Digital Health New York hosted an event titled “The Women’s Health Journey: New Models, New Opportunities” featuring an esteemed panel.
Following the announcement of the White House’s Initiative on Women’s Health Research, Digital Health New York, an organization committed to fostering a community within the digital health ecosystem, held an event exploring Women’s Health. The event was centered around a panel discussion moderated by Violet Aldaia, President of H4B Chelsea featuring Black Opal Ventures’ Managing Director, Dr. Tara Bishop, Kate Condliffe, the CEO of Diana Health, and Dr. Maria Sophocles, the Chief Medical Officer at Embr Labs and Founder of Women’s Healthcare of Princeton. The panelists discussed both the challenges and opportunities across the broad spectrum of women’s health. Dr. Bishop centered her thoughts on three main points:
Too often women’s health is narrowly defined as conditions like fertility, pregnancy, or menopause but conditions like cognitive decline, mood disorders, and rheumatologic conditions disproportionally affect women. Often for these conditions, we treat women similar to men despite physiologic differences between genders. To push the field of women’s health forward, we must address the diagnosis, treatment, and care of all conditions that impact women
The recognition that women’s health has historically been underfunded and underrecognized is a big step. In the past decade, we have seen a plethora of new companies, new models of care, and new therapeutics for conditions that impact women such as pregnancy, infertility, menopause, and gynecologic conditions. This is encouraging and exciting for patients and providers
Despite progress, a small minority of venture capital funding is managed by women-led funds and historically many women’s health companies are financed by women-led funds. If we can get more capital under the management of women, we will likely drive more innovation and impact on women’s health
Digital Health New York’s timely event provided a forum for engaging and nuanced discussions of the various challenges and opportunities as we continue to drive a better future for women’s health. The panel summarized their perspectives on the incredible opportunity for innovation and funding to drive women’s health to the future of care.
Digital Health New York is a leading community for those across the digital health ecosystem in New York that hosts events, drives content, and inspires community. Black Opal Ventures aims to improve health outcomes for all by investing in companies at the collision of healthcare and technology.