A new generation of female entrepreneurs tackles women’s mental health

“We cannot allow women to continue to die when they are avoidable,” says Hello, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based company founded in 2013 that provides Bluetooth-enabled blood pressure monitors and gender-specific digital devices. said Marjan Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Heart. Coaching to help both women and men reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke.

Many of these companies are leveraging technology for health issues that affect women in unique ways, from life cycle changes such as menstruation and menopause to chronic diseases such as heart disease. It is called. In the case of this heart health-focused company, some of whose founders are also scientists and clinicians, they are trying to fill a gap in gender research that has historically made the male body the default standard. . As a result, women with heart disease are not only under-researched but also often underdiagnosed and undertreated.

Heart disease remains the number one killer of women

“This assumption that women are somehow at lower risk because they are women, or that premenopausal women don’t get heart disease, is simply not true.” Erin Mikos, director of women’s cardiovascular health research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said: “I just published a paper… showing that certain types of heart attacks are on the rise among women under 45. That’s why we need to start thinking about prevention.”

According to federal data, more than 60 million women (44%) in the United States have some form of heart disease, and it can occur at any age, not just after menopause as is commonly believed. .

Women share risk factors with men such as high blood pressure, elevated LDL cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, smoking, depression, and a sedentary lifestyle. However, they also carry distinct risks associated with early menstruation, menopause, inflammatory conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and polycystic ovary syndrome. Pregnancy complications such as gestational diabetes, preterm birth, and preeclampsia can also pose long-term cardiac risks. “Even 50 years after becoming pregnant with preeclampsia, women still have higher cardiovascular risks and higher mortality rates than women without preeclampsia,” Dr. Michos says.

The good news is that most coronary artery disease, if caught early, can be prevented or managed with lifestyle changes and treatment. But the health care system does a poor job of identifying people at risk, especially women and people of color. In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, 310,661 women died due to heart disease, representing about 1 in 5 deaths among women. However, more than half of women are unable to identify their risk of heart disease and are unaware that they are susceptible to heart disease. To make matters worse, diagnostic tests and treatment guidelines are still often based on disease progression in men, which can lead to substandard treatment in women.

For example, Michos noted that although women have been shown to benefit from lipid-lowering drugs just as much as men, “overall, women are underprescribed for these treatments.” Even people who have had a heart attack or stroke are less likely to receive life-saving drugs or other interventions.

Solutions for women, by women

Enter femtech companies — more than 60 percent of them were founded in the past five years, and more than 85 percent of them are led by women, says FemHealth Insights founder and host of the podcast Femtech Focus said Brittany Barreto, who tracks the sector at Yahoo! .

“Women in STEM science fields are disproportionately working on women’s health solutions and funding those solutions,” Barrett said.

Hello Heart’s Cohen compares investors’ new interest in women-focused health tech companies to advertisers’ recognition in the 1950s that female consumers constituted a huge untapped market. are doing. “‘Mad Men’ is about how we had the revelation that women should be the primary advertising target because women buy things. We’re now seeing similar trends in digital health. I’m seeing a few things. [a realization by venture capitalists] There’s a huge, potentially lucrative market out there that they’re not serving. ”

While many companies are just starting up, — In some cases, we may also be awaiting regulatory approval for new devices — Investors and analysts are bullish on trends in the sector potential. “Although still in its early stages, our research shows that the underlying dynamics of femtech are accelerating: public awareness, company formation, and funding are surging.” , says a 2022 McKinsey report titled “Dawn of the Femtech Revolution.”

For example, Alicia Chong Rodriguez’s startup Bloomer Tech, named after a 19th-century suffragist, is redesigned to track data about the wearer’s heart, lungs, hormones, and metabolism. Developed “Bloomer Bra,” an underwear for everyday wear. Chong-Rodriguez’s goal is to accelerate the collection of medical-grade data to enable better diagnosis and monitoring, as well as facilitate the development of new treatments and care models for women with heart disease. That’s it.

She and her colleagues developed, patented, and tested a flexible, washable circuit that turns clothing into a device that can relay a series of information to the wearer’s smartphone through a Bluetooth-enabled app. Wearers can also choose to share that data with their doctors. .

Chong-Rodriguez said she was inspired to do this work by her namesake, her grandmother’s fatal heart attack. Later, while working as a graduate student in MIT’s Computational Cardiovascular Research Group, she was struck by how much of the data used in medical decision-making was “fundamentally missing women.” Ta. That’s because premenopausal women were excluded from clinical trials until 1993. The policy was born out of a desire to protect women and their children from potential side effects after the thalidomide scandal and was reinforced by researchers who viewed menstruation and pregnancy as complex variables. Despite today’s calls and even mandates to include women in courts, women… especially the colored ones — still underrated.

Heart health, women, and the limits of exercise

“For a long time, there was a misconception that women were basically little men, except for reproductive purposes, of course,” says Chong-Rodriguez. “This oversimplification can be harmful. There is so much we don’t know or don’t fully understand about women’s physiology that we don’t understand why women have heart disease. It’s already difficult to recognize, diagnose, and treat. And training AI with limited data and variables can actually perpetuate this problem.”

Bloomer Health recently received $1.9 million from the National Institutes of Health for clinical research. Chong-Rodriguez believes this will accelerate the adoption of the device. “The more women who are fitted with this medical device, the better our understanding of female physiology will be and the better ways we will provide women with diagnosing and treating any unique, disproportionate, or disparate intracardiac symptoms.” We will be able to develop unique digital biomarkers” in women. ”

Cardiothoracic surgeon Kathy E. Magliato, whose 2010 memoir “Heart Matters” was the inspiration for a television series about female heart surgeons, also became an entrepreneur out of frustration with the status quo. She founded her health tech startup, Codex Systems, because she was discouraged by the growing number of young women she worked with, she said. “Eighty percent of heart disease is preventable,” she recalled thinking. “So why is it still the number one killer of men and women? And the answer goes back to how early diagnosis is really missing the boat.”

She and her business partner, bioengineer Michael Hoyt, designed, patented, and tested a “smart” blood pressure cuff that could detect early signs of arteriosclerosis through subtle changes in the lining of blood vessels. I tried to change this situation. You’re more likely to get heart disease. SmartCuff has been tested on more than 700 of her patients at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Magliato said the company is raising funds to expand the number of testing facilities and obtain regulatory approval.

The company will then sell tools to track the effectiveness of lifestyle changes and medications for individuals with coronary artery disease. “You can only operate on one or two people a day, right?” she said. “But imagine if I built a technology that could serve thousands of patients every day. That’s what keeps me going.”

Hello Heart’s Cohen is trying to change women’s health by educating them. In 2023, the company will launch a public campaign with the slogan “If you feel something, say something,” to highlight how heart attacks in women differ from those in men, or how they are portrayed in movies. Raised awareness of what is happening and how it differs. Symptoms in women may include nausea and an upset stomach. Pain or tightness in the chest, plus fatigue or pain in the jaw, arms, shoulders, upper back, and neck.

The challenge of caring for women’s hearts

Meanwhile, the 2 million members of Hello Heart’s digital coaching program (about an equal number of women and men) receive real-time, gender-specific feedback, primarily through their employers and health plans. The app not only tells you about your blood pressure, but also potentially irregular heartbeats, test results, medication effects, weight, and physical activity. For example, you might see a graph pop up on your phone showing how your blood pressure dropped after you took a walk. A peer-reviewed 2021 study tested that approach and found that 84 percent of hypertensive patients not only lowered their blood pressure, but maintained it for up to three years.

Cohen said he’s just getting started. “We have waited long enough,” she wrote in a letter published in the New York Times Magazine, calling for more funding for women’s heart research and training for clinicians on women’s conditions. A campaign has been launched calling for improvements. Among the hundreds of signatories are Thrive Global CEO Arianna Huffington, NCAA volleyball star and heart health advocate Assia O’Neal, and former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Peggy Hamburg. is included.