FemHealth Focus: From purpose to scale - unlocking investment in women’s health

Hello, and welcome to Talking digital health, a podcast by law firm Mills & Reeve, hosted by health and tech lawyers Sophie Burton Jones and Charlotte Lewis. Our aim is to discuss key topics of interest to people procuring tech and digital products and services in the UK health and care market. And also to people selling tech and digital products and services to the UK health and care market.

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Sophie Burton-Jones: I'm Sophie Burton-Jones.

Charlotte Lewis: And I'm Charlotte Lewis.

Sophie Burton-Jones: And in this episode, we're delighted to be joined by Claire Edwards from Alvarez & Marsal and Ally Vey from Phoenix Equity. Two leaders with extensive experience advising in investing in and supporting growth businesses across the healthcare and life sciences sectors.

Thanks both for coming.

Charlotte Lewis: Lovely to have you both here today. This episode actually builds on our FemHealth Focus series, which explores the barriers and opportunities shaping the future of women's health. So across the series, we're focusing on three interconnected themes. Those are investment and support, which is the theme of today, research and data, and policy and strategy.

As I say, this episode focuses on investment and support, and we're exploring how the women's health and femtech sector are evolving, whether investment activity is keeping pace with opportunity, and what needs to happen to unlock the next phase of growth.

Sophie Burton-Jones: And women's health is increasingly being recognised as a major health workforce and economic opportunity.

And despite growing investment activity, many founders, we think, still face challenges accessing capital, and many businesses struggle to scale.

Charlotte Lewis: So I guess the question we're really interested in exploring today is, what will it take for women's health and femtech to become a truly mainstream investment category?

So thank you both for being here to explore this topic further.

Sophie Burton-Jones: So in terms of straight in with the first question, so over the last decade deal activity has increased substantially with more venture capital and private equity investors entering the market. Do you think we are finally seeing women's health emerge as a mainstream investment category, or are we still at the beginning of that journey?

Claire Edwards: I'm happy to share my view first. Women's health is obviously generally personal as a female. And we've watched, I've watched, the momentum building in the sector. And we really care what's happening. I don't think we've reached maturity.

I think it's accelerating, but from a really low base. And I think the ingredients for an inflection point are visible. So institutional capital like Phoenix entering, doing platform deals and evidence bases improving, but the volumes are still, it's still early stage. And I think what's changing is probably the quality of capital coming into the sector, not necessarily the quantity.

So that shift from early stage angel investment through to VC and PE, that's not just about more money coming in. It's a different type of investing. It's a different underwriting discipline being applied to the sector for the first time, and that's what helps to build that momentum and actually moves us to a mainstream position.

And I think, yeah, there's still really unique barriers to women's health. And one of the things that we've really enjoyed is, A&M have really backed us spending time in the sector and helping to build networks, collaborating with Charlotte and Sophie at Mills & Reeve to run events, networking events, and providing, helping support some of those ingredients.

But yeah, I think when you look at it, when you step back and look at it, we're a long way to go still.

Ally Vey: Yeah, and I would agree with that. And by the way, thank you so much for having me. It's just a joy to be talking about women's health. And the more attention it gets, the better, and- Definitely

then there'll be more investment. Yay. So I think we are still very much at the start. Personally with tonnes more to go for, but great that there has been some activity. Maybe a bit of just, yeah, my own experience to help paint that picture. At Phoenix, which is a lower mid-market private equity fund, we had been looking to invest in women's health for nearly ten years, and we simply couldn't find a business that was of a certain size and scale that we could invest in.

We did eventually find one, which is London Gynaecology, who we're now partnered with, which is fantastic, but we found one. And I actually, before this podcast we use a platform called Actum to track private equity deals- it's quite a new platform, so it won't have everything- but I did just do a quick search of UK businesses that have received private equity funding, and on that database since 2015, they have 11 companies.

And I added up the investment amount, and it was 85 million. That is not... That won't be thorough. It won't be everything. There'll also be other businesses that are doing some form of women's health, but they're not classified as a women's health business. But it was just quite interesting. If I had searched things like accounting, dental, vets, legal- like all these other, IT managed services, all these other sort of trends in the UK lower mid-market PE, the numbers would've just been totally different. So yeah, in my mind, still a lot more to go for.

Charlotte Lewis: Yeah, it's quite interesting actually. It links to another point that we wanted to explore with you both around what, what actually counts as women's health.

So historically, investment in women's health has often focused on fertility, pregnancy, contraception and menopause. There is an increasing debate about whether women's health should be defined much more broadly and include conditions that affect women uniquely, differently or disproportionately. When investors are thinking about women's health, do you think they should be thinking more broadly than those very traditional sort of femtech or women's health categories?

Ally Vey: Yeah, I absolutely do. I personally would go as far as saying that women's health is much more of a trend or a theme. It's not a kind of sub-sector or a niche. And, stepping back for a second, I would say that women's health plus men's health is global healthcare. Yeah. So we're just talking about half of the healthcare ecosystem here, because most conditions affect women differently to men, because women are not small men.

So I think about women's health more as a theme, like tech-enabled services or aging population. Within the aging population, you have lots of other sectors that benefit from or are serving the aging population, whether it's, pension solutions, elderly care homes. Whether it's hips and knees to be more mobile older in life.

There's lots of niches that serve the aging population. I think women's health is the theme or the trend, and again, there are lots of niches that then serve into that.

Claire Edwards: Yeah. We completely agree, and I think looking at it in that broader lens from an M&A perspective, it then broadens the buyer and investor landscape.

So actually, rather than, you needing to have a real focus on women's health, actually, broader healthcare service consolidators can start to look at what the opportunities are under those themes. So yeah, completely agree on that point.

Ally Vey: I guess some examples of that we might come on to talk about Hologic later but, that's a business that was taken private, I think, for over something like over $80 billion, which might be seen as a medical device business or a medtech business. But it's mainly serving women's health or, women's femtech or it definitely is benefiting from a theme, but it might just be classified as something totally different. And then you also have businesses like some private hospitals, who might just be classified as private hospitals. But, guess what? A tonne of their work and their growth is by looking after very specific women's cancers or other women's health conditions.

Sophie Burton-Jones: Yeah, and I don't know the answer to this, but presumably something like Viagra probably is just a health business as opposed to specifically being labelled as a men's health business.

Ally Vey: Exactly, and it would just... I think Viagra would just be classified under pharmaceuticals.

Sophie Burton-Jones: Yeah.

Ally Vey: And again, if you wanted to look at pharmaceuticals, the only pharmaceuticals that are necessarily pulled out as women's health would be contraceptives or maybe drugs for breast cancer or fertility drugs, so hormone-related drugs that simply are never given to men.

But there'll be a tonne of other pharmaceutical products that are just, they still help women with their health, but maybe they need to be adjusted in how they help women and their health.

Charlotte Lewis: I think it speaks to and it's the topic more closely aligns with our sort of research and data strand that we've got, but obviously all of these things interlink.

And actually, I think there's a potentially a broader question around the level of information we have and the research that we have on women's health, and how some of these conditions do affect women differently. There's some people that are suggesting now that I think you alluded to it, Ally, that almost all conditions will affect women differently to men.

The research just hasn't been there necessarily to support that. I was at the health conference, and Dame Lesley Regan said that's one of the things that she's backing is that there's a percentage of conditions now that they know that either only affect women or affect women disproportionately or differently.

But there's about 50% of conditions that at the moment it's not that they affect men and women the same, it's that the research hasn't been done to determine that. It would be very interesting to see if that is the case because then actually it opens up a whole... It does open up this space to say women's health, as you say, is not so much a sector as a trend.

And actually, women's health is therefore just all of health, in the same way that men's health is basically all of health. And then we can start having quite different conversations about investment because you're talking about absolutely not a niche, but absolutely an entire population.

So I think having these conversations is just really important, and reframing people's mindset around women's health is not just gynaecological problems, for example, because actually we need to think very differently about how we treat women for probably all conditions than we currently do.

Ally Vey: Exactly.

And it seems like diagnostics, there's fantastic work going on in diagnostics, which is great. But are people who are developing new diagnostics tools thinking what's the base level for a man versus a woman, and therefore what is the right level to determine whether something is awry?

And it's just again, it's more of a theme. And then with treatments, what is the correct dosage? Sometimes women are given an adult dose of, let's say, a painkiller, and they might be the same size as a 14-year-old boy. Yeah. And, you know, this small woman who has an whole sort of different hormone system is given the same dosage as a 6'7" man.

It's just mad.

Sophie Burton-Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think what we see quite often is that women's health businesses are founded because of that type of lived experience where something's not being provided at all that seems fairly obvious. Or something's been provided not very well because it's been determined on the basis of what would be acceptable to a man.

When you're evaluating women's health or femtech business, what do you think is the difference between a company that is solving an important problem and one that's genuinely investable? And do they meet in the middle?

Ally Vey: Yes. I think this is really interesting. And I think just because there's an unmet need doesn't necessarily mean there's a kind of a commercial model that makes sense.

And I think in women's health, you have to think really carefully about who is paying for what you are making or developing, because targeting a patient or a woman is very different to selling into the NHS or a hospital, or insurers, or the workplace. And I think understanding why somebody would buy what you're developing and what the benefit to them is just really important.

I said we might come back to Hologic because it's such a massive business, I think. I was looking into their kind of history and what they've bought, and I think it paints quite an interesting story. Hologic bought a business called Endomag for $310 million. So this is a technology used in breast cancer surgery, and it essentially allows breast cancer surgery to be done better and more cost effectively because the results are better and women have less visits.

So there is a clear kind of role. There's a clear sell to a hospital because a hospital thinks, "If I invest in this technology, I can see more patients in less time and get better results." There's an absolute clear kind of pitch to the hospital. And you develop the technology and you then therefore you know you can sell it into hospitals.

And if you know that you've got somebody at the end who's going to buy this technology, and they're going to get a return on their investment, then it all makes sense. And I think, when you get to things like women being in severe pain once a month, which means they either can't go to work or they're not doing their job properly,

if you are developing something to help with that, who's paying for it? Is it the patient who's in such severe pain that they will pay themselves to not be in pain? Is it the NHS because they want to stop women being in pain because they want to reduce GP visits and reduce women turning up at A&E in severe pain thinking they're about to die?

Is it the employer? They're going to pay because they want women to be at work more or be performing better at work? Or is it a sort of a broader government thing because they're thinking we're going to boost the economy by having less... I think so some of the new innovation and all of these great ideas that are coming out, sometimes there's not so much clarity on the commercial model and who is actually going to pay for the solution once it's been developed.

Claire Edwards: Yeah. I think when we're working with businesses and helping to build the evidence that supports that business case, I think there's exactly those two points, it's that evidence generation. So do you have the evidence that underpins the story that you're telling?

And then also that commercial model. And I think, as we see more businesses scale, there's clearer, more well-trodden pathways to the end consumer, be that, as you said, Ally, B2C or B2B2C, but we're starting to see some of that evolve, which is great. But I think for us, those two points are what differentiate a sort of mission-led business versus an investable business.

And we often see founders with really deep conviction, but they then can't articulate the unit economics of their product or service. So actually unpacking that, and we work a lot with businesses to start to unpack that data that helps to tell the story. And I think the other bit we see as a real hurdle is just that clarity on your regulatory pathway, and I think that's one of the big barriers for investors, is actually understanding is this a device or a diagnostic?

What regulatory approvals do we need and what's the pathway to get us there? So I think that's a material diligence point and something that investors need to get comfortable with.

Sophie Burton-Jones: Do you ever see those kind of mission-based businesses, as you called it, come to you, and then you think, "Actually, there could be something in this, but we need to pivot you to a different model that might work for investment purposes?"

Claire Edwards: Yes, I think there's often things that can be done, and actually when Ally and I chat, we often say, there must be a way of looking at what fits together so you get really discreet sort of offerings that tackle one issue, but actually could you bring some of those businesses together and actually, create partnerships or connect people up?

So I think that's sometimes a really exciting way, and hence why we've been so focused on trying to build that network. Because actually, if you can introduce two businesses that sit alongside each other, you can create real value in bringing those together.

Ally Vey: Yeah, and it's a theme we might come onto later, but there is huge fragmentation especially in the UK women's health market.

And I'm really excited about the role that London Gynaecology can play in, for example, some of those niche technologies. How do they get in front of patients? Hello, we've got four clinics and we're a small business, so we can absolutely bring on technologies and start rolling out new diagnostics, new treatments and work with innovators.

I talk to lots of people developing new and exciting products, and if I think there's a clear role in one of the clinics, then I introduce them to the team. I'm probably passing on one or two new business ideas a week. And I think, yeah, partnerships will be a big part of the success of this market in the future.

Charlotte Lewis: Claire, you mentioned evidence. I'm interested to know the extent to which, again, women's health is generally considered to be less well-researched, therefore there's potentially less evidence, less data compared to healthcare more broadly, what impact that might have on a business that's trying to demonstrate that it's investable but isn't necessarily starting from the same sort of place that healthcare that isn't specific to women's health, could?

Do you see that? Because it's something that comes up quite a lot at events that I go to. But I'm not sure whether that's a real thing or whether that's people saying it because it's one way of explaining why their business isn't getting invested in.

So, I'm just curious to know how you see that play out.

Claire Edwards: Yeah. I think it is really interesting, isn't it to unpack it because I think there's sort of the broader research, as we were saying, women being considered small men for clinical trial purposes. So there's this huge sort of data and evidence gap that supports new products coming to market.

So that's one area in itself. But then I think within a business, it's then being able to gather data and evidence that supports your routes to market, that supports your business model. So actually just thinking about what you do have access to as data, gathering feedback from your customers,

being part of pilots, having key opinion leaders involved, and all of those aspects that can then really start to underpin your growth plan and support that growth plan into the future.

Ally Vey: Yeah, because clinical data is very expensive and complicated to get, but you can get other things.

And as an example, I was talking to someone recently who's developing an innovative pelvic pain product. So for anybody who's having any form of pain, actually maybe in their lower back and in their pelvic region, and I was saying, "Can you just get data on women, just lots of women who... how often have they had pain?

What have they spent money on?" And to start building this picture of how many different things people have tried, how much money people have spent, and they still haven't found their answer, but they're still willing to pay. Because then you paint a picture of there's this many women in pain, they're spending money, and they will continue to spend money until they find something that works.

I have something that works, you know, and it just paints such an obvious picture. But it doesn't need to be... You don't need to necessarily run a clinical trial, which is very expensive and hard to do.

Charlotte Lewis: Yeah. We're talking about different types of data. And I guess if you were an innovator in this space trying to think quite cleverly about how you can obtain the information that you actually need, because in some cases

you might not need all of the data that's missing to get up and running, but you will certainly need to be able to demonstrate that you've got a marketplace and customers for your product.

Ally Vey: Exactly.

Charlotte Lewis: So, thinking then about scaling really. We've talked about growth in the sector, particularly around sort of early stage activity, but commenters suggest that a bigger challenge is creating a business that can successfully scale and ultimately achieve meaningful exits.

And we're certainly seeing that. I think you both alluded to it earlier on in the podcast. So is the real challenge today generating more startups or is it creating more companies that can successfully scale and achieve significant exits?

Claire Edwards: I think it's the latter. I think if you look at the data, there is capital flowing in at a seed level.

So we've got a good volume of startups. We've got support for innovation. And then we're starting to see Buyout Capital, as Ally's talked about, partnering with London Gynaecology. I think the gap is that middle. We've got a really thin growth equity landscape, and I think that's, to the points we were talking about earlier, that's because there's relatively few specialist funders at that space.

People that are comfortable with clinical risk, with regulatory risk. Actually, it's quite hard to underwrite that some of those positions where businesses are scaling. When we look at it, that's what we see. I think then you can look at broader statistics about many women's health businesses are female founders.

I'm a female in M&A. There's not many of us. There's even fewer females in private equity. Ally's really rare. So it's that access to a network. How do you know about those investors? How do you access that network? It's multiple layers of complexity and barriers that we need to break down to get a focus on supporting those businesses that have a really great story and a really great plan to scale.

Sophie Burton-Jones: And do you think investors are underestimating the opportunity at all? Or do you think it's a mixture of all those things that you've just mentioned?

Claire Edwards: I don't know, and it's something we've all talked about collectively. Because I think when you look at the stats, it's horrific, isn't it?

It's 2% of female businesses received venture funding. And so I don't know what it is. I think it's the combination of things that we've talked about. It's unpacking what is women's health? What fits in that category? How do we clearly articulate the pathway to scaling the economic case?

We're seeing, I think, sort of clarity on that end market as well because you're seeing private customers, but also now employers, are starting to support women in the workplace. So actually as some of those new themes evolve, it just gives greater clarity on those routes to market and how you might scale a business.

But I think it's, yeah, I think there's not one single point. It's layers of complexities to unpack.

Ally Vey: What I think I would love to see is people just really proudly talking about the fact that they've invested in women's health and it's been a really successful investment, and they've made a good return.

Before this podcast, I was trying to find more sort of hardcore data of people who have done really well. There are some businesses in America like Flo and Pomelo that on paper people have done really well, but there's no clear sort of published data on the returns any of those investors have or might have made.

Pregnancy Plus- the app was sold to Philips. The terms won't disclose. I don't know how much money Amber made. I'm sure she did really well, but again, it would just be so fantastic if people were just more proud of investing in this area and making money rather than... I think maybe people are shy of it because they see it as... because it's healthcare and it's women's health, maybe they're a bit nervous of saying that we've made money out of it.

But investors exist to deliver returns, unless you're an impact investor, which is very different. But if you are a bog standard, institutional investor, you need to make a return for your shareholders. And so people should be proud of it, that it makes kind of commercial sense to make these investments.

So I think that will help and absolutely having more female investors because there is absolutely no way that Phoenix would have invested in a women's health business if we didn't have lots of women in our team. It's funny because I don't think people talk about periods in the boardroom.

People don't like talking about periods and menstruation, and I don't know why, but it makes people squirmish. Breast cancer, cervical cancer, deliveries- fine. People happily talk about C-sections and birthing suites and all of this, but they do not want to talk about periods and menstruation and heavy bleeding.

It's just ... And so there's always going to be a bit of a barrier. And it's women too. Women don't want to talk about it either. Yeah. It's not just men.

Claire Edwards: Yeah. I think it

Charlotte Lewis: goes back

Claire Edwards: to- With conditions, not just... Sorry.

Charlotte Lewis: There's- that's it, Claire. Yeah ... so I was going to say, I think it goes back to your point about it's multilayered.

What are the barriers and why isn't women's health sort of as successful in terms of investment opportunities and commercially as it could be, and should be, because we recognise the market size is so big? And I think, when you peel it all back, I think there's so much more sort of cultural impact in terms of women's health than there would be in relation to probably many other aspects of healthcare.

And so we probably do need to blame the patriarchy here for some of this stuff. because that's, it's... And it is women as well. There's taboo and embarrassment under education, those sorts of things. So actually, as you say, more women getting into areas that would support investment in those spaces is fantastic.

So you, in your respective industries, and us as well talking openly about this and encouraging women to be involved and to qualify into these areas, because we all support the sort of the ecosystem as well. And actually then encouraging women to feel comfortable talking about their health and all aspects of their health openly, if they feel able.

I've certainly become a lot more confident in saying things about myself and accepting that's just a part of my body and it's who I am, particularly I do with my daughter as well, because I think this only changes if we start to change it. I think, the internet, there's lots of social media, lots of bad things that we can say about it. But actually, for some things like this, it's really powerful to get women being more confident about, talking about, the bodies that they exist in and the amazing things that our bodies can do. I think it will take time and you've just got to keep at it really.

Which I don't think that these... there's probably a better word for it than I'm using, but... these sort of issues are quite the same. There may be one or two male health conditions that are slightly more people don't necessarily talk about. But I think with women's health, there's a much broader range of things that people don't yet feel comfortable talking about openly.

I think men have a role to play in that as well, to educate themselves on women's bodies and how they work and what they do, and to engage women in that conversation so women feel more comfortable talking about it. I do see quite a lot of male allies becoming more prominent. And, like him or not, Stephen Bartlett talking about periods on his podcast and understanding about menstrual cycles.

It's quite powerful. That's not something you could've imagined, you know, some years back. So I think there's something in that actually permeates through all of this. And we all have a role to play in that, I think.

Claire Edwards: Yeah. I think that sort of unfamiliarity is a big barrier, isn't it?

Investors are unfamiliar with this as a sector, unfamiliar with talking about women's health, so unlocking all of those inputs that make it unfamiliar, yeah, will be a big step forward.

Ally Vey: I think one of the other things that in investing in healthcare in general, because investors love sort of data and improved outcomes and hardcore, hardcore data to show that their investment is making a difference,

I think in some areas that's very clear. So with cancer, it's percentage of people that live beyond ten years. There's been huge improvements in breast cancer and survival rates. It's literally hardcore data: how many women are still alive ten years later? But there's all sorts of areas in healthcare that has been under-invested because it's harder to measure the improvements and the outcomes.

And women's health is one area because there's lots of conditions where the outcome is simply less pain or feeling better. How do you measure it? How do you clearly show investors in the wider community that your product or your technology is making women's lives better?

But there are other areas too, like respiratory diseases. People don't die of respiratory dise- diseases, but there's a tonne... there's like just so many people around the world who have awful respiratory conditions or skin conditions, but because they're not dying of it, people don't invest as much because investors can't say, "And we stopped this many people dying."

It's a lot harder to measure. So maybe something-

Sophie Burton-Jones: You could measure it by days people don't miss of work or- that's what I was thinking ... something like that.

Ally Vey: Which you could, but then that all comes blended in with mental health. Why are people

missing health? Is it just pain? It could be pain, lower back pain from something totally different. It could be mental health. So- ... I wouldn't, I don't know what the answer is, but if someone could come up with a sort of a worldwide scale of measuring sort of the impact on women's health and how different technologies improve it, then that would just be fantastic.

Charlotte Lewis: Yeah. I think, so , we had a conversation where it was discussed about ... Obviously, there's an awful lot of work that goes into menopause, which has been fantastic over the last kind of ten years or so, raising awareness, and not to be underestimated the importance of that. But that actually one of the areas that we really do need to focus on is women of sort of 18 to 55, that sort of working age women, and obviously menopause does capture that. I do know that. But who, as you say, are missing one or two days a week, a month of work, or are not productive during that time, or are suffering, quite severely, with PMDD in the week before their period, which means that they're not performing optimally and those sorts of things.

And the impact that has on the economy or on, ultimately on the economy, but also for themselves or for their employers. And I really like the idea of seeing how we could create improvements in that for the women themselves, but also actually economically what that opens up.

Because then I think that would unlock more funding because you can then start to measure the sort of economic benefit of doing so. I think a bit more effort into that. And I think you're right, Ally, it starts with that data collection really, because if you can map it out and you can prove it, then it becomes much more attractive as an area to invest in.

So I would like to see a bit more research and thought into that space, because I think that's where women's health could really take off because if you start to multiply those numbers against a population, the figures become billions. So, it's very powerful.

That's my sort of micro version of what success might look like for now. But I'd be interested to know from your perspective, if we were recording this podcast in five years' time, what do you think would need to have happened for you to conclude that women's health investment had truly come of age?

Ally Vey: So for me, it's really clear. I just want more exits and investors being open and proud of investing in this sector, and it making good financial sense to invest and not treating it as a sort of impact investing or a cultural thing. Just more solid women's health exits.

Claire Edwards: Yeah. And I think the same. I think we need more capital at a scale-up stage that gets us to those exits, but exactly that.

More exits that give us reference points, data on those deal metrics that then inform future exits, and also more deal flow outside of London. There's really exciting activity in the regions as well. I'm in Bristol. We're just setting up a women's health network there, and it's amazing the reception we've had.

So I think starting to see that impact come out into the regions as well would be great.

Ally Vey: Yeah, and more partnerships. Yes. I hope that London Gynaecology can really help with that, but seeing the power of sort of bringing some of these as you say, whether it's a network type of partnership, but really sort of group power.

Charlotte Lewis: Yeah, definitely.

I think there's something really interesting in that conversation actually. And a note to innovators around point solutions are great on their own, but if you're creating a point solution you probably ought to be thinking quite early on about how you could work alongside others to create a more holistic approach, whether that's joining up with a clinic, or whether that's looking at the end-to-end pathway.

But, again, I'm not so sure that all innovators think like that. They're thinking about their specific problem and their specific solution. But in healthcare, we've done that for too long, frankly. We need to be much, much broader. We're a whole person, and treating people in the whole sense is very important.

Sophie Burton-Jones: That's what I was going to say as well. We're obviously talking about women's health, and it's really important from that perspective. But actually, from a whole healthcare system perspective, that's not a bad shout. No. More partnerships and consortiums and doing that end-to-end care.

Ally Vey: And for people to stop talking about women's health like it's a niche. Yeah. Yeah. And more- Yeah. ... talking about it like it's half of the global healthcare- Just health ... system.

Sophie Burton-Jones: Just health.

Charlotte Lewis: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you both so much for joining us today. Today's discussion has obviously highlighted how far the women's health investment market has come, which is fantastic, but also how much further there is to go, and actually some of the reasons for that, which are multifaceted.

We've explored how investors are thinking about the sector and what makes a business investable and the challenges of scaling as well as the opportunities that remain largely untapped. It's a really exciting space to be in. Most importantly, we've discussed what needs to happen for women's health and femtech to move from a promising growth market to a mature and mainstream investment category.

Thank you.

Sophie Burton-Jones: So yeah, thanks very much for your time Claire and Ally. It's been brilliant to talk to you both about this. If you would like to hear more from Claire and Ally, you can contact them both via LinkedIn. And at Mills & Reeve, we're very happy to discuss any legal queries you might have, whether you're buying or selling healthtech more generally or anything in the women's health space.

And our individual contact details are available on our website at mills-reeve.com. So thanks everybody for joining this episode of Talking digital health by law firm Mills & Reeve.

Charlotte Lewis: Thank you.