“Is this really the best we can do?” thought Jo Barry, as she made her way to work with two disposable heat patches stuck to her stomach and lower back, quietly raging at both the waste and the cost. Other alternatives – hot water bottles or wheat bags – weren’t exactly office-friendly, either.
After 20 years of living with endometriosis – enduring repeated surgeries, invasive treatment and chronic pain – Barry had reached breaking point. Soon after, she launched her own brand, Scarlet Period, and created the “Rae” period pad: a lightweight, discreet pad designed to deliver gentle heat directly to the abdomen. The aim? Subtle period comfort that fits a busy life, without the waste and impracticality of patches. Vogue’s beauty and wellness editor, Morgan Fargo, is a fan.
Barry is one of many femtech founders turning personal hardship into practical innovation. Femtech – short for “female technology” – is an umbrella term for products, services and software that address women’s health needs, from menstrual care to fertility, menopause, postpartum and beyond. Globally, the femtech market was valued at about $40.2 billion in 2020, and it’s projected to reach around $97 billion by 2030.
For years, female physiology was neglected by medical research – considered “too complex, cyclical or inconvenient”. As Barry puts it: “For decades, women were excluded from clinical trials, meaning drugs, diagnostics and devices were literally designed without us.” But times are changing. Invisible burdens – heavy periods, pain, fertility issues, menopause symptoms – are finally being acknowledged. As more people speak out about their experiences, demand for tailored solutions has risen. As Justyna Strzeszynska, femtech founder of menstrual care company Joii, notes, once the silence was broken, it became impossible to pretend these issues were niche.
Femtech isn’t just about better pads or apps – it’s about systemic change. It’s about acknowledging the unique healthcare needs of half the population and catering to them. It’s about turning decades of neglect into innovation, dignity and choice. And while the industry still has a long way to go – especially in terms of affordability, data privacy and wider access – the momentum is undeniable.
Here are just some of the brands, founders and products that deserve your time and attention.
The devices
Ruth Phypers, founder of Laser Medicine on Harley Street, harnesses clinical photobiomodulation therapy – more commonly known to consumers as red light therapy. Phypers uses a combination of therapeutic lasers designed to stimulate ovarian function and support egg production, helping women – particularly those struggling to conceive – to improve their chances of pregnancy. Alongside these in-clinic treatments, she has developed an at-home protocol: a photobiomodulation abdominal light pad powered by 540 LEDs. The device is designed to improve cellular energy and reduce inflammation, benefits that may support fertility while also helping to manage conditions such as endometriosis and PCOS.
“Female eggs contain more mitochondria than any other cell in the body,” Phypers explains. “So if you can increase mitochondrial energy, the egg performs better – which is especially beneficial for older women, where egg energy naturally declines.” The pad can be used either independently or alongside in-clinic treatments, although consistency is key. Phypers reports strong results across her own clientele.
For period pain, Rae offers quiet, consistent relief, sitting discreetly under clothing so you can go about your day as normal. Heating to 50 degrees, it tucks easily into everyday outfits – or the brand’s cleverly designed Period Pocket Underwear – providing targeted warmth that helps alleviate discomfort. Even those without severe period pain might just enjoy the soothing feel of this one.
Meanwhile, the Nettle medical wearable headband by Samphire Neuroscience is designed to support women experiencing premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD – a severe form of PMS characterised by intense mood changes), menstrual pain and difficult pre-menstrual moods. It utilises transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) – a low-level electrical current – to stimulate areas of the brain involved in pain processing and emotional regulation. Designed to be worn for 20 minutes at a time in the days leading up to a period, early clinical trial results indiciate promising outcomes for this device.
When Tania Boler created Elvie, she changed the breast-pump landscape, making a process long associated with discomfort and inconvenience altogether more seamless. The ultra-quiet Elvie Pump offers personalised pumping rhythms via an app, while the Elvie Trainer helps strengthen the pelvic floor through guided exercises. Then there’s Daye, a non-toxic period-care brand that has developed a diagnostic tampon capable of screening the vaginal microbiome and testing for STIs and HPV – cleverly merging menstrual care with preventive health.
Finally, there are the wearables many of us already incorporate into daily life. The Oura Ring, for instance, offers detailed cycle tracking, helping users understand fertility windows, phase-specific physical and emotional needs, and predictions for when their next period might begin. It can also be worn during pregnancy, tracking signs and symptoms while offering guidance on what physiological changes to expect.
Apple Watch, too, includes a Cycle Tracking app, using data such as skin-temperature changes to help estimate ovulation and fertile windows – another example of how mainstream technology is increasingly designed with female physiology top of mind.
The apps
According to Dr Helen O’Neill, associate professor in reproductive and molecular genetics at UCL, and founder and CEO of Hertility, one of the biggest challenges facing women’s health brands isn’t just funding or stigma – it’s visibility.
“Across major platforms like Meta, TikTok and Google, medically accurate content about fertility, menstruation, menopause and sexual health is frequently flagged as ‘inappropriate’, restricted or shadow-banned,” she explains. “This means female-founded and clinically led companies like Hertility are often blocked from advertising or see their reach dramatically reduced, while male-focused health content faces far fewer barriers.”
This lack of visibility makes progress more difficult. And yet Hertility – best known for its at-home hormone and fertility testing, alongside its new patent-pending tool, GYN-AI – continues to gain traction. Built using the brand’s curated dataset – which includes data from over 650,000 health assessments and 72,000 blood tests – the tool aims to enable screening, testing and diagnosis in days, rather than years.
At a moment when advanced AI models such as ChatGPT are gaining prominence, yet are widely believed to be trained on datasets riddled with historical gender bias, tools like GYN-AI have the potential to shift the landscape – embedding female-specific data at the very foundation of health-tech innovation.
Other brands worth noting include Clue, the menstrual cycle-, period- and fertility-tracking app that offers personalised predictions alongside in-depth cycle analysis. Its founder, Ida Tin, coined the term “femtech” in 2016, helping to define an entire industry.
“One of our campaign lines is, ‘It’s not in your head, it’s in your data’,” says Louise Troen, Clue’s chief marketing officer. “Women are so often told they’re irrational, emotional or unreasonable – when in reality, at any given moment, we’re navigating complex hormonal shifts that influence how we feel and behave. If anything, that makes women extraordinary.”
Part device, part app, Joii is a menstrual-health tool that offers data-driven insights into period flow – an important indicator of broader health. Built around the Joii pad, which functions much like a sanitary towel, the system evaluates menstrual blood loss. After use, the pad is scanned via the accompanying app, which uses AI to estimate blood volume and clot size.
Over time, this data builds a personalised period-health profile, allowing users to understand exactly how heavy their periods are – information that can support earlier detection of conditions such as endometriosis and fibroids. Crucially, it also gives women clear, objective data that they can take into medical consultations, shifting conversations from anecdotal descriptions to tangible evidence.
The treatments
At Avenues, a fertility clinic in Euston, London, the focus is on using cutting-edge technology to deliver clearer answers earlier on in a woman’s reproductive journey. The clinic’s pelvic ultrasound intelligence offers a level of diagnostic detail that can be transformative for assessing ovarian and uterine health, cycle irregularities, PCOS, fibroids and endometriosis, explains Dr Cristina Hickman, consultant embryologist and founder.
“For women freezing their eggs, our AI Egg Intelligence is another breakthrough,” she adds. “It analyses the health of each egg after collection, providing a realistic picture of egg quality and its potential to result in pregnancy now – rather than waiting years until eggs are thawed, only to discover issues then.”
At the same time, Hickman is careful to stress that technology should be a supplementary tool, and not a replacement for clinical expertise. “True reproductive insight comes from a comprehensive assessment – hormones, ovaries, uterus, sperm and lifestyle – interpreted by a specialist,” she notes.
Elsewhere, at Dr Galyna Selezneva’s London clinic, patients struggling with pelvic floor weakness or urinary incontinence can book sessions on the Emsella Chair. The non-invasive treatment emits high-intensity electromagnetic pulses that stimulate deep pelvic floor muscle contractions while you sit fully clothed for around 30 minutes. A single session can trigger the equivalent of more than 10,000 pelvic floor contractions – a level of activation that would be impossible to replicate through voluntary exercises alone.
The supplements
And then there are the female health-focused supplement brands addressing women’s unique hormonal needs. “So many products marketed ‘for women’ are really just standard, off-the-rack formulas with a pink label,” says Danielle Fox, co-founder of Ova. “Key considerations – like hormone-supporting nutrients, therapeutic dosages, or formulas tailored to different reproductive stages – are surprisingly rare. We created Ova to design supplements around what women’s bodies genuinely need across the different phases of their reproductive lives.”
Ova’s OvaHer supplement combines zinc, vitamins B6 and B12, methylfolate, vitamin D3 and other nutrients – in their most bioavailable and clinically proven forms – to support egg health, fertility and overall reproductive wellbeing.
For those who struggle during the luteal phase – the week or so leading up to a period – Evelyn Health’s Revive Greens Shake offers targeted nutritional support. It contains clinically aligned doses of magnesium, curcumin, chromium, vitamins C and B6, and L-tryptophan, nutrients associated with blood-sugar regulation, inflammation reduction and neurotransmitter balance. The result is a formula designed to help ease luteal fatigue and mood disruption – simply mix and drink.
