by Ewelina Woloszyn
For as long as most of us can remember, advances in technology to address women’s health issues was not keeping pace with advancements in other areas. For instance, women tend to be underrepresented in clinical trials. Women are more likely to suffer from more than one chronic illness than men, 38% to 30% respectively. Over 250,000 women die of cancer each year in the United States. Recently, technologies to improve women’s health are starting to improve and become more widely available.
Once such area is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for cancer diagnosis. These technologies allow for non-invasive diagnosis for various kinds of cancer, including those that are specific to women such as ovarian cancer which kills over 14,000 women per year. According to widely available data, women are dying due to gender inequality in medicine, access, medical research and other areas. Something needs to be done to address this gap immediately.
Healthcare technology is beginning to improve outcomes for women and there is an increasing number of companies founded by women to help women. The female led tech companies (FemTech) is predicted to grow to US$1·07 trillion by 2026. However, even with this growth in these technology and software companies, led by women only a small portion of the investments in Health Tech are going to these female founders.
This lack of funding for these female founders combined with the lower number of women working in technology makes the problem greater. Consider today’s healthcare systems, women overwhelmingly make up a large percentage of healthcare front line workers while men hold around 70% of the leadership positions.
To change this dynamic we need to change the process for clinical trials, medical research and focus on more gender-focused outcomes. This includes providing more funding to female led health tech companies and this needs to start now. As a female founder I am focused on using my resources and those of AI Safety Holdings to address this very important issue.
