What's coming next for femtech?
Currently largely centred on curative care and reproductive health, areas of expansion look set to include preventative care and additional life stages.
“The femtech industry is expanding to cater for later women’s life stages, creating AI-driven solutions that will empower individuals with greater choice and transparency as they approach the perimenopause,” explained Olivia Houghton, who is beauty lead and foresight analyst at strategic foresight consultancy The Future Laboratory.
“In the coming years these technologies will shift from menopause- or menstruation-only to become life-long hormonal partners. Such innovations could prove transformative, enabling deep understanding of one’s body and its changing needs,” she continued.
Houghton predicts that by the time digitally native Gen Z reaches mid-life, they will seek ownership of their healthcare journeys and femtech is aligned to cater for this.
“For example, taking a 360-degree approach to mid-life health management, the Midday health app uses advanced algorithms, AI sensor technology and digital therapeutics to track hormonal changes and symptoms, alerting users to triggers and patterns, and offering tailored interventions in real time,” she shared.
Houghton says there are now four key factors that are likely to shape future innovations in femtech.
#1: The gynaecological-technological revolution
‘From menstrual care to fertility treatments, long overdue innovations in femtech are reshaping gynae practices and empowering women to take charge of their sexual health, fertility and wellbeing,’ says Houghton. These inventions don’t claim to re-invent the wheel, but represent the intersection of innovation and necessity, promising a future where women’s health is proactive and personalized: a trend that The Future Laboratory is calling Gynaeguity.
The next era of femtech products will make women feel more empowered, acknowledged and heard through relevant solutions and increasingly AI-powered developments.
For example, US-based startup Sequel has just reinvented the design of the tampon – a product that’s barely changed since it was invented nearly a century ago. The smarter spiral-shaped design helps to absorb more flow, making it less likely to cause leaks.
#2 Hyper-personalisation
Feeling underserved and overlooked by mainstream medical services, experts predict that women will increasingly turn to femtech services for personalised and accessible solutions to gynaecological health concerns.
“Femtech’s journey into personalisation will be its north star for some time to come,” said Houghton.
She gave the example of the start-up, Daye, which opened a digital period pain clinic in July 2023 to help accelerate the path to diagnosis for gynaecological issues such as endometriosis and PCOS.
“After filling out a medical questionnaire on the platform, users receive a personalised health insight report and undergo consultation with a period pain specialist,” she explained. “The digital clinic connects users with sexual health nurses, period and pelvic pain specialists, fertility experts, physiotherapists, nutritionists and lifestyle coaches for further treatment.”
#3: Optimal IVF solutions
“One hyper-personalisation trend we have noticed is how consumers are choosing ‘Optimal Oocytes’, or optimal IVF solutions,” said Houghton.
“At the 39th Annual Meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in June 2023, fertility company Fairtility announced the launch of CHLOE (Cultivating Human Life through Optimal Embryos) OQ. The revolutionary AI tool provides transparency into the viability of oocytes (egg cells) and gives insights into the potential of an oocyte developing into the blastocyst stage post-fertilisation – a notoriously crucial yet unpredictable stage in fertility treatment,” she explained
#4: Diversity and wider audiences
“Diversity and wider audiences are a natural result of this growth trajectory,” said Houghton.
“An example of femtech equality is from Canadian period care brand Nixit that launched a line of condoms in January 2024 with ‘vaginal health in mind’. It aims to change the narrative of buying and carrying condoms being a man’s responsibility by creating a product designed and marketed for women’s vaginal health.”
The condoms come in feminine pink packaging and are made with just two ingredients: natural rubber latex and pure silicone oil. Typical condoms, the brand says, prioritise endurance and fixate on size, while Nixit products focus on being safe for sensitive vulvas and avoiding pH disruption and UTI-causing ingredients.
Femtech in focus case study #1: Renude
Renude incorporates AI to create personalised skincare routines. It was developed by cosmetic scientist and CEO Pippa Harman and data scientist Cate Nisson. We spoke to Harman to find out more…
CosmeticsDesign-Europe (CDE): What inspired you to develop Renude?
Pippa Harman (PH): Cate and I had an interesting route to launching Renude, as we both had been working on this idea when they first met. I had spent a decade in the skin care industry, formulating and developing products for brands like Beauty Pie, Boots and Reckitt Benckiser.
During this time, friends and family would often ask what products they should be using, so after many years of helping my network, I started formalising this into curated skincare plans. Word spread very fast, then after a few minutes on the BBC news discussing getting more girls in STEM, I received hundreds of enquiries. It highlighted the huge gap in the industry for unbiased, personalised skincare advice from professionals.
Cate had come to the idea from a different angle. After seeing a close friend struggle with his mental health due to cystic acne and rosacea, and not being able to get the right advice, she took to skin care forums and used peer to peer, before and after images and routine information to design a skin care routine. It worked for her friend, bringing back his confidence and highlighting to her that this was a data problem. Given the recent advancements in visual technologies, she saw the opportunity for Computer Vision and Machine Learning to solve this problem. We met by chance at an event at the Google Startup Campus and the rest is history!
CDE: At Renude skin care science meets data science. How does this work and benefit the consumer?
PH: Our skin is a very complex organ, and there are many factors at play that contribute to skin health. Equally, there are many facets of a skin care product that determine who it is best suited for, then building these into a complete routine to complement each other is yet another challenge. We see this as a data problem.
If we can understand at scale how different people respond to different products and ingredients, we can best predict what will work best for who. We always wanted to use data to solve this and were determined to collect the highest quality of data possible from which to build AI. This meant working with licensed aestheticians to manually review every customer's skin and select their skincare routine, then building skin diagnostics alongside consultant dermatologist Dr Justine Kluk to ensure AI accuracy.
Since launch, we’ve collected three million data points from real consumers including images, questionnaires and a quarterly review on their routine, to truly validate what has worked and what hasn’t. We’ve used this to create AI that can essentially think like an expert and have validated its accuracy with a panel of Harley Street dermatologists, who had 94% agreement with our AI.
CDE: How have the public and industry reacted to Renude?
PH: The response has been overwhelmingly positive. What we hear time and time again from consumers is that they are simply overwhelmed by the skincare market. It doesn’t matter how much time is spent researching, there is simply too much choice.
We see that 90% of those who sign up to Renude are experiencing at least one symptom of skin barrier damage, which often occurs due to trial and error which in many cases can exacerbate existing skin complaints.
CDE: How do you predict the Femtech industry will look in five year's time?
PH: There are some incredible female founders out there breaking taboos in women’s health, and it’s those companies that I would love to see grow over the next five years.
Founders like Hannah Samano of Unfabled, Peony Li of Jude and Rebekah Brown of M Powder moving hormone health, bladder health and menopause into the mainstream, creating communities where women can share their experiences and have their voices heard.
CDE: What is in the pipeline for Renude in 2024 and beyond?
PH: Lots of exciting things are coming up for Renude. We won an innovation grant earlier this year to support an exciting new project which we will be previewing in a few months’ time. I can’t say too much about it, but it will be a world first, so watch this space!
Femtech in focus case study #2: Clementine
In 2017, Kim Palmer left her corporate career to create Clementine – a subscription-based mental health app for women that uses hypnotherapy to monitor and lower stress levels.
CosmeticsDesign-Europe (CDE): How does Clementine work?
Kim Palmer (KP): We use Cognitive Hypnotherapy, which is a type of talking therapy like counselling. It’s a powerful new approach in the mental wellbeing space as it combines effective techniques from different therapy styles including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Positive Psychology, traditional hypnotherapy, and Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP). Combining these approaches, Cognitive Hypnotherapy works with the mind at both conscious and unconscious levels to make lasting positive changes to problematic thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
CDE: How can this help women?
KP: The entire Clementine app experience is designed with women in mind, from the choice of words, visuals, topics, UX design, and colors. However, this doesn’t mean that men can’t benefit from the app—10% of our user base are men. Women who use the app often describe it as being tailored just for them, like someone has got inside their head and knows what they are thinking. This is because most of our team are women, and we understand many of the issues and pain points, bringing this understanding into the overall development, design, and execution.
CDE: You collaborated with No.7 to offer support to menopausal women. Would you collaborate with another beauty brand in the future?
KP: Yes. This was such a brilliant innovation for us and for all the women in the world who have zero time to dedicate to a daily self-care practice. The bigger idea is to imagine a world where self-care is not something you have to add to your to-do list but is designed into all the products and services we consume every day.
Imagine having a mindful, more conscious, and therapeutic experience while going about our daily routines—whether it’s brushing our teeth, applying skin care, drinking tea, or even going to the loo. This is entirely possible if we start thinking about how we design these experiences.
CDE: How do you predict the Femtech industry will look in five years' time?
KP: The growth of the Femtech industry has been staggering since I first started Clementine. However, I feel it has become quite confusing for consumers, with many new brands, standards, and influencers involved in selling. I think we will see more platforms created to build niche marketplaces, making it easier for women to buy with confidence.
I see huge scope for integrating mindset, self-care, and emotional wellbeing into products and services. This feels like a huge missing piece of the puzzle. If we want to help women make lasting changes, we must help them change habits too.
CDE: What is in the pipeline for Clementine in 2024 and beyond?
KP: We are in pilot mode for our expert service in the UK and hope to expand the team of experts here before looking to other regions.
We’ve got a huge brand collaboration in the period space launching in the UK later this year that will help address the gender sleep gap for women.
We hope to start R&D for a new version of Clementine that will help with the maternal mental health crisis.
