4 Predictions From Top VCs For Women’s Health In 2022

The necessity for extra funding in girls’s and household well being has by no means been extra pressing. The pandemic drove tens of millions of girls out of the workforce as a result of household and well being obligations, a development that disproportionately impacts communities of shade. The American Medical Affiliation has referred to as our nation’s present Black maternal well being disaster “an American tragedy.” Transformative improvements in girls’s and household well being not solely advance well being fairness, however may also improve particular person household funds and contribute extra broadly to financial productiveness.

But, girls’s well being (an admittedly imperfect nomenclature which fails to embody the complete spectrum of variety it providers) has by no means held its rightful place as one of many greatest classes in digital well being for enterprise capital. A couple of years in the past, whole funding within the area barely hit $100 million; in 2021, it surpassed $1 billion for the first time. Whereas that inflow of capital is notable, it isn’t practically sufficient. Simply 4% of all healthcare R&D and simply 5% of digital health investment is concentrated on girls’s well being, and girls are nonetheless under-represented in practically all scientific trials.

The women’s health market is projected to hit $60 billion by 2027. As we wrap up a yr of milestones for the sector, I caught up with a few of the trade’s main traders to get their predictions for the place girls’s and household well being is headed going into 2022.

1) Fertility tech will rework assisted replica and put extra deal with males’s our bodies.

Not less than 1 in 8 {couples} battle to conceive, and it prices roughly $60,000 to efficiently conceive a baby by in vitro fertilization (IVF). Worse, IVF is without doubt one of the few well being applied sciences that has seen utilization and outcomes decline prior to now 20 years. Technological breakthroughs pioneered by firms like Alife Health can enhance the effectivity and efficacy of therapy by laptop imaginative and prescient, diversified knowledge units, and vertical software program options. And though this sounds apparent, it’s nonetheless not broadly understood that half of all fertility points are tied to situations in males’s our bodies—an space that’s simply now beginning to see extra funding. 

Leslie Schrock, writer, entrepreneur, and angel investor, believes that the fertility dialog in 2022 will increase to incorporate males, with investments going towards firms that concentrate on their our bodies and training, addressing situations reminiscent of DNA fragmentation in sperm which might be a standard reason behind recurrent miscarriage: “As an investor and mother of two boys, I used to be heartened to see celebrities publicly spend money on firms like Legacy, and hope that their involvement drives additional consciousness and dialog about this downside,” stated Schrock, who’s an advisor and/or investor in firms together with Alife, Maven, Oath, Legacy, and Emme.

2) Options will increase to deal with under-served populations, particularly households in rural communities and people lined by Medicaid.

Many digital well being firms, together with these centered on girls’s well being, had been initially constructed to service non-public pay and extra easily-accessible populations, however the occasions from the previous two years have strengthened the necessity and alternative for digital well being options that successfully interact girls in rural populations and underserved communities. Half the infants in America are born below Medicaid, and a few of the main firms within the class, together with its first unicorn, Maven Clinic, are transferring past the preliminary employer buyer set to increase to those populations.

Alyssa Jaffee, Accomplice at 7wireVentures, believes digital well being options ought to “deal with growing entry and affordability of testing and therapy providers by eliminating well being care’s geographic boundaries and increasing experience for therapy planning and general care administration into the house.”

3) Group-based client well being is making a comeback.

Many options concentrating on girls’s well being have centered on employers, however that has held again some customers from feeling comfy connecting with others who’re going by fertility struggles, being pregnant, and changing into new mother and father. Not everybody feels protected sharing their being pregnant journey with an employer, significantly within the early phases.

Chrissy Farr, well being tech investor at OMERS Ventures, predicts there’s a large alternative for functions that may construct group by specializing in shoppers, and that suppliers may even must be part of the combination.

“I’ve seen firms pop up within the seed phases to do exactly that, and it’s critically essential that these companies be certain that girls are accessing high-quality, evidence-based info,” she stated. “What I’m assured about is that Fb Teams will not be the long run for connecting mother and father at this overwhelming time, significantly given the rise in misinformation. We have to carry the mother group into the Twenty first-century and join girls to the help networks they want.” 

4) Precision drugs is crucial to scaling care supply amidst rising demand.

The primary wave of innovation and funding in girls’s and household well being has centered largely on growth of entry. The subsequent wave must deal with offering really personalised care and high quality outcomes by constructing extra inclusive communities on the affected person and supplier degree, and in addition by considerate functions of expertise. To take action, firms want to make sure that AI avoids bias and incorporates extra inclusive datasets and serves practitioners from numerous backgrounds and with experience throughout totally different modalities and specialties. 

Digital well being innovation can be important to addressing a rising disaster: demand for healthcare providers in the USA is barely growing. What is commonly much less mentioned is the not-so-slow march, the plummeting variety of suppliers throughout main and specialty care–together with OB/GYNs and embryologists—that’s inevitable within the subsequent ten years. We have to make the most of expertise and tech-enabled providers to enhance the effectivity and efficacy of suppliers in order that we are able to proceed to satisfy affected person wants with out sacrificing high quality outcomes; platform options reminiscent of SteadyMD supply a tech-optimized answer to energy the present and impending digital well being demand for high quality care.

Aike Ho, principal at ACME Capital, is optimistic in regards to the potential of expertise to unlock capability and tackle underlying structural points.

“I’m excited to proceed to see and spend money on digital well being firms that aren’t solely delivering sought-after providers but additionally constructing actual expertise that scales past human constraints,” she stated. “That’s the distinction between healthcare firms that allow expertise versus expertise firms that allow healthcare.” 

As we method the top of a watershed yr for girls’s well being, these traders share a standard sentiment: we’re simply getting began. Cheers to a contented and more healthy 2022 for girls, households, and communities in all places.