Women’s health: A market ready for transformation
By Jen Radin, MPH, MBA, Life Sciences and Healthcare Principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Women’s health is not a niche market. It is one of the biggest untapped growth opportunities in health care. According to the United States Census, by 2030, 60 million to 70 million women in the U.S. will be 45 or older—and that demographic shift will likely reshape demand for care, coverage, and innovationi. The question may no longer be whether this market matters. The question is who will move fast enough to own it.
Many of these women will likely be entering perimenopause and experiencing hormonal changes that can contribute to a wide range of health conditions. This demographic shift represents a potentially significant growth opportunity for pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, health plans, health systems, and consumer-focused organizations. Each stakeholder has a role to play in innovation across women’s health. The question is no longer whether this market will expand, but which organizations will shape its future.
I recently led a panel at Asembia’s AXS26 Summit where I had an opportunity to discuss the unmet demand in the women’s health market. The panel included Joanne Armstrong, MD, MPH, FACEP, vice president of women’s health at CVS Health, Michael Annichine, CEO at Magee-Women’s Research Institute & Foundation, and Jannine Versi, co-founder and CEO at Elektra Health, a virtual care platform focused on midlife women’s health. Here are a few of the highlights from our discussion:
Jen: What are some of the biggest white spaces you're seeing in women’s health research?
Mike: There is often a lack of understanding of sex-specific medicine and sex-specific protocols for treating diseases and/or injuries. Diseases can affect men and women differently, but so can injuries, such as concussions and other brain trauma. Women often require different treatment for those injuries than men. There tends to be a lack of curriculum around women’s health in medical schools, and I think that creates a lack of knowledge and understanding around the basic hormonal functions that occur in women throughout their lifespan. This limited understanding, combined with little sex-specific data, has led to some of the white space that we see across the board. We are trying to introduce a curriculum to medical schools that not only includes women's health but includes women's health across the lifespan.
Jen: Where do you see some of the biggest opportunities in the menopause marketplace?
Jannine: Menopause can be quite complex. What affects morbidity and mortality can often be traced to what kind of care women receive in this phase of life. I think [the health care sector] is moving from episodic to more longitudinal care for women. This includes education around preventative health, particularly during the midlife decades. During this period, we have found that many women are not up to date on their health screenings. About 40% of patients who come to my organization are not up to date on their mammograms, so we focus on ensuring that we close those gaps while also addressing their symptoms. I think there's a real opportunity around how organizations engage with women as patients, as insured members, as employees, and as consumers across their lifespan. Women are living longer, but they are not always experiencing the health outcomes they want to see.
Jen: What do you see as some of the biggest opportunities for preventive care in women’s health?
Joanne: Today, there are 34 million women in menopause, and an estimated 12% of those women are thinking about leaving the workforce because of health issues related to menopause. The cost of being in the workforce, but not performing at your best, is about $1.8 billion annuallyii. Menopause is an entree into the discussion, but we should be looking at midlife health more broadly. Midlife is a 12- to 15-year window of opportunity to focus on prevention. Along with perimenopause, midlife women’s health should also include cardiometabolic health and brain health. That is a huge white space.
Jen: How are advancements in basic research, data curation & AI impacting women’s health?
Mike: Many of us have started to see increased interest in women's health across the industry. Since we all started identifying market opportunities, we’ve been able to create conversations that investors and industry partners can understand; and then they followed understanding with investment. Those investments have led to a lot of progress in some key areas.
Jen: Turning to the start-up ecosystem of companies that are focused on women’s health. How do you attract investment? What are the challenges, and what are the bright spots?
Jannine: We've seen tremendous growth in the space, but it's from a relatively small base. You might have 30 minutes to explain to an investor why they should be interested in your company. But if 25 minutes of that time is used to explain what menopause is, there isn’t time left to talk about the opportunity. This is changing, though. It’s helpful to see the topic of menopause and midlife women's health being discussed on TV shows and showing up in newspapers and magazines. There are some big brands being built in the women's health space, and we hope we’ll see some go public soon. That will help to validate the market for investors and show that this isn't just a big space because there are a lot of women, but that this is a big space because it is a valuable place to invest and generate outsized returns.
Jen: While today we may not have enough PCPs & GYNs per capita who have been broadly trained in women's health, how can retail health fill some gaps and expand access for women?
Joanne: A primary care physician or OB-GYN might not have time during an appointment to discuss midlife health promotion & symptom resolution. There is such a pent-up demand for education and resources, and I think pharmacists can be incredibly important. They tend to be highly trusted in their communities and could help educate women about what to expect in midlife and even promote cardiometabolic health. Retail pharmacies and health care organizations should train pharmacists and nurse practitioners to recognize the symptoms of midlife health issues. It could be why someone isn’t getting good sleep or has increased anxiety or GI issues. Virtual care could also help.
Jen: What role do you expect generative AI and agentic AI to play in the research & care delivery space?
Mike: AI is being used in many aspects of care delivery & diagnosis across the industry. It is being used to detect lesions in the fallopian tubes that allow the detection of ovarian cancer sooner. We can see minuscule things with much more power than in the past. We are also using AI in electronic medical records to take consumer-reported data and integrate that into care delivery so that clinicians have it at their fingertips. AI shows a lot of potential in developing health care that's truly personalized, and much sooner than many thought possible.
Conclusion:
The women’s health market offers an opportunity for multiple stakeholders. Leadership will likely vary by stakeholder. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, can strengthen the evidence base by prioritizing indications where X and Y chromosomes affect outcomes differently; medtech companies can look for ways to enable earlier detection for disease, improve monitoring, and develop new care pathways through at-home diagnostics; and health plans can respond to member needs. Investors can back scalable platforms rather than point solutions, especially where reimbursement supports repeatable economics.
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Endnotes
iDemographic Turning Points for the United States: Population Projections for 2020 to 2060
iiEmployee Perspectives and Challenges Concerning the Transition of Menopause (EMPACT Menopause) Study
The executive’s participation in this article is solely for educational purposes based on their knowledge of the subject and the views expressed by them are solely their own. This article should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of soliciting business for any of the companies mentioned, nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse the services or products provided by these companies.
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