By Chelsea Schiller and Rebekah Neal
The Making of a Women’s Health Movement
Venture capital investment in women’s health reached an all-time high, more than tripling between 2019 and 2024 and surpassing the growth rate of healthcare investment overall. This surge was fueled by growing recognition that many health conditions affect women differently and disproportionately, alongside emerging research revealing the underlying causes and biological drivers. Federal and state policies and investment amplified this momentum, including the groundbreaking $113 million commitment from the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which rallied stakeholders across the ecosystem and helped de-risk the field for investors.
Since this announcement in 2024, the field of women’s health has rapidly evolved across funding, regulatory pathways, and reimbursement, coalescing into a powerful new movement:
- Investors—from venture capital firms to philanthropic foundations—have announced nearly $4 billion in funding.
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have made historic steps to expand women’s health education and access to treatments, including removing misleading FDA warnings on hormone replacement therapy for menopause.
- Policymakers have introduced new bills, such as the Find It Early Act, to influence women’s health reimbursement, and have been propelled by Women’s Health Advocates, a growing coalition of women’s health investors, entrepreneurs, researchers, patients, and policymakers.
- Ecosystem conveners have released benchmarking reports—including Women’s Health Access Matters’ defining The Case To Fund Women’s Health Research and Cure’s Unlocking the Opportunity—that clearly show how accelerating sex and gender–based health research benefits women, their families, and the economy.
Despite this progress, the gap and opportunity for continued investment in women’s health research, innovation, and policy remain. While women in the U.S. drive more than 80% of healthcare decisions and make up over half of all patients, they also face higher costs for care and higher barriers to access. The need for innovation is clear, and an increase in federal non-dilutive funding will remain important to advancing progress, as venture capital (VC) investment in women’s health companies accounts for only 4% of the total VC investments in healthcare.
In this landscape, VentureWell’s unique capabilities help ensure that every dollar directed toward women’s health can make an outsized impact.
Accelerating Women’s Health Innovators’ Path to Market
With over 30 years of experience powering innovators from idea to impact, VentureWell has supported nearly 20,000 innovators in raising $7.8 billion in follow-on funding and transitioning to market. This includes supporting more than 230 women’s health innovators in accelerating their path to market through initiatives including the ARPA-H Sprint for Women’s Health, VentureWell’s Aspire program, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s RADx® programs.
At HLTH 2025, VentureWell’s Women’s Health Innovation Pavilion showcased women’s health startups and founders that have partnered with VentureWell to advance their commercialization readiness, including CONNEQT Health, Daré Bioscience, Malcova, medara™, Nura Health, and Sonkusale Research Labs. These teams are working towards novel solutions ranging from non-invasive endometriosis and breast cancer diagnostics to treatment for high-risk HPV.
At HLTH 2025, Women’s Health Fund founder Jessica Federer announced WH1, a new vehicle to activate $60 billion in capital with the challenge, “We owe women decades of scientific advancement, and now it’s time to deliver.” Today, these innovators are doing exactly that.
To close the longstanding gaps in women’s health outcomes, VentureWell partners with funders and innovators to deliver targeted commercialization interventions that carry innovations through the common pitfalls in the funding gap known as “the valley of death.” Our support focus areas include investor readiness training and connections to equip founders in securing their first round of equity, network building and engagement to connect collaborators and share best practices, and research & development (R&D) funding to develop breakthrough innovations.
Strengthening Investor Readiness
Women’s health founders and startups have spent decades educating investors on basic female biological functions and women’s health issues. This requires women’s health startups and founders to spend time on the basics and deliver data-driven stories to effectively communicate the market potential and health impact of their innovations.
To equip women’s health innovators for investor engagement, VentureWell partners with entrepreneurs from the earliest stages of commercialization to develop their fundraising strategy, refine their pitch, and prepare for due diligence conversations through programs like VentureWell’s Aspire Medtech. This program provides access to structured programming and investor-mentors, preparing innovators to successfully raise their first round of equity funding.
Malcova is a 2022 Aspire Medtech alumni company that now has patented, low-radiation 3D imaging technology and AI models to screen for breast cancer early and accurately for people with dense breast tissue. Through Aspire, the team sharpened their business strategy, positioning them to secure $2 million in non-dilutive funding from small business awards before connecting with angel investors and early venture capital to fund their technology.
“VentureWell gave us an incredible hands-on opportunity to pitch to investors, understand their perspectives and expectations, navigate negotiations, and connect with early-stage VCs”, shared Peymon Ghazi, co-founder and CEO of Malcova.
Driving Progress With Expert Networks
VentureWell draws on decades of experience in the innovation and entrepreneurship space to build curated connections that lead to impactful partnerships. Innovators have access to our network of experts in regulatory, reimbursement, manufacturing, market and customer discovery, clinical validation, and AI and cloud infrastructure. Experts are paired with innovators at discrete commercial and technical inflection points to achieve key milestones that move technologies from lab to market.
As manager of the ARPA-H Investor Catalyst Hub, a public-private partnership connecting more than 650 institutions across the healthcare innovation ecosystem, VentureWell is advancing solutions through initiatives like the Sprint for Women’s Health, tackling critical gaps—from at-home diagnostics and ovarian health to chronic pain and female research models—and connecting awardees to experts that can further their commercialization readiness.
Daré Bioscience is developing the first at-home treatment to clear persistent high-risk human papillomavirus infection, which causes cervical cancer. “The Investor Catalyst Hub has helped us connect with thought leaders in the regulatory community who are working in this area and are very motivated to bring patients into clinical studies,” shared Sabrina Johnson, Daré founder. “It’s creating that collaboration ecosystem and bringing in experts that can support our work.”
VentureWell also connected Sprint for Women’s Health researchers with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide credits and subject matter expertise needed to build out their cloud infrastructure and explore the application of generative AI. This accelerates technology development and prepares innovators for investors who are increasingly looking for founders and startups to articulate a credible AI strategy.
Women’s health innovators, investors, and experts have the opportunity to engage: Apply to be an Investor Catalyst Hub member to join this network.
Managing Awards and Measuring Impact
Many conditions impact women in distinct and outsized ways; however, despite the recent acceleration in investment, the funding associated with these conditions remains low. For example, according to Women’s Health Access Matters, women are 50% more likely than men to die with a heart attack, yet only 4.5% of the $444 million of 2019 NIH funding on coronary heart disease went to women-focused solutions.
To support in closing this gap, VentureWell manages and evaluates the outcomes of grants, contracts, equity investments, and R&D awards on behalf of private and public institutions. VentureWell has supported more than $124 million in funds for women’s health research, including funding challenges for the ARPA-H Sprint for Women’s Health and the NIH Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Technology (RADx® Tech).
Through the Investor Catalyst Hub, VentureWell is administering $113 million in award funding to Sprint for Women’s Health performers, managing milestone-based payments to accelerate technology to patient impact. VentureWell oversaw the call for applications—which received 1,700 submissions—ultimately awarding 24 high-impact and novel approaches. Of those, nine awardees were small businesses or startups, and 30% had never received government funding before.
The RADx® Tech Maternal Health Challenge awarded $8 million to innovators addressing maternity care deserts with diagnostic devices and wearable solutions to reduce maternal mortality.
The Maternal Health Challenge catalyzed 10 innovators’ business and technological development. Six months after the challenge ended, VentureWell evaluated the impact of Maternal Health Challenge innovators: Six secured patents, five obtained a combined total of more than $5 million in follow-on funding, three finalists submitted or received regulatory approvals, and eight teams planned or completed clinical studies.
CONNEQT Health, a Maternal Health Challenge finalist, developed the first at-home clinical-grade device to measure biomarkers that predict cardiovascular risk before symptoms appear. CONNEQT Health’s chief strategy officer, Catherine Liao, expressed: “Having milestones, deadlines, and forcing functions [of the challenge] drove the acceleration in getting our innovation out the door. Ten months in, we have shipped to a few thousand customers as well as performed a few thousand arterial health assessments for our customers.”
Securing the Future of Women’s Health
The women’s health movement is reshaping research, investment, and care delivery. Yet realizing its full potential will require sustained commitment: investment that matches the scale of women’s unmet needs, policy that clears pathways for innovation, and an ecosystem that empowers founders with the expertise and partnerships necessary to thrive. As the field moves from momentum to measurable impact, the work ahead demands coordinated action from funders, policymakers, researchers, and innovators.
VentureWell remains deeply committed to powering this next chapter. By equipping women’s health innovators with commercialization support, expert networks, and strategic capital pathways, we help ensure that transformative ideas reach the patients who need them most.
Chelsea Schiller is the director of Health Commercialization and Rebekah Neal is the vice president of Commercialization at VentureWell, where they work to help innovators bring novel health and science solutions from lab to market.