FemTech Untapped - How technology can help end suffering in silence - Endometriosis, PCOS, and gynaecological cancers
Over the last two years, we organized and hosted three major global conferences: FemTech Forum, Health Tech 2.0, and Investing&Fundraising in HealthTech and FemTech.
This year, we decided to do something different.
Why FemTech Untapped?
In 2022, we are committed to opening the conversation around the topics in FemTech that are still taboo, areas that are untapped, underresearched, and underfunded.
Over the past few years, the term FemTech has become a buzzword, and women’s health, today more than ever, has been getting the recognition and visibility it deserves. But, this is still not enough for the healthcare industry to be more inclusive and more innovation, disruption and funding is still needed in some other areas such as cardiovascular health or mental health. Female health is not just reproductive health, and unless we start treating it as such, especially if we don’t see it as a part of a larger public health discussion, things won’t move at the right speed in the right direction for many more years.
That’s why this year we are bringing you a series of events, educational panels, blogs and interviews with industry leaders, founders, clinicians, organizations, and investors every month throughout the year, with the focus on some of the most important topics in the femtech space, featuring some of the most innovative companies in this industry.
Join us every month for a series of events and educational content where we will cover topics from diversity and inclusion in the femtech space, to innovations in menstrual, mental, gut and cardiovascular health, to male contraception and baby tech, and everything in between.
This program will be delivered in partnership with our program partners FemTec Health and Goodwin, as well as our webinar partners Biote, Lovehoney Group, Elix Healing and many more.
Together, we can all work towards the femtech innovation and support being more accessible and inclusive!
Our March event - How technology can help end suffering in silence - Endometriosis, PCOS, and gynaecological cancers
Endometriosis affects roughly 10% (190 million) of reproductive age women and girls globally. It takes on average seven years to diagnose it and in the meantime, women are often dismissed, misdiagnosed, and misunderstood.
There are five gynaecological cancers (Ovarian, Cervical, Uterine (womb), Vaginal and Vulval), but they are rarely discussed in the public. Gynaecological cancers have a devastating mortality rate of 37%, according to Lady Garden Foundation, and understanding the symptoms and early detection can save lives. That’s why more open conversation and education is needed.
WHO reports that there are over 116 million women around the world who are affected by PCOS, the most common hormonal disorder. Yet, although so many women are going through this, they often feel lonely, neglected, and are left to suffer in silence for years.
The time has come to put these topics on the public agenda, to give women the information and education they need, and the healthcare they deserve.
Join us to find out how technology can help end suffering in silence from the founders and innovators who are pushing the frontiers of innovation and working on the solutions for female health issues that were neglected and under-researched for way too long.
Our speakers
Heather Bowerman, founder and CEO of DotLab
Heather Bowerman is the founder and CEO of DotLab, a molecular diagnostics company in women’s health. Bowerman has been recognized as a TR-35 Global Innovator by the MIT Technology Review, a World Technology Award Finalist for Health & Medicine, and one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs. She was previously a management consultant at McKinsey & Company in healthcare and technology, Harvard’s nanotechnology teaching fellow, and an associate in the Obama White House’s Office of Science & Technology Policy. She is a graduate of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering and Harvard University. DotLab has been named as an “Amazing Medical Breakthrough” by Reader’s Digest and one of the “Fierce 15” companies by FierceMedTech.
Bowerman founded DotLab in 2016 because one of the world’s most prevalent, irreversibly debilitating diseases—that happens to only affect females—lacks sufficient tools for diagnosis, leaving millions undiagnosed or with a significant delay to diagnosis. Initially, the company is harnessing its expertise with the novel, cutting-edge biomarkers and the power of machine learning to deliver the first non-invasive tool to diagnose endometriosis, resulting in a paradigm shift in the identification and management of the disease.
DotLab will also pioneer data-driven management of women’s health diseases through the collection of real-world, longitudinal data across multiple timepoints. DotLab has been named as an “Amazing Medical Breakthrough” by Reader’s Digest and one of the “Fierce 15” companies by FierceMedTech.
Oriana Papin-Zoghbi, co-founder and CEO of AOA Dx Inc.
Oriana Papin-Zoghbi is the CEO and co-founder of AOA Dx Inc. She has global experience creating and leading organizations resulting in successful strategic exits. She brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise from women's health startups and large life science companies, and a passion for entrepreneurship and solving problems that disproportionality affects women. Oriana has received numerous awards in entrepreneurship, including the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center MassNextGen Award and The Wave Summit's Emerging Women Founder in Bio Award. She has a proven technical record of creating market entry strategies and product launches in new markets, including launching nationwide HPV screening in East Africa and novel diagnostics in maternal-fetal medicine. Oriana holds a degree from Boston University in Economics and International Relations, and she has experience both living and working in various geographies.
As CEO of AOA Dx, she has raised over $5M in Seed funding and $1M in non-dilutive grant funding. She has been accepted into numerous competitive accelerators including Y Combinator, Springboard Enterprises, and MassMedic Ignite. AOA Dx Inc is a Y Combinator and VC-backed company, a biotech company focused on early-stage cancer detection. AOA partnered with a leading oncology researcher at McGill University to develop the first early-stage ovarian cancer liquid biopsy diagnostic test. The co-founders have worked together for the last decade at two previous startups in the women’s health space, both resulting in successful exits upon commercialization.
Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynaecological disease because there is no accurate testing method and its symptoms are continuously mistaken for benign conditions, making it incredibly difficult to diagnose the disease in the early stages. Early diagnosis will reduce patient mortality and deliver cost savings to payers.
Chantelle Bell, co-founder of Syrona Health
Chantelle Bell is the co-founder of Syrona Health, a digital clinic for people going through chronic gynaecological conditions with a key focus on Endometriosis. Their app 'SORA’ (Class I Medical Device), supports their community with tracking health, monitoring health, access to specialists and a community. Syrona’s first focus was Endometriosis, however, they have expanded to support people with PCOS and Menopause.
Eydis Lima, founder of Curiva
Eydis Lima is the founder of Curiva, a company developing diagnostics patch designed for the detection of gynecologic oncology malignancies. The company's patentable and proprietary technology offers the patch with an application that provides diagnoses of cervical cancer as the primary indication in a streamlined manner and in a non-invasive approach to the diagnosis of cervical cancer initially, enabling patients to receive proper cancer treatments and physicians to diagnose them the same day.
Eydis is an engineer turned entrepreneur, she seeks to innovate solutions for women in the area of gynecologic oncology. She has consistently been rewarded for hard work with increased responsibilities and opportunities to help clients grow or take on improved business angles that can manifest into early-stage startups. Particularly, in the case of the research she performed in the Mor Lab at Yale University with ovarian cancer therapeutic, Cantrixil. To date, therapeutics is in phase II clinical trials with Kazia Therapeutics both in Australia and the United States. Additional work that she conducted in this lab were in-vivo studies to demonstrate that a grafted diagnostics nanoparticle had the potential in detecting ovarian cancer micrometastasis.
Currently, she is focused on the technology and business development of a patent-pending technology she’s invented, diaPatchTM, a diagnostics patch for the detection of cervical cancer. Her prior research inspired her to pursue this innovator and entrepreneurial path and she seeks to incrementally propose improved non-invasive tools to women suffering from the large toll that gynecologic oncology malignancies take on their lives. Lima has a Master’s of Science in Entrepreneurship from the University of Notre Dame and a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Agenda
(*All time slots are GMT)
4 pm - Opening words by organising team
4:10 pm - Company introduction - presentation delivered by Heather Bowerman, founder and CEO of DotLab
4:20 pm - Company introduction - presentation delivered by Oriana Papin-Zoghbi, co-founder and CEO of AOA Dx Inc.
4:30 pm - Company introduction - presentation delivered by Chantelle Bell, co-founder of Syrona Health
4:40 pm - Company introduction - presentation delivered by Eydis Lima, founder of Curiva
5 pm - Panel discussion
5:45 pm - Q&As
6:30 pm - Closing words by the organising team
About our partners and sponsors
Program partners
FemTec Health
Founded in May 2020 by Dr. Kimon Angelides and publicly launched in October 2021, FemTec Health is the leading Health and Beauty Sciences Company focused on using technology and data to transform the total healthcare experience for women in every stage of their life cycle. Areas of focus include specialty care, wellness and prevention, reproductive care, sexual wellness, mental health, chronic care, and beyond. Angelides has brought together A female-led team with decades of experience across healthcare, wellness, and consumer products in public and private companies. FemTech Health’s mission is to revolutionize women’s healthcare by using state-of-the-art genomics, predictive intelligence, and digital technologies to create an experience that is unified, coordinated, and provides personalized services and products based on every woman's unique needs. FemTec Health currently has offices in Houston, New York, San Diego, London, Barcelona, Athens & Shanghai.
Goodwin
Goodwin partners with clients to practice law with integrity, ingenuity, agility, and ambition. Their 1,600 lawyers across the United States, Europe, and Asia excel at complex transactions, high-stakes litigation, and world-class advisory services in the technology, life sciences, healthcare, private equity, real estate, and financial industries. Goodwin’s extensive experience and knowledge of the women’s health and wellness industry coupled with their deep industry contacts helps them to foster relationships between their clients and stakeholders to provide them with full-service legal offerings. From intellectual property to regulatory and from structuring capital raises to IPOs, they advise clients at all stages of the company lifecycle.
About Women of Wearables
Women of Wearables (WoW) is a leading global organization and ecosystem aiming to connect and support women and allies in wearable tech, health tech, and femtech, as well as educate about the latest innovations in the world of emerging technologies. With headquarters in London (UK) and more than 20,000 members located around the globe, WoW has become a global movement that supports its growing community through events, mentorship, educational programs, and collaboration with its network of local collaborators and partners. Our members are startup founders, designers, technologists, industry experts, researchers, bloggers, journalists, investors, and many more.
Our community is open to anyone who is affiliated with and interested in emerging technologies and is not just for professional women, but for anyone with an interest in wearable technology and providing women with a platform for growth.
HOW TO JOIN US
➡️ Become a WoW member to learn from and connect with our community of entrepreneurs, designers, and technologists, leverage valuable resources, and discover career and business opportunities! By joining, you’ll get the opportunity to promote your company at one of the leading global organizations for women in tech, advertise in our newsletter and collaborate with us for our webinars, conferences, and content.
➡️ Follow us on Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram / Facebook.
➡️ Join our femtech group on LinkedIn.
➡️ Get in touch if you’d like to become our partner!
