The University of Connecticut Technology Commercialization Services (UConn TCS) recently hosted the webinar “Innovation in Women”™s Health,” which delved into progress, innovations and investment opportunities in FemTech. The seminar was presented by Tracy MacNeal, a FemTech entrepreneur and CEO of the obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYN) platform company Materna Medical. Throughout the presentation, MacNeal cast a light on what she believes to be male-centric thinking present in many areas of medicine and science.Â
“Health care really is men”™s health care,” she opined. “It”™s a blind spot for all of us.”
MacNeal made a case for why medical and financial groups should look into FemTech both as an avenue for improving the health of female patients and an opportunity to service a large and underserved market that has little competition.
The seminar detailed how care is dispensed between male and female patients, with MacNeal arguing that the medical community”™s bias toward men”™s health has resulted in a deficient state for women”™s health, with physicians ignorant or dismissive of female specific conditions such as migraines or pelvic injuries suffered during childbirth.
MacNeal noted this male perspective on health is present even in OB-GYN.Â
“Most people think of OB-GYN as women”™s health: contraception, gynecology. Fertility is far and away the best-funded area of women”™s health,” she said. “But I think there are other categories of women”™s health that are much, much more important.”
Materna Medical seeks to make up for what MacNeal sees as major deficiencies in women”™s health by offering female patients devices meant to restore pelvic health and alleviate, prevent and reduce the severity of conditions like incontinence and prolapse. The company currently offers the Milli Vaginal Dilator and the Materna Prep, a device undergoing clinical trials that is meant for first-time mothers and is stated to reduce pelvic floor injuries and result in shorter lengths of delivery.
The company has made strides in meeting demand for innovative products catered toward women”™s health, and MacNeal believes there is a large and mostly untapped market for research and innovative products in FemTech. She submitted that women are the primary drivers in health care, with 80% serving as decision makers on health care matters in their households. Additionally, according to MacNeal, because childbirth is the number one reason for hospitalizations globally, women comprise a great deal of hospitalizations.
“Investors will increase funding in innovation for women”™s health ”” they”™ll realize that it is half the population,” she said, adding that innovators of all stripes “will see an opportunity to really improve the unmet needs.”
MacNeal offered a number of explanations as to why there are biases against female health despite what appears to be a clear-cut ethical and financial case for it. Though women lead the way in receiving health care, clinicians often lack knowledge in how to best treat female specific conditions. MacNeal found that 80% of physicians undergoing OB-GYN residency training are uncomfortable discussing or treating menopause.Â
“We have, I think, 64 million Americans in menopause right now,” MacNeal said, “and only 20% of OB-GYN residents graduating have received enough menopause training.”
“One in five women in menopause will seek help but four in five will not for their symptoms, avoiding topics around incontinence, prolapse and menstrual distress,” she continued. “Even when they do speak up, they often are dismissed, so there”™s a lot of gaslighting.”
The gender imbalance among physicians favoring men was a cited reason for what MacNeal sees as the substandard quality of women”™s health. Using a 2017 chart from Athenahealth of a sample of 18,000 physicians across 3,500 practices in its network, MacNeal highlighted the gender composition of physicians, with 55.9%, 69.5% and 82.4% of physicians being male in the 35-44, 45-54 and 65+ age ranges. Although this trend has seen a reversal among the younger set ”” female physicians now comprise 60.6% and 51.5% of all physicians in the 35 age and 35-44 ranges.
MacNeal also mentioned the small number of women in venture capital firms as an obstacle for FemTech companies, reasoning that firms with more female partners are more likely to invest in companies that have women in management roles or as CEOs.
“As an entrepreneur, I”™m saying (to investors) three out of four people in the category that we”™re talking about, which is 50% of the population, have this problem,” MacNeal said, using the common issue of painful sexual intercourse as an example. “The men across the table might say, ”˜Well, gosh, I never heard anything about that!”™ And so, you got to remember who”™s listening, and what you see is a bias towards equity when there is a more diverse team on the investment side.”
Vivek Ramakrishnan, director of venture development at UConn TCS, started the Q&A portion of the webinar by asking the Materna Medical CEO, “How did you manage to convince your investors? What actually turned the needle for you?”
MacNeal, who joined the company in 2018, taking over from its founder, responded, “For us, the big challenges to overcome were to quickly and easily explain it to investors in a way that they believed that this was a big, unmet need. And that got easier and easier as FemTech has grown. Every investor I talked to has seen 20 incontinence and prolapse companies ”” they know it”™s a huge problem. But they never see a technology that”™s trying to prevent it. We”™re the first of that kind.”
Richard Guha, entrepreneur-in-residence at UConn TCS, brought up how women in India will only see a female doctor, and wondered if the latest generation would see more of a “demand for women to be treated appropriately” in medicine, and asked MacNeal, “Are you aware of anything like this among the younger generation versus the older generation?”
MacNeal responded that in her experience, Gen Z women are more open about discussing women”™s health as compared to other generations, and that social media has played a role in younger women being less bashful when talking about issues such as vaginismus or vulvodynia.
Amit Kumar, director of licensing and venture development at UConn TCS, asked MacNeal what advice she may give to make technologies related to early pregnancy more attractive to investors, in light of the challenges of conducting clinical trials that involve pregnant women.
“I definitely advocate patience for anyone trying to run a clinical trial,” MacNeal said. “Pregnant women are very unlikely to want to participate in clinical research.”
“But we have to address these issues, because our maternal mortalities and morbidities are getting worse, not better. So, if we can”™t figure out a way to include pregnant women in clinical research safely with full consent, then our outcomes are going to continue to get worse.”
