Adapted from Lucy Lehane‘s Article Insights into Women’s Health
Diagnostics are at the heart of modern healthcare. In the NHS, around 70% of clinical decisions rely on laboratory or point-of-care test results. Yet, despite their central role, diagnostics receive a relatively small share of overall healthcare funding. And although that gap affects everyone, the consequences are particularly evident in women’s health. Underinvestment in women’s health can mean missed opportunities for earlier detection, better outcomes and more equitable care.
Despite accounting for half of the population, women experience higher rates of misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, and unmet clinical needs. Research shows that women tend to live longer than men, but spend an estimated 25% more of their lives in poor health. These outcomes are not simply the result of service pressures. They reflect structural gaps in how diagnostics are designed, validated, and deployed.
Why diagnostics have not worked equally for women
Many diagnostic tests in use today were developed and validated using predominantly male populations. As a result, thresholds, biomarkers, and symptom profiles often fail to reflect female biology. This has real-world consequences. For example, women are significantly more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack, partly because diagnostic criteria and biomarker cut-offs were historically derived from male data. Similar patterns are seen across autoimmune disease, pain conditions, and cardiometabolic disorders.
Underdiagnosis is equally damaging. Endometriosis affects an estimated one in ten women of reproductive age, yet the average time to diagnosis in the UK is almost nine years. During this period, symptoms are frequently normalised or dismissed, delaying effective treatment and worsening quality of life. These delays are not caused by a lack of clinical need, but by the absence of reliable, accessible diagnostic tools integrated into care pathways.
The role and limits of FemTech
FemTech has emerged as a fast-growing sector focused on women’s health, spanning fertility, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, and beyond. This growth reflects genuine unmet need, but technology alone will not close the diagnostic gap. Apps, wearables, and home tests only deliver value when they are evidence-based, clinically validated, and aligned with healthcare systems.
The risk is that innovation outpaces impact: products marketed to women without robust data, clear clinical utility, or integration into NHS pathways. For diagnostics, success depends on rigorous study design, inclusion of women across life stages, and close collaboration with clinicians, regulators, and health systems.
What needs to change
Closing the diagnostic gap in women’s health requires coordinated action across research, innovation, and implementation:
Design diagnostics for women, not as an afterthought. Sex-specific biology must be embedded from biomarker discovery through to validation and clinical thresholds.
Improve representation in clinical studies. Trials must reflect the populations who will ultimately use the tests, including women across age, ethnicity, and comorbidity profiles.
Focus on earlier, less invasive diagnosis. Non-invasive, accessible diagnostics, particularly those suitable for community or home use, can reduce delays and system burden.
Align innovation with care pathways. Diagnostics must address real bottlenecks in primary and secondary care, not just technical feasibility.
Listen to women as end users. Effective diagnostics start with understanding lived experience, unmet need, and what meaningful outcomes look like.
A call to action for 2026
Women’s health is not a niche market. It is a core healthcare challenge with significant clinical, economic, and societal impact. Diagnostics have a critical role to play, but only if innovation is grounded in evidence, inclusivity, and system-level thinking. By aligning FemTech innovation with robust diagnostics development, we can move beyond awareness toward measurable improvements in care, outcomes, and equity.
The opportunity now is to build diagnostics that truly work for women, and to ensure that closing the diagnostic gap becomes a priority, not a promise.
Read the full article: Insights into Women’s Health