LAS VEGAS—Of the total $26.5 billion VC dollars invested in healthcare companies in 2023, only 4% went toward women’s health companies. That represents a 59% increase from the previous year.
This stat was highlighted at a women’s health breakfast panel at HLTH on Tuesday, first appearing in a report published earlier this year by Accenture and Springboard Enterprises. The research aimed to redefine women’s health using a framework that outlines main categories of conditions that exclusively, predominantly or uniquely impact women. These include areas like cardiovascular health, aging and bone conditions, cognitive and brain health, autoimmune issues and oncology.
The breakfast panel, which was filled with attendees well beyond its capacity, featured Oriana Papin-Zoghbi, co-founder and CEO of AOA Dx. Founded in 2020, with the help of machine learning, the startup is attempting to design a new blood-based diagnostic to detect early-stage ovarian cancer. Though catching the disease early is crucial to better survival rates, three-quarters of women today are diagnosed with ovarian cancer at stages 3 or 4.
Perceptions of higher return on interest in well-researched disease areas hold back investment in women’s health as a category. Despite AOA Dx having raised about $30 million to date, engaging with investors is a particular challenge, Papin-Zoghbi said on the panel. Investors often want examples of big exits in the women’s health space, and it’s rare to find one willing to back a company that does not appear to fit into existing patterns of returns. While they exist, they have not historically been under the category of women’s health—because that category did not exist, Papin-Zoghbi noted.
To that end, AOA Dx will soon publish research demonstrating examples where there were successful exits that may have just been labeled as oncology or imaging. Similarly, AOA Dx might be women-focused, but it’s still an oncology company.
“We’re building a report where we have traced exits over the last 25 years, and we have found over 20 unicorn exits in women's health,” she said. “They exist.” The report’s full findings are expected to be published at the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
“Really helping the investors understand what the exit potential could be was what ended up driving us to do the research,” Papin-Zoghbi said.
Women are also underrepresented in clinical trials, often failing to mirror actual disease burden, according to Accenture and Springboard’s report. From 2018 to 2022, there was between a 12% and 27% discrepancy between disease prevalence and female trial participation across eight diseases. Since 2013, there has also been a 9% decrease in National Institutes of Health funding of women’s health research compared to total funding for clinical research.
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“There is a large opportunity for life sciences organizations to invest in the research and development of treatments that account for sex-based differences, enabling meaningful market differentiation,” the report said.
Investors are paying attention. Tuesday at HLTH, the Women’s Health Fund described a newly launched vehicle for investing in women’s health companies. Dubbed WH1 and unveiled earlier this month, it is a life-sciences-focused fund of funds — planning to invest in experienced fund managers with $60 billion in assets under management— to bring them into women’s health. Founding supporters include the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women Venture Fund, the Society for Women’s Health Research and Women’s Health Access Matters among others.
The Women's Health Fund was founded by Jessica Federer, formerly Bayer’s chief digital officer. After seeing statistics about gender gaps in research, she recognized it to be a “very fixable problem,” she previously told Cure.
“We didn’t include women in clinical trials until 1993. We didn’t study women. We don’t have enough data on women,” Federer, managing partner at the fund, reportedly said at another HLTH event. “We owe women decades of scientific advancement, and now it’s time to deliver.”
WH1 plans to invest in 15 top-performing life sciences funds with the goal of taking companies from series A through exit, hoping for steady and sustainable growth.
“We’re not looking for what we saw in cell and gene therapy or digital health, where the [hype and valuation] levels went to places they shouldn’t have been,” Federer said. “We’re looking to have evidence-based sustainable growth, because half of the population is waiting for us.”
Editor's Note: This story was updated with clarification from Federer on WH1 and her quote on stage. When referring to gene therapy and digital health, she meant that hype and valuations were too high, not investment levels.