A New Stage Of Development: Women’s Digital Health

Posted by Roots on June 23rd, 2022

Females constitute 49.6% of the world’s total population and, in one of its reports, the US department of labor reported that females use digital health care solutions more than men. Further, in a recent survey, it was founded that the percentage of women adopting tele health platform rose from 13% to 38% post the outbreak of COVID-19.

At present, there are more than 100 marketed solutions focused on women’s digital health market; these contain applications, software, and devices. Some of these solutions have also been approved by the USFDA for therapeutic applications in areas, such as reproductive health and menstrual health.

It is worth noting that, NC° Birth Control, established by Natural Cycles, was the first application to receive approval from US FDA in 2018; the application can be used as a method of contraception and helps in regularly tracking menstrual cycle. 

Several developers are vigorously engaged in the development of solutions related to women’s digital health. In fact, several start-ups focused on women’s digital health have been established in the last few years, indicating the growing interest in this sector. A variety of solutions, such as women’s health diagnostic devices, women’s health market applications as well as digital services for women, primarily targeting reproductive health, menstrual health, pelvic floor care and fetal health, are being developed by digital women’s health market solution providers.

Because women’s digital health is a relatively niche field, extensive research and growth is required to meet the existing unmet needs of women. Having said that, the field has attracted significant attention from the investors and healthcare venture capitalists, which have invested close to USD 3 billion over the past few years, enabling the femtech business flourish.  Given the growing research efforts and active involvement of investors, we expect a variety of applications and devices focused on refining women’s health to be developed, enabling the women’s digital health market to witness steady growth over the coming years.

Women’s digital health offers solutions through the following mediums:

• Mobile Apps: At present, there are several apps that help women around the world with their healthcare and general wellness; these include menstrual apps, fertility apps and pregnancy tracking apps. Using these apps, menstrual cycle can be tracked to understand the menstrual pattern. Additionally, approximation of ovulation can also be done through which fertility window can be determined. Further with the help of pregnancy tracking apps, growth of the baby and changes in the mother’s body can be observed.

• Wearable Devices: With the help of sensors, devices, such as wearable bracelets can help track body temperature, respiratory rate, stress levels and heart rate and monitor general wellness of the body and provide messages to the users. In addition, HeraMed has introduced a fetal heart rate monitor called HeraBEAT that enables pregnant women to monitor the heartbeat and pulse rate of the fetus.

• Service: Digital services serves as a critical tool for providing patient-centered health care to women by allowing them to connect with doctors and ob-gyns from their premises regardless of their position breaking the geographical barrier with the use of internet.

The future of women health care

Women are 75% more likely to use digital tools to track their health. To identify the gaps and unmet needs, it is important to grow customized and focused solutions. Policies related to women’s health need to be established to increase awareness and prioritize women’s health. Further, a framework that allows entrepreneurs to traverse health systems and better understand market access and implementation requirements for women’s healthcare, is also required. Along, with the help of inexpensive and available technology, the service industry is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.

Moreover, healthcare R&D is paving the road for femtech solutions in the medical field because of which the femtech business is expected to grow tremendously over the next few years. Our market report could give you detailed profiles of key players engaged in the women’s digital health market (shortlisted based on company size). Each profile features a brief overview of the company, its financial information (if available), details on the solution(s) offered, recent developments and an informed outlook.

The market report also focuses on, a roadmap for the development of women’s digital health solutions, such as applications and devices considering various factors that impact pre-development, development, and post-development process. It also highlights the current unmet needs in digital health solutions for women across different therapeutic application areas.

Conclusion

There have been strides in this domain which have paved way for making life of females easy, but there is a necessity for increasing its accessibility especially in the rural areas, increasing the funding in this domain, throwing away the stigma related to menstruation, and the use of digital health platforms.