Corporate DEI may be entering a quieter phase under political and legal pressure. Yet, women’s health is getting louder! The signal is hard to miss: specialist funds with multiple unicorns, mainstream innovation lists packed with maternal, breast, autoimmune, and menopause solutions, and Fortune-500 buyers who increasingly see women’s health as risk reduction plus productivity lift. In a defining moment last week, Hologic (the company with many of the world’s most trusted breast and cervical cancer diagnostics) has agreed to be taken private by Blackstone and TPG in an $18B deal. The transaction, which includes one of the largest-ever private equity buyouts in our space, highlights just how far women’s health has come. Clinical need, economic value, and cultural acceptance finally rhyme.
A couple of years ago, conference agendas still framed endometriosis and preeclampsia as “gaps.” Today, those same topics sit on innovation panels with tangible solutions: risk stratification, earlier detection, and care-pathway integration. That migration, from identifying problems to operationalizing products, is an important leading indicator of commercial traction. Payors and providers don’t buy awareness; they buy workflows that move outcomes and budgets. The story evolved from “women are underserved” to “here’s a measured way to save money, reduce complications, and keep employees productive.”
Capital is behaving accordingly. Dedicated investors like Portfolia have demonstrated portfolio depth and outcomes that many generalist funds dismissed as “niche” just a cycle ago. As we recently heard at the Women’s Health summit, the founding energy in this space is personal (i.e., companies born from lived experience and unmet need) and that passion is now undeniably paired with clinical rigor. Meanwhile, generalist capital is beginning to follow (but not lead) and still falls far short of where it should, with only 4% of funding going to women’s health. Yet, that’s a tell: when specialists price discovery and build repeatable diligence patterns, and generalists validate later, it is a tell of an emergent category maturing into an asset class.
If you need another indicator, scan TIME’s 2025 Best Inventions list. It’s saturated with women’s health touchpoints: maternal risk assessment (e.g., Mirvie), bone health (Osteoboost), cervical screening (Teal Health), autoimmune neuromodulation (SetPoint Systems), and practical, low-tech innovations like blood-loss drapes that save lives in low-resource settings. Not everything is “femtech” in the narrow sense, and some solutions benefit all genders, but the signal again is unmistakable: the burden of disease, underdiagnosis, and care friction that disproportionately affect women are finally getting productized.
Why now? We believe there are three converging forces.
1) The macroeconomics are quantified: Closing the women’s-health outcome gap is projected to add $1T+ annually to global GDP by 2040. CFOs don’t invest in opportunities because it is “the right thing to do”; they invest in growth, risk reduction, and labor productivity.
2) The pipeline is more translational: Point solutions are bundling into pathways: diagnostics tied to protocols, remote monitoring tied to triage, employer benefits tied to measurable absenteeism and complication reduction.
3) Distribution learned some lessons: Employer channels, retail partners, and IDNs are moving faster than traditional clinical sales alone, allowing companies to meet patients where they are and show outcomes within a benefits cycle.
Many of the discussions we have with investors center around: where will value concentrate over the next 1-2 years?
1) Menopause and midlife metabolic health: This is not just hot flashes; it’s cardiometabolic risk, bone density, sleep, and cognition. Solutions that combine clinical diagnostics, longitudinal engagement, and pragmatic outcomes (fewer acute visits, better adherence, improved QoL scores) will win payor attention.
2) Maternal health: Preeclampsia and preterm-birth risk stratification improve care plans earlier. The ROI math here is straightforward: predict complications, tailor prenatal care, avert high-cost events.
3) Endometriosis and pelvic pain: The “diagnostic odyssey” is finally getting a triage stack (imaging AI + biomarkers + navigation) that can shave years off a diagnosis while reducing unnecessary procedures.
4) Autoimmune disease: They disproportionately affect women. Device-enabled neuromodulation and targeted therapies tied to CDx can cut flares and emergency utilization.
5) Sexual, menstrual, and urogenital health: These areas stand out for their blend of Rx/OTC tools and care delivery hybrids that slash friction for patients and procurement.
On the investor side, we often discuss a few underwriting heuristics:
1) Platform adjacency matters: we’ll pay up for a menopause platform that can extend into bone and cardiometabolic management, or maternal-risk solutions that logically expand into neonatal and pediatrics.
2) Data moats come from longitudinal engagement windows of 6-18 months; they lower CAC, improve triage, and enable premium pricing.
3) B2B2E (employer) and retail channels remain powerful accelerants to clinical adoption, especially when evidence packages are built for those buyers.
4) And we’re biased toward clear test-to-therapy linkages: “companion diagnostics”, algorithmic protocols, and formulary relationships that translate detection into action without a bureaucratic scavenger hunt.
What should operators do differently?
1) Lead with outcomes economics, not personas: For every product line, package three “ROI receipts”: one adverse event avoided, one ED visit prevented, and one diagnostic cycle shortened. Keep them one page each. This is the language of benefits leaders, CFOs, and medical directors.
2) Don’t ship tests without pathways. A test that doesn’t change a decision is just an invoice. We previously commented about it at length here. Bundle screening with triage, provider handoffs, and remote monitoring. Price on avoided cost or guaranteed milestones.
3) Design your evidence for payor KPIs: Pragmatic studies that hit readouts in under 12 months and map cleanly to HEDIS/Stars or employer productivity metrics will unlock scale faster than elegant but academic trials.
4) Treat category marketing as infrastructure: Too many point solutions create buyer fatigue. Establish common language about the problem, shared proof points, and clear “before/after” flows. Borrow Consumer Goods discipline: simple, repeatable, and buyer-ready.
What could stall momentum?
1) Underfunded foundational research: If federal and philanthropic dollars don’t keep pace, we risk shallow pipelines and me-too features. Industry can translate need into action, but it still draws from an academic bench.
2) Reimbursement inertia is another deadweight loss: great pilots die in procurement purgatory. Solve this with aligned codes, total-cost models, and “drop-in” outcomes packs that speak the buyer’s language.
3) Hype cycles are a third risk. The halo of DTC can create attention spikes, or ... backlash. Keep the center of gravity clinical, measurable, boringly effective.
4) Fragmented narratives force every company to re-educate from scratch. The fix is category-level storytelling: shared math, shared vocabulary, better analogies. (“70% of clinical decisions rely on diagnostics,” is a good start; so is “a dollar in timely testing saves X dollars downstream.”)
If you’re a health system, employer, or payor leader, the playbook is mercifully short. Pick three women’s-health priorities tied to your cost drivers (e.g., maternal complications, autoimmune flares, or midlife metabolic risk) and pilot solutions that combine screening with care navigation. Demand pragmatic evidence in under a year and contract on milestones you actually track. If you’re a policymaker or grantmaker, aim your dollars at the stubborn evidence gaps: endometriosis biomarkers, preeclampsia pathophysiology, sex-specific dosing and trial design, autoimmune disease progression in women. A relatively small lift in foundational research goes a long way when industry is primed to translate.
And if you’re building in this space: start with the end in mind.
1) Define your intended use and label claims on day zero.
2) Design studies against those claims.
3) Pre-build your “ROI receipts.”
4) Map your care pathway, and rehearse your procurement conversation before your first customer meeting.
5) Land with enterprise channels (employers, retailers, IDNs)
6) Use DTC as a demand amplifier and data engine, not your primary go-to-market. If you must choose between another glossy product reel and a brutally clear outcomes deck, choose the latter, every time.
The women’s-health surge is not charity; it’s the market discovering overlooked value. When we correct that, everyone wins. Fewer complications. Fewer expensive surprises. More days at work. More predictability in budgets. It’s the rare overlap of equity and efficiency, of doing the right thing and being rewarded for it.
Let’s take full advantage of the window. Operators: bundle tests with pathways and outcomes. Investors: underwrite adjacency and evidence you can measure in quarters, not decades. Buyers: demand pragmatic proof and contract on what matters. Policymakers and funders: keep the science flowing so the pipeline doesn’t thin just as the market wakes up. We have the momentum. Now we need the discipline to turn it into durable impact, for patients, for systems, and, yes, for P&Ls.
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Note: Some of the companies listed in this article may be DeciBio Consulting clients.
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