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An audience of community leaders, investors, innovators and health care professionals gathered in Dublin at ZEISS Medical Technology recently to discuss innovations and investment opportunities in women’s health.
The May 14 panel and luncheon was a collaborative effort between Startup Tri-Valley, ZEISS and the Alameda Alliance for Health and aimed to publicize the Tri-Valley women’s health innovation ecosystem and connect investors with entrepreneurs.
The event titled The Unseen Opportunity in Women’s Health was held for the first time in person, following a virtual webinar format that took place two years ago.
Keynote speaker Genevieve LeMarchal of venture capital firm Suncoast Ventures highlighted how the gaps in investment and innovation in women’s health leads to real-life consequences using statistics and her own personal experience.
LeMarchal kicked off her remarks by asserting that women’s health, “is not a charity case and it is not at all about virtue signaling. It is one of the most viable, most scalable and most overlooked investment opportunities of our time.”
Citing the McKinsey Health Institute, LeMarchal shared that, “If the United States were to close the gap in women’s health, it would unlock a $400 billion unmet GDP opportunity for our country and $1 trillion globally.”
“To put that in perspective, in just the United States that’s the size of the entire U.S. agriculture industry. So this is not theoretical and it’s not kind of like a fun idea – this is immediate, real world, bottomline impact and it is sitting literally right in front of us,” she added.
Noting that she’s often been asked why the women’s health market is so invisible, LeMarchal said, “I believe that for generations women have been taught that accepting poor outcomes for our health is normal. We have been excluded from clinical trials until the 1990s – I could go on and on and on – but we are still very underrepresented in clinical data.”
On a personal level, LeMarchal also shared that in 2023 she nearly died from undiagnosed preeclampsia during pregnancy.
“I didn’t fit the profile. I didn’t trigger the signals the way that they believed that I should. I was ‘healthy’ going to all my appointments and I was at one of the top hospitals right here in the East Bay, but all the signs were missed,” she said.
“For maternal health, in the United States, it ranks among some of the highest in maternal health mortality compared to other developed nations,” she added, noting that although this issue is critical, women’s health is not limited to reproductive health but rather spans mental health, heart issues, autoimmune deficiencies and a host of other conditions.
Following LeMarchal’s keynote address was a panel discussion that highlighted some innovations currently in the works that are meant to address many of the disparities in women’s health.
The panelists who discussed the projects they are working on at their respective companies included founder and CEO of EazeBio, Reem Mahrat; VP of global marketing for Raydiant Oximetry, Denise Malvehy; Qvin co-founder Mads Lillebrand; co-founder and chief medical officer for Aster, Lailah Kara-Newton; and the discussion was moderated by Linda Greub, co-founder and managing partner of venture capital firm Avestria Ventures.
Mahrat, who is an entrepreneur-in-residence at Daybreak Labs in Livermore, talked about how her company EazeBio is developing biomarker-based diagnostics for women’s health, focusing on early detection and personalized healthcare which seeks to empower women to monitor their health from home.
San Ramon-based Raydiant Oximetry specializes in developing a safe, noninvasive fetal pulse oximeter that measures fetal oxygen levels with the goal of improving detection of fetal distress, allowing health care providers to make better-informed decisions and provide improved patient care.
“The idea is to use this to have it become standard of care during labor and delivery to reduce newborn birth injury and hopefully reduce emergency c-sections and health care costs as well,” Malvehy explained.
Qvin has developed the first-ever FDA-cleared health test using menstrual blood to aid in the early detection of various conditions including HPV, STIs and ovarian cancers, among others. The company’s “Q-pad” passively collects menstrual blood using an embedded Dried Menstrual Sample strip which is removed from the pad and shipped to a lab, enabling individuals to contribute clinically valuable samples from home.
“This is a noninvasive way. It’s very natural, it’s culturally sensitive, religiously sensitive, so it brings a whole new empowerment to women around the world,” Lillebrand said of Qvin’s product.
Like LeMarchal, panelist Kara-Newton also shared her personal experience of undiagnosed preeclampsia which inspired her to co-found Aster, a Fremont-based company that aims to use predictive and preventative technology to revolutionize prenatal and postnatal care.
“We’re building an electronic health record system specialized for women’s health providers,” she said. “We take clinical insights and we also help our providers who mostly work in private practice really optimize their operations and drive revenue.”
“For us, it’s about empowering the providers and therefore offering patients better health outcomes and trying to grow the ecosystem of women’s health providers like myself,” she added.
After discussing each company’s innovation, Greub wrapped up the talk by asking the panelists how communities like the Tri-Valley can help support the growth of their businesses.
Pointing to her experience with Startup Tri-Valley and Daybreak Labs, Mahrat emphasized how offering access to unique technical expertise and fostering a collaborative ecosystem are examples of community initiatives that help support companies like hers.
“This is the kind of community we want where we all help each other and we have this kind of conversation and we build the future together. It’s collaboration, it’s not competition,” she said.
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