Female health & wellness should be a priority as the NHS rebuilds following COVID-19

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The FemTechLab brings together experts to discuss why women’s health and wellbeing should be a top priority in rebuilding the National Health Service (NHS) after COVID-19

An open letter from FemTech Lab to the UK Department of Health and Welfare …

For too long, structural inequality in the NHS has contributed to a lack of understanding and investment in the health and wellbeing of women. Although nearly 80% of NHS staff are female, the majority of managerial positions (63%) are still held by men.

This inequality has led many health services and clinical routes of treatment to be designed for women with no consideration for the end user. Let’s just take a real-life example. A woman in a same-sex relationship with symptoms of endometriosis was advised by her GP to get the Mirena Coil to improve her symptoms. When she had the IUD adjusted by family planning services, she was asked if this was for “contraceptive” purposes. Since this was not the case, she was denied access to the coil – a treatment her doctor recommended – for about half a year.

This is not an isolated incident. Due to inaccessible services and gaps in supply like these, women spend more of their lives with illness and disability, despite having a longer life expectancy than men.

As part of a recent effort to tackle gender inequality in health care, the UK Department of Health and Welfare (DHSC) is developing a new strategy for women’s health. In response to the department’s request for evidence, FemTech Lab brought together a number of subject matter experts to take part in an evidence-gathering exercise. We found that.

Under-researched and underdiagnosed

Women are chronically underrepresented in clinical trials. This is especially true for the elderly, of childbearing age, with disabilities or from the LGBT + or BAME community. If you’re a female reader, you likely fall into at least one of these groups!

The effects of this are twofold. First, it introduces diagnostic delays. For example, women are diagnosed with heart disease an average of seven to ten years later than men. Such delays often result in other chronic diseases being prevalent at the time of diagnosis, which affects life expectancy and quality of life.

Second, it can lead to inappropriate treatments being prescribed to women, which remains a global problem. For example, US women suffered more than two million drug-related adverse events between 2004 and 2013, compared with 1.3 million in men. Had more women participated in clinical trials, these results could have been avoided.

Bad data lead to inadequate results

A review of the current medical literature reveals a lack of health data for women. This needs to be addressed if the DHSC’s Women’s Health Strategy is to achieve better health outcomes. Collecting new in-depth health data from women should become routine within the NHS. An in-depth analysis of existing data is also required. The resulting insights should be embedded in the NHS operating framework so that it is easily accessible to doctors.

In addition to medical data, collecting patient feedback should be the focus of any future transformation of women’s health services. It is crucial to offer safe, inclusive spaces where women feel safe to share their experiences, especially if they have felt abandoned in the past. Too often, women who criticized the way they were treated by the NHS felt disempowered and little or no action was taken to address their concerns.

Technology can improve outcomes for women

The female health and wellness technology sector is entering a golden era. However, we believe that innovative solutions in the FemTech industry are currently underestimated by the NHS. From providing immediate feedback options to providing accessible self-management training and support for women, technology has the potential to transform women’s health.

We suggest that the NHS accelerates possible applications for female health technology and digital health companies in a variety of healthcare facilities. Similar partnerships have proven effective in the past. FemTech company Elvie, for example, has successfully partnered with the NHS to distribute its urinary incontinence trainer to women with a weak pelvic floor. So far, the partnership has resulted in savings of £ 424 per patient.

We also urge the NHS to Close the data gap by working with health technology companies to collect and analyze health data from women. The FemTech industry has a huge untapped resource of expertise in this area. The collaboration would stimulate research and gain knowledge on important issues of women’s health and catalyze innovation.

It is clear that while the NHS recovers from the shock of the pandemic, it has a unique chance Use technology to rebuild better. We have already seen an acceleration in the digital transformation of healthcare due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including virtual counseling and family doctor appointments. We hope that DHSC will build on this dynamic and use the services, products and software developed by the FemTech industry to address gender inequality in healthcare.

Signed,

• Shakti Dookeran, Innovation Leader, Imperial College Health Partners
• Amy Thomson, Founder and CEO, Moody
• Jenny Thomas, Program Director, Digital Health. London
• Hannah Samano, Founder and CEO, Unfabled
• Point Zacharias, Co-Founder and COO, Nourish App
• Nicole Leeds, Head of Marketing Strategy, Note
• Effticia dowry, Business Attorney, Stephenson Law
• Karina Vazirova, Co-Founder, FemTech Lab
• Terri Harris, Women’s Health Specialist and Community Leader, FemTech Lab

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source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/female-health-wellness-should-be-a-priority-as-the-nhs-rebuilds-following-covid-19/