Health Learning 1: Why femtech opportunities are not limited to female reproduction.

Personalisation in health — why dis-aggregating health research data according to the sex of each cell (XX vs XY) is a huge opportunity.

Firstly — to call out that a lot of what I learnt recently was from Caroline Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women, and the amazing work of Paula Johnson. I am still learning(!!), and I’d love to talk with anyone exploring this space. I am both an angel investor and consumer investor at growth stage. Please feel free to reach out!

I have noticed recently that coverage of female health opportunities can be scoped as synonymous with reproductive health: I am very excited about these types of opportunities. However, I am also discovering (perhaps naively!) that:

• Each cell in the body in fact has a sex; XX vs XY, this is broadly different for men vs. women. So each organ e.g. heart, lungs etc. are in fact different..

Therefore:

• External factors like alcohol and of course drugs have different impacts on XX vs XY cells
• Health interventions can in fact have divergent impacts on XX vs XY cells

Yet…what I also learnt is that medical research and clinical studies are not necessarily analysed in a dis-aggregated way to look at the different impacts on XX vs. XY cells.

In addition, it is not necessarily true that a statistically relevant number of female participants are included in clinical trials or have to be according to health regulation.

One example that I found particularly poignant in Caroline’s book was the example of a female sexual health product. The pharmaceutical manufacturer of this product had to re-run a clinical study for the drug in 2015. For this study — more than 20 men were recruited, and less than 5 women… The study was completed and the drug continued to be used. I had to re-read this.. how could it be that this female centric health study was carried out with so few women? And how was this within approved health regulation, in 2015…just 5 years ago?!

Also through Paula Johnson’s research I found that the leading cause for death for women in the US and Europe is heart disease, however, that the ‘gold standard’ diagnostic test does not necessarily identify this disease in women given this manifests itself differently vs. many male cases. In fact Caroline’s book points out that in the case of aspirin (which has been found to be effective in preventing a first heart attack in men) was found in studies in 2011 and 2015 not only to be ineffective in women, but potentially harmful ‘in the majority of patients’.

I feel quite shocked…sad…but also excited by future potential: What are the opportunities we have in front of us where female health can be improved?

• For example, what are the health interventions that could have worked on XX cells but were discounted and could be re-visited?
• Are there new more effective, less expensive even, interventions that could become available?
• Could this be achieved in a scalable way leveraging technology? e.g. could companies like Unlearn help to re-run some of these clinical trials via the use of digital twins?

To this point I am also quite fascinated in new opportunities for longitudinal data collection and analysis in health by leveraging technology, please see my follow up article :) if you are also interested.