femtech:brief #10: The Gender Gap in Medicine
👋🏽👋🏽 Hello and welcome to the 10th edition of femtech:brief! Today we talk about the gender gap in medicine and how femtech is helping to brigde it.
The gender gap in medicine will continue to grow in 2021, but the gap is not as big as it has been in the past, thanks to evolving technology.
During the 80s, a group of female scientists in the US formed a society to campaign for better health research in women, now called the Society for Women’s Health Research. They teamed up with some US Congress members to draw attention to the discrepancies in medical research and the effect on women’s health.
“Because women can bear children, medical discourse associated women with the body and men with the mind, a binary division that reinforces and is reinforced by the public-private division ... In addition to restricting women’s public contribution, such beliefs provide medicine with an explanatory model of disease and illness in women: to deny one’s ‘biological destiny’ is to incite all manner of diseases, as Plato stated when theorising the wandering womb.” “
The implicit bias in evidence-based medicine
According to Aspivix, a Swiss startup developing medical solutions that empower clinicians to deliver the best possible care to their female patients, women-specific symptoms are often dismissed or misdiagnosed in evidence-based medicine because the majority of clinical studies are largely conducted in male subjects.
Women have been, and continue to be, misdiagnosed due to this bias. In fact, one of the main factors that lead women to suffer from an illness for longer time than men, is that women are still considered a medical mystery, which is another term for: the female body has been largely understudied and many medical professionals lack the knowledge required to treat a female patient adequately.
Indeed, women have a much greater chance of being misdiagnosed than their male counterparts, and some medical professionals are more likely to dismiss chronic pain in women than in men. In specific areas of healthcare, research showed the following trends in misdiagnosis:
Women are 50 percent more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack.
Women are 30 more likely to be misdiagnosed, or have their condition overlooked entirely, following a stroke.
It takes approximately five years for autoimmune diseases to be correctly identified and diagnosed in women.
Female-specific conditions (endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, etc.) often take 10 years or more for accurate identification and diagnosis.
Is femtech the answer to bridging the gap ?
While it is true that femtech startups have been mainly focused on reproductive health, the next generation of femtech companies are now looking beyond reproductive health to create a parallel health care industry tailored to women. These companies — many inspired by their founders’ personal experiences of how health care can fail women — are looking to exploit opportunities in mainstream medicine’s gender gap.
One such example is Tia, a startup self-denominated as the modern medical home for women. At Tia, they strive to offer healthcare that treats the whole you: a comprehensive in-person and virtual care to support your physical, mental and emotional health.
Another startup that is looking beyond reproductive health is renude. This startup offers personalised skincare routines for women of all ages and skin types.
💡 Did you know?
Not until 1993 were clinical trials required by law to include women in the U.S. Even the mice used in drug tests are usually male.
👁️ Bonus read
What gender bias can do to innovation.
Back in 2017, Janica Alvarez was trying to raise funding for her start-up Naya Health, where they had designed a smart breast pump that could measure milk nutrients and was comfortable to wear. But when the founder met with venture capitalists for funding, men sitting in the board room refused to touch the device, calling it “disgusting.”
You can read more details here.
That’s all for this week, and year for that matter! Thank you for joining us 🙂 We wish you a great holiday season 🎄 enjoy it with your loved ones and keep thinking of ways to challenge the status quo!