While women with “big hearts” play well in popular culture, cardiologists see a very different picture – with significant implications for women’s health and medical care. Women have smaller hearts and narrower blood vessels than men and their cardiovascular systems respond to disease and treatment in very different ways. Growing evidence that failure to reflect women’s distinct anatomy in cardiac care leads to deadly disparities in outcomes has recently stimulated development of new diagnostics and increased focus on inclusion of women in medical device trials.

Endometriosis has been woefully under-recognized in the medical community, and consequently, the delay between onset and diagnosis is often quite long, with some women waiting up to 12 years for a diagnosis.

Gender bias in cardiac treatment guidelines is putting women at risk because guidelines are written based on clinical trials conducted mostly in men. As previously reported in BioWorld, nearly 70% of female patients are underdiagnosed for cardiovascular disease as women are grossly under-represented in clinical trials.

Med-tech deal values hit their lowest point of 2024 in October, reaching just $15.9 million – a sharp drop from the $356.79 million recorded in September.

Despite government efforts to prop up biopharma and med-tech research toward creating women’s health products, companies must eventually reach out to the private markets to bring their inventions to the next stage of development. Anna Zornosa-Heymann, a women’s health investor, serves as a part-time contractor with the U.S. NIH’s SEED (Small business Education & Entrepreneurial Development) office, where she helps companies move from government to external funding. Government funds are “excellent to pay for research … but those funds don’t allow you to build a first-class team and to develop a sales apparatus,” she told BioWorld.

Med-tech companies raised $7.35 billion in the third quarter of 2024, slightly down from $7.49 billion in the second quarter but up from $6.45 billion in Q1. Through the first three quarters of the year, total funding reached $21.28 billion, marking a 48% increase compared to $14.36 billion during the same period in 2023.

While women’s health has slid under the research radar for decades, large biopharma companies and venture capital firms are beginning to take notice of the untapped market potential. More companies are wandering into the space and exploring avenues of science that were largely ignored for years. A BioWorld analysis of biopharma companies working on women’s health solutions found that while many efforts to improve the well-being of women exist, the proportion of funding and partnering for this emerging sector of medicine still represents only a small slice of the industry’s overall activity.

While women make up half the world’s population and own two out of every five businesses, there are substantial knowledge gaps about conditions affecting their health – mostly due to decades of research excluding women from clinical trials and investment decisions.

At the BioFuture 2024 conference held in New York in November, Seema Kumar, the CEO of Cure, described women’s health as something that has been directed at the “bikini area.” That “bikini” bias extended to both diseases and their causes – women’s health covered the breasts and reproductive system, and its causes were hormonal. Both concepts are far too narrow.