Women control most healthcare decisions, why doesn’t the healthcare industry serve them better?
In most industries, businesses follow the dollars. In the wacky world of healthcare, while that is sometimes the case, in other cases, not so much. Let’s take women’s health, for example.
Women:
· Make up 51% of the population
· Are the primary-healthcare decision makers in their families 90% of the time¹
· Control 80% of household healthcare spending²
· Spend 27% more on healthcare per capita than their male peers³
· And yet, 66% feel misunderstood by health care market⁴
Pretty impressive numbers, right?
The fact is that despite women making the lion’s share of decisions and dollars when it comes to overall healthcare spend, women’s health gets a relatively low share, hovering around $1B of the $21B of seed, venture capital and private equity dollars that went to digital health funding in 2020.⁵
The real opportunity is much, much bigger. We just need to expand how we think about women’s health.
Recent innovations and investments in women’s health have traditionally focused narrowly on reproductive health. A Rock Health report found that of the 51 women’s health startups funded through the first half of 2020, roughly half focused on fertility alone (n = 24), and another third targeted pregnancy (n = 17).
As the average age for first-time mothers continues to rise and fertility concerns become more common, it will be increasingly important for women to access the most up-to-date information in this space. But while fertility and pregnancy are incredibly worthwhile areas of focus — and, I would argue, are critical health conditions for society to support -women trying to conceive or who are pregnant make up a small proportion of the 45% of women who are reproductive age. That means that most of the dollars for women’s health are going to a minority of the market.
The good news is that the women’s health market is starting to expand. Interest and investment in a wider range of conditions have taken off recently as overall awareness and comfort with women’s health has grown. While not all women will get pregnant in their lifetimes, virtually all women who reach their 50’s will go through menopause. By 2025, 1.1 billion women are expected to be postmenopausal. According to the Female Founders Fund, a venture capital fund that exclusively funds, you guessed it, female founders, the average spend over the course of menopause (which can last anywhere from four to 10(!) years) is $20,000. That is an attractive market by anyone standards.
Another area of interest and investment is in reimagining the primary care experience for women, where the focus is on whole-person health and delivering a more consumer-friendly experience at the doctor’s office. These modern clinics combine general health and wellness, women-specific health issues and mental health, delivered by a coordinated care team and supported by a technology platform that enables personalized care. All while providing human touches such as cloth kimonos, instead of tissue-paper “gowns” and socks to protect again cold floors. Sounds almost pleasant, right? And these aren’t concierge practices, they are covered by many insurance companies with the belief that investing in primary health is critical to identifying and ultimately preventing, the development of (costly) health conditions.
Increasing the number of women in leadership positions across the healthcare spectrum will help drive future innovation. Venture capital firms with at least one female investing partner are three times more likely to fund companies with female CEOs — but less than 10% of investing partners in US venture capital firms are women. In 2019, women-founded or women-led companies received just 2.7% of overall venture funding. And lastly, while 80% of healthcare industry employees are women, fewer than 20% are in leadership roles.
We’ve come a long way (baby), and there is still a lot more work to do. But there is reason to be optimistic. Stay tuned as we take a deeper dive into some exciting opportunities in women’s health in the coming days!
This article is the first in a series focused on Women’s Health launching this March in celebration of Women’s History Month. Stay tuned for additional articles and points of view from our Slalom Life Sciences and Healthcare team.
References
- Yankelovich Monitor, 2019
- Greenfield Online for Arnold’s Women’s Insight Team
- CMS, U.S. Personal Healthcare Spend, 2018
- Greenfield Online for Arnold’s Women’s Insight Team
- Rock Health Digital Health Funding, 2020
Meet the Author:
Leah is passionate about women’s health and well-being and has over 20 years of experience as a consultant, operator and in corporate venture roles across healthcare and consumer-focused businesses. She now works at Slalom, helping a range of healthcare companies accelerate change.
Slalom is a modern consulting firm focused on strategy, technology and business transformation. Our healthcare and life sciences industry teams partner with healthcare, biotech and pharmaceutical leaders to strengthen their organizations, improve their systems, and help with some of their most strategic business challenges. Find out more about our people, our company and what we do.
