Women’s health has historically been underfunded. Yet, it remains one of the most promising investment spaces in health care.
Women are often called the chief health officers in their families, as they make up to 80% of health care decisions. Still, research has not adequately supported the unique physiology of women’s bodies across the lifespan.
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Advances in women’s health, from at-home diagnostics to midlife care solutions, will help close the gender research gap and unlock a massive economic opportunity. For one, a 2023 Mayo Clinic report found that the economic burden of untreated menopausal symptoms amounts to nearly $2 billion in lost productivity and nearly $27 billion when medical expenses are included.
“We think women’s health is one of the most compelling investment opportunities of our time,” Maria De Santis, a principal at Muse Capital, an early-stage venture fund in consumer technology, who has been investing in women’s health for the past eight years, tells Flow Space.
Progress is happening, and investors should pay attention. The global women’s health market, which includes treatments and care for conditions that affect women solely or disproportionately, is projected to reach $600 billion by 2030. PwC, which released the report, called the space “a longitudinal market opportunity.” Today, the market is valued at an estimated $435 billion.
While only about 6% of health care investment dollars have gone to women’s health, investments have been growing.
“Forget the ethics of it and even the medicine of it,” Dr. Suzanne Gilberg, an OB-GYN and the chief clinical officer at Monarch, a new membership-based health care platform for integrated care, tells Flow Space. “The long-term health consequences are costly when we don’t pay attention to half of a woman’s life. If you just look at it in economic terms, it’s a point at which we still can make a big impact.”
So what is driving this projected $600 billion market?
The first message investors and physicians in this space hope to send is that women’s health is — and never was — a niche.
“Women’s health is much more than just fertility,” De Santis says.
Women’s health is often thought of as consisting solely of reproductive health issues. However, with a broader definition, women’s health now encompasses all of the conditions that affect women disproportionately, uniquely, and differently, from autoimmune conditions to chronic pain and dementia. According to the PwC report, cardiovascular disease, behavioral health, autoimmune conditions, and musculoskeletal conditions will account for the most year-over-year market growth in women’s health by 2030.
“The market is finally being redefined through a broader lens and more correctly,” De Santis says.
A recent report quantified exits in women’s health at over $91 billion between 2000 and 2024, largely underreported due to the misidentification of what falls under the umbrella of women’s health.
“We are finally starting to see that these massive exits that we’ve seen in oncology diagnostics, they’re not just oncology and diagnostics,” De Santis says. “They are ultimately solutions for women.”
While it could be argued that women’s health should simply be classified as health, the distinction helps highlight the longstanding disinvestment, Gilberg says.
“We already have a big deficit in terms of just our understanding and learning, and so I think it would be a mistake to remove the terminology,” she says.
Another major driver of this marketplace is the rise of AI-driven diagnostics in preventive health.
“Especially in a health care system that is reactive, consumers are looking for proactive health. There’s a possibility now of continuous care from home, longitudinal health, and multiple checkpoints,” says De Santis. “We’re seeing so much innovation happening outside of what may be narrowly considered women’s health.”
The PwC analysis points to consolidated integrated platforms that address women’s needs over the lifespan as showing promise in the marketplace, alongside midlife care models. The midlife telehealth platform Midi Health, which recently reached unicorn status, is one example.
Still, there’s a gap between insights and actions that raises the question of how this capital will actually benefit women’s lives equitably and across the lifespan.
“What is going to be developed out of this? What is going to be invested? What will be mined from this?” Gilberg asks. “What information will we really receive, and will this create a positive impact in the women’s health space?”
Gilberg cautions companies and investors not to recreate the same problems the health care system faces now, such as volume without results. As a founder of the integrative care platform Monarch, she advocates for a redefined system.
“When you’re talking about an integrated system that requires time, it requires attention, it requires trust, [and] it requires a relationship that grows over time,” she says. “The problem is the way we have corporatized the delivery of health care.”
What’s more, many innovative care models are membership-based and are not accessible to the masses.
“If everybody is going to view this as an opportunity to build something and exist as opposed to investing in the health of our citizens, we are going to have a problem,” Gilberg says. “There’s just only so many things that we need to buy…if we have 5 million new supplements and products, many of which may be fantastic, but we don’t have the foundation of health, what are we really doing?”
