)20 7965 8399.
Images: Louisa Ghevaert CEO & Founder Louisa Ghevaert Associates
