Miriam Kenrick and Sarah Sowerby, co-founders of Women in Pharma,
report from the Women’s Health Innovation Summit

The Women’s Health Innovation Summit is the first of its kind in the UK – hot on the heels of the Women’s Health Strategy for England, which was published last summer.

Over 100,000 women responded to the call for evidence showing how passionately people care about the gender health gap. This extraordinary level of participation alone shows how much people want to contribute to change.

Dame Professor Lesley Regan was clear that things we previously thought were ‘okay’ about the NHS for women, were not okay at all but we all – men and women – have a vested interest in change. She sees her role as harnessing this wave of enthusiasm.

Women play a critical role in holding society together and yet we routinely deprioritise our own needs by putting everyone else’s needs first. When we finally reach out for help from the health system, we get pushed from pillar to post, not taken seriously and we struggle to get the care we deserve. And would you believe the UK is particularly bad.

‘Manual’, a well-being platform for men, analysed health data for 156 countries worldwide to find out where has the greatest gender health gaps. UK women are the worst off compared to all other G20 countries with UK women ranking 125/156 globally amongst their peers across different health and well-being categories.

There is a lot of work to do by both the health system and our industry to get better. Hence one of our three Women in Pharma is to shake up the industry to do better for women’s health – after all if we are healthier and happier everyone whose lives depend on us will also be better. It’s a double win!

During the congress, it was super interesting to find out what innovations are happening in women’s health. We love the concept of the new women’s health hubs. Designed to be a one-stop-shop, both physical and online, progress is happening but it’s a bit ad hoc.

If pharma was doing this, we’d have run advisory boards, identified best practices, created a blueprint to follow and adapt. Market shaping! But in the NHS it’s dependent on a single passionate person building it from the ground up and if that person leaves the whole thing could come to a grinding halt.

There’s quite a bit of innovation in femtech too but only 2% of investment goes to women founders from the 90% of investors who are men. There are loads of great well-being and health tracking apps now specialising in women but they struggle to get the funding to scale.

It’s the same in pharma. A recent article in Nature showed the scale of the problem with a brilliant moving animation. When you look at burden of disease, those that are predominantly female just don’t get the funding.

Women in Pharma have a job on their hands. But if we get this right, we all triumph.

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