Every year on 28 May, International Women’s Health Day puts the spotlight on women’s health. But most conversations still revolve around fertility and reproductive health, as if that is the full picture. It isn’t.
Women are more likely to face conditions like heart disease, autoimmune disorders, osteoporosis, chronic pain, and Alzheimer’s, yet many of these remain underdiagnosed, underfunded, or dismissed altogether.
This article looks at seven overlooked areas of women’s health and the startups building better diagnostics, treatments, and care systems around them.
Category 1: Mental health
Women are twice as likely as men to experience anxiety and depression. Yet most mental health tools were designed without gender-specific care in mind.
1. FamilyWell Health
Founders: Dr Jessica Gaulton
Year: 2022 | Location: Boston, USA
FamilyWell Health is a digital mental health platform that embeds therapy, psychiatry, and coaching directly into OB/GYN clinics and health systems. Founded by a Harvard neonatologist after her own experience with postpartum depression. Raised $8 Mn Series A in 2025 and is expanding into perimenopause and menopause care.
2. Thymia
Founders: Emilia Molimpakis, Stefano Goria
Year: 2020 | Location: London, UK
Thymia uses AI, neuroscience-based video games, and facial and speech analysis to help clinicians detect and monitor depression and anxiety faster and more accurately. Being developed with a specific focus on women, including early detection of perinatal mental health conditions.
3. Spring Health
Founders: April Koh, Adam Chekroud
Year: 2016 | Location: New York, USA
Spring Health is an employer mental health platform that uses AI to match employees with personalised treatment plans. Women make up a significant portion of the patient base, and the platform actively builds a diverse provider network with specialisations in women’s and LGBTQ+ health.
4. Brightline
Founders: Naomi Allen
Year: 2019 | Location: San Francisco, USA
Brightline is a virtual behavioural health platform for children and families. Offers therapy, coaching, and speech therapy via app. Founded after Naomi Allen navigated the complex behavioural health system for her own child.
5. Clementine
Founders: Anna Korhonen
Year: 2020 | Location: London, UK
Clementine is a mental health app built specifically for women, focused on stress, sleep, and anxiety. Offers audio therapy, one-to-one appointments, and mindfulness resources on a flexible, non-prescriptive schedule.
6. Blueskeye AI
Founders: Michel Valstar
Year: 2019 | Location: Nottingham, UK
Blueskeye AI uses machine learning to analyse facial and voice data to detect depression and anxiety. One of its first clinical applications is monitoring perinatal mental health in women.
7. JumpingMinds
Founders: Ariba Khan, Piyush Gupta
Year: 2020 | Location: Bengaluru, India
JumpingMinds is an anonymous mental health platform built for the Indian market, where stigma runs particularly deep for women seeking psychological support. Uses a friends therapy model and AI trained on over 40 million data points to connect users with peers and experts.
Category 2: Cardiovascular Disease
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women globally. Women experience different symptoms than men, are frequently misdiagnosed, and receive treatment later, often after a first cardiac event has already occurred.
Founders: Dr Simin Gharib Lee, Lauren McConnell
Year: 2023 | Location: Boston, USA
Systole Health is a virtual group care platform where groups of 8 to 10 women meet weekly with a cardiologist and health coach for 60-minute sessions covering prevention, treatment, and lifestyle. Systole intervenes before the cardiac event happens.
2. Heart-Tech Health
Founders: Dr Suzanne Steinbaum
Year: 2022 | Location: New York, USA
Heart-tech Health is a medtech company focused on reducing cardiovascular disease risk in women through prevention. Its flagship product, Adesso, gives women a personalised baseline of their heart health and a holistic plan to improve it, regardless of where they live or their access to specialists.
3. Hello Heart
Founders: Maayan Cohen, Eran Eilat
Year: 2013 | Location: San Francisco, USA
Hello Heart launched a dedicated menopause feature in 2023 to address this gap directly, offering women the tools and information to have informed conversations with their doctors at exactly the stage of life when most healthcare systems stop paying attention.
4. Bloomer Tech
Founders: Alicia Chong Rodriguez, Aceil Halaby, Monica Abarca
Year: 2015 | Location: Cambridge, USA
Bloomer Tech embeds medical-grade sensors into an everyday bra to track ECG, heart rhythm, and metabolic data in real time. No clinic visit needed. Its bigger mission is to build the first large-scale dataset of female heart health, so AI can finally be trained on women’s bodies.
5. Monitra Healthcare
Founders: Ravi Bhogu, Aparna Bhogu, Sashank Bhogu
Year: 2016 | Location: Hyderabad, India
Women’s cardiac symptoms, like palpitations, unexplained fatigue, and dizziness are among the most commonly dismissed in Indian clinical settings. Monitra’s upBeat is a band-aid-like wearable ECG patch that records heart rhythms continuously for one to five days, capturing the intermittent events that a standard 30-second ECG will almost always miss. The data transmits to the cloud in real time, where AI flags anomalies for cardiologist review.
6. Genexia Health
Founders: Dino Martis, Kelly Cohen, Anoop Sathyan
Year: 2022 | Location: Cincinnati, USA
Genexia Health uses AI to detect coronary artery disease risk from existing mammogram images, turning a single scan into a dual screening tool without requiring additional tests or workflow changes. The company’s approach integrates directly into routine breast cancer screening, enabling earlier cardiac risk detection at scale.
Category 3: Bone and joint health
1 in 2 women over 50 break a bone due to osteoporosis as they lose up to 20% of their bone density in the first five to seven years of menopause. Despite this, osteoporosis is routinely dismissed as an inevitable part of ageing and innovation in this space has been almost nonexistent for decades.
1. Bone Health Technologies (Osteoboost)
Founders: Dr Shane Mangrum, Laura Yecies (CEO)
Year: 2014 | Location: Redwood City, USA
Bone Health Technologies developed Osteoboost, an FDA-cleared wearable belt designed for postmenopausal women with osteopenia. The device uses targeted vibration therapy to slow bone density loss without drugs or clinic visits, offering a non-pharmacological approach to women’s bone health.
2. Grace and Able
Founders: Sarah Dillingham, Trevor Petrie
Year: 2020 | Location: Washington, USA Website
For women, medical wrist wearables for rheumatoid arthritis are usually clunky. Grace and Able make decorated compression gloves and wrist braces that are designed by a hand therapist and tested by arthritis patients. Functional, comfortable, and actually wearable in everyday life.
3. Wellen
Founders: Nora Gibson, Annie Tsai
Year: 2021| Location: Brooklyn, USA
Wellen is a digital bone health platform designed for women navigating osteoporosis and ageing-related mobility challenges. The company offers guided strength training, posture correction, balance exercises, and expert-led education to help women improve bone strength and reduce fracture risk without relying solely on medication. In 2024, Wellen was acquired by Bone Health Technologies to expand holistic, non-drug osteoporosis care.
4. Skeletalis
Founders: Ben Swanson, Colin F Grienede
Year: 2023 | Location: Boston, USA
Skeletalis Bio develops precision osteoporosis therapies for postmenopausal women. Its lead SKE-001 uses the Oasis platform to target bone resorption sites, boosting strength while minimising side effects of traditional drugs like bisphosphonates.
5. Seen Nutrition
Founders: Dr Jenny Han, Adrienne Bitar
Year: 2023 | Location: Ithaca, USA
Seen Nutrition develops women-focused bone health supplements made from food-derived calcium and preventative nutrition ingredients designed to support long-term skeletal health. The company focuses on improving calcium absorption and bone strength through cleaner, nutrition-first alternatives to traditional supplements.
6. Midi Health
Founders: Joanna Strober
Year: 2021 | Location: Palo Alto, USA
Midi Health is a virtual care platform focused on menopause and midlife women’s health, including bone health, osteoporosis prevention, and healthy ageing support. The company combines hormone care, specialist consultations, and personalised treatment plans to address long-term health risks that often emerge during menopause.
Category 4: Autoimmune and chronic conditions
80% of autoimmune disease patients are women. Getting a diagnosis takes an average of 4.5 years and multiple doctors. These are conditions that predominantly affect women, are chronically underfunded, and have historically been dismissed as anxiety or stress.
1. WellTheory
Founders: Ellen Rudolph
Year: 2021 | Location: California, USA
WellTheory is a virtual autoimmune care platform focused on conditions that disproportionately affect women, including Hashimoto’s, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis. The company combines functional medicine, nutrition, and personalised coaching to support women navigating years of delayed diagnoses, dismissed symptoms, and fragmented chronic care.
2. Neuraura
Founders: Claire Dixon (CEO) and Pierre Wijdenes (CPO)
Year: 2021 | Location: Calgary, Canada
Neuraura develops wearables/implants like LoOoP for PCOS/metabolic health via bioelectronics, addressing hormone/inflammation issues in women.
3. Hera Biotech
Founders: Somer Baburek (CEO), Dr. Bruce Nicholson, Dr. Nameer Kirma, Dr. Paul Castella
Year: 2020 | Location: Texas, USA
Hera Biotech is building non-surgical diagnostics for endometriosis, a chronic inflammatory condition that affects millions of women but often takes years to diagnose. The company focuses on reducing diagnostic delays through biomarker-driven testing.
4. Hyivy Health
Founders: Rachel Bartholomeusz
Year: 2017 | Location: Melbourne, Australia
Hyivy Health develops smart pelvic rehabilitation technology for women managing chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, and post-treatment gynaecological complications. Its connected devices combine symptom monitoring with at-home recovery support.
Category 5: Endometriosis & Chronic Pain
Women wait an average of 7 to 10 years for an endometriosis diagnosis, despite living with chronic pain, fatigue, inflammation, and fertility complications. Many are initially told their symptoms are normal period pain or anxiety-related, delaying treatment and worsening long-term health outcomes.
1. NextGen Jane
Founders: Ridhi Tariyal, Stephen Gire
Year: 2014 | Location: California, USA
NextGen Jane is developing tampon-based diagnostics for conditions like endometriosis and other inflammatory gynaecological disorders. The company uses menstrual blood biomarkers to improve early detection of diseases that often take women years to diagnose.
2. DotLab
Founders: Heather Bowerman, Dr. Hugh S. Taylor
Year: 2016 | Location: San Francisco, California, USA
DotLab is building DotEndo, the first non-invasive blood/saliva test for endometriosis via microRNA biomarkers. Replaces invasive surgery for earlier detection.
3. Celmatix
Founders: Dr. Piraye Yurttas Beim
Year: 2009 | Location: New York, USA
Celmatix is developing precision medicine for reproductive health using genomics + data analytics (Polaris platform). Its focus on fertility, endometriosis risk prediction and personalised care.
4. Phendo
Founders: Dr. Noémie Elhadad (Columbia University), Citizen Endo collaborators
Year: 2017 | Location: New York, USA
Phendo is a research app tracking endometriosis symptoms/pain/QoL in real time. It uses patient-generated data to advance under-researched chronic pain in women.
5. Juno Bio
Founders: Hana Janebdar
Year: 2020 | Location: Sydney, Australia
Juno Bio is an at-home vaginal microbiome test decoding microbes linked to infections, infertility and inflammation. It gives personalised insights for preventative precision women’s health.
Category 6: Breast Health & Cancer Detection
Breast cancer remains one of the most common cancers affecting women, yet access to early screening, dense breast diagnostics, and preventive monitoring remains deeply unequal across geographies and income groups.
1. Niramai
Founders: Dr. Geetha Manjunath, Nidhi Mathur
Year: 2016 | Location: Bengaluru, India
Niramai develops AI-driven thermal imaging (Thermalytix) for early breast cancer detection. It is non-invasive, radiation-free, has no compression, and works for dense breasts. Particularly vital for developing nations where mammography access is limited.
2. iSono Health
Founders: Dr. Maryam Ziaei, Dr. Shadi Saberi
Year: 2018 | Location: San Francisco, California, USA
iSono Health creates ATUSA™, the world’s first FDA-cleared wearable automated 3D breast ultrasound system. Designed for dense breast screening without compression or radiation. Co-founded by two female engineers who experienced mammogram inadequacies firsthand.
3. DeepLook Medical
Founders: Dr. Brian Dong (CEO), Dr. Michael Y. Chen
Year: 2014 | Location: Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
DeepLook Medical develops FDA-cleared DL Precise™ AI software for breast imaging that uses shape-recognition to clearly identify tumor boundaries, especially in dense breast tissue. Provides one-click segmentation and vivid tumour morphology displays, giving radiologists critical clarity in early-stage detection.
4. Lunit
Founders: David Kweon, Jinhan Kim
Year: 2013 | Location: Seoul, South Korea (global HQ), with US operations
Lunit creates INSIGHT MMG, an FDA-cleared AI for 2D mammography that boosts detection accuracy by 20%+ and reduces radiologist reading time. Used in 30+ countries, it helps identify cancers that traditional mammography misses, particularly in dense breasts. Recently expanded to include 3D tomosynthesis support.
5. Radformation
Founders: David Wood, Dr. Jeron Cordes
Year: 2016 | Location: Durham, North Carolina, USA
Radformation develops AI-powered radiology workflow software, including AutoBreast AI for mammogram triage and detection. Automates workflow prioritisation, flags suspicious cases, and reduces false negatives. Integrates with existing PACS systems, making high-quality breast cancer screening accessible without expensive hardware upgrades.
6. MammoScreen (Therapixel)
Founders: Pierre Fillard, Olivier Clatz
Year: 2013 | Location: Nice, France
MammoScreen (Therapixel) is an AI-powered mammography reading software that automatically detects breast cancer with higher accuracy than radiologists alone. Helps reduce false negatives in screening, especially for dense breasts. Raised €15M in 2022 to expand US presence.
7. Qure.ai
Founders: Prashant Warier, Pooja Rao
Year: 2016 | Location: Mumbai, India
Qure.ai AI platform interprets radiology scans (including mammograms) within seconds. Offers qXR for chest X-rays and qMammo for breast cancer screening, making early detection accessible in low-resource settings. Reduces time-to-treatment critical moments.
Category 7: Pelvic Health & Postpartum Recovery
Millions of women experience pelvic floor dysfunction, incontinence, painful recovery, and core instability after childbirth, yet many never seek treatment because these conditions are normalised or stigmatised.
1. Nua Surgical
Founders: Barry Russell, Dr. Ciara O’Sullivan
Year: 2019 | Location: Galway, Ireland
Nua Surgical develops medical devices to reduce maternal complications post-C-section (e.g., wound closure tech). Improves surgical/postpartum recovery in gynaecological/maternal care. The category women whisper about instead of openly treating.
2. Elvie
Founders: Tania Hadjiconstantinou (CEO), George Nicolaou
Year: 2013 | Location: London, UK
Elvie creates smart pelvic floor trainers (Elvie Trainer) and breast pumps (Elvie Pump) tracking muscle strength and milk flow via app. Helps women with postpartum recovery, incontinence, and pregnancy prep through discreet, data-driven biofeedback.
3. Perifit
Founders: Dr. Hana Kamenická, Tomáš Kamenický
Year: 2015 | Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Perifit is a smart pelvic floor biofeedback device (Perifit Muse) with gamified app exercises for incontinence, prolapse, and postpartum recovery. Tracks progress in real time, making Kegel exercises engaging and effective. Clinically validated; partners with hospitals across Europe.
4. Juna Women
Founders: Dr. Sarah Mundy, Amy Lee
Year: 2018 | Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Juna Women is a virtual postpartum care platform offering acupuncture, pelvic floor therapy, lactation consulting, and mental health support via app. Addresses the “fourth trimester” gap, where 70% of women lack adequate recovery care.
5. Mummfit
Founders: Sarah Wootton (CEO)
Year: 2016 | Location: Melbourne, Australia
Mummfit is a postpartum fitness app with medically reviewed programs for core rehab, pelvic floor strengthening, and gentle cardio. Created by mum-of-three after her own difficult recovery, focuses on safe return-to-exercise timelines to prevent prolapse/incontinence.
6. Bloomlife
Founders: Kia Karami (CEO)
Year: 2015 | Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Bloomlife creates wearable pregnancy and postpartum tracker (Bloomband) that monitors fetal movement, Braxton Hicks, uterine contractions, and postpartum bleeding via smartphone app. It is FDA cleared and helps women catch complications early.
7. Keggy
Founders: Dr. Natalie Lin, Jess Williams
Year: 2019 | Location: New York, USA
Keggy is a smart Kegel trainer with real-time biofeedback and app-guided pelvic floor exercises for incontinence, postpartum recovery, and sexual wellness. Discreet, wireless design makes pelvic rehab accessible at home. Clinically tested for 80% success in reducing leaks within 8 weeks.
Previously, we’ve also covered reproductive health startups making a difference. it’s important to spotlight them as well on this day:
Looking forward
Across every category in this list, there’s one pattern: women are often diagnosed later, studied less, and expected to tolerate more. The gap is not just medical. It is structural.
What makes these startups important is not just the technology they are building. It is the assumptions they are challenging. That chronic pain is normal. That menopause is not serious enough for innovation. That heart disease looks the same in everyone. That women’s health begins and ends with fertility.
And while this list only scratches the surface. The future of women’s health will depend on how broadly we define it and how seriously we invest in the conditions women have spent decades being told to simply live with.
-By Rinkle Dudhani and the AHT Team
