Did you know that most healthcare research, solutions, and related tech have been created by and for men? In fact, women started being included in clinical trials less than 30 years ago which has resulted in an insufficient understanding of female healthcare needs.
Not only that but currently, female healthcare is still treated as a one-size-fits-all problem, and misses to address the need for personalization. Additionally, the number of issues around traditional female healthcare increases when we think about the fragmentation in healthcare solutions. There are solutions for reproduction, fertility, pregnancy, menopause, period care, skin, and gut care, but not a single solution that combines all aspects of female health. There isn’t a solution that can be treated as a lifelong partner in female health. Until now.
Тoday we meet you with the founder of the startup developing a solution that delivers personalized care for every woman across every stage of her life. Founded by the Greek serial digital health entrepreneur Dr. Kimon Angelides, FemTec Health is a health and beauty science company that brings all aspects of women’s health into one platform. Publicly launched in October 2021, FemTec Health is run by a female-led team combining experience in healthcare, consumer products, and wellness.
Dive into the world of tech and female health with Dr. Kimon Angelides and find out how FemTec Health can empower women to choose the products and services that are right for their bodies.
How did it all start?
Being a founder of six other healthcare ventures as well as a former Director of Strategy at the Texas Heart Institute, and a Professor of Cell Biology, Neuroscience, Molecular, and Cellular Biology, Dr. Kimon Angelides shares what inspired him to focus his energy and business experience on improving female health.
“I think women are the pillar of our society and they need to be in good health and have access to good healthcare. Another reason why I decided to focus on female health is connected to some medical and business factors. In the US many venture capital groups have been interested in women’s health. But they have been interested in just parts of it – fertility, menopause, and so on, but that is not the way that a woman’s journey is,” the founder of FemTec Health explains.
With this in mind, he decided to solve the fragmentation issues and develop a solution that provides all the services and products for the complete journey of a woman. After gathering a team of female experts in health, tech, and business development, including Dr. Kimberly Capone, Chief Scientific Officer (formerly with Johnson & Johnson), Dr. Angelides started working towards the realization of his idea.
“To really solve a problem, you have to use a multi-display and a lot of different approaches. We wanted to base everything on hard data and focus on clinical rigor to make the outcome as relevant as possible,” he shares.
Empowering women to choose what’s right for their bodies
As Dr. Angelides notes, the main mission of his company is not only to equip women with scientific insight about treatment but also to help them determine which are the exact factors responsible for their health conditions. FemTec Health combines science and technology to transform the traditional healthcare experience of women and tailor it for their specific needs and stage of life. The company uses biometrics, AI, and genomics to understand the internal “fingerprint” or microbiome of every individual and use that information to provide customized services and products.
The team behind Dr. Angelides has developed a patent-pending AI platform BiomeAI™ that covers all aspects of therapeutic health including specialty and chronic care, mental health, wellness and prevention, sexual wellness, and reproductive health. In order to create a personalized healthcare profile, the platform uses various static and dynamic data inputs such as medical history and diagnoses, menstrual cycles, and psychosocial factors.
The tailored solutions that FemTec Health can provide its users include telehealth consultations with specialists, monitoring and support of health challenges, therapy and counseling for mental health, as well as nutrition and sexual wellness advice. A unique proposition of the multi-faceted solution of FemTec Health is that the company transforms commodity beauty products into health and wellness products. The goal is to allow women to choose the beauty products that will improve their wellness and overall health, not just their looks.
The business side of FemTec Health
The company operates with a direct-to-consumer (D2C) and a business-to-business (B2B) business model. To offer a freemium service to its female users, FemTec Health partners with employer groups to allow them to provide their female employees with health empowerment programs. Therefore, the service is delivered as an employer-sponsored package. On the other hand, the company also offers a premium monthly subscription service for individual users that includes premium health and wellness services.
Acquisitions play a key role for FemTec Health’s growth model and the company has already acquired several big players in the beauty industry – the beauty subscription box Birchbox, beauty industry social marketing platform Liquid Grids, and the universal beauty store Mira Beauty.
Underlying this horizontal growth is the capital that FemTec Health has raised from various international venture capital firms. So far, the company has attracted over $38M from investors such as Longmont Capital, Ithaca LifeSciences, Unilever Ventures, Estee Lauder, and Trinity Capital.
The journey of so far and the plans ahead
Dr. Angelides shares that the solution of his team has had a very good reception, mostly because they are providing something that can be used by every woman regardless of her age. Currently, FemTec Health has offices across The US, Spain, The UK, China, and Greece, and a team outnumbering 150 employees.
In the following months, FemTec Health will be announcing its new consumer offering which is connected to the relaunch of Birchbox. Dr. Angelides shares that they are using the BiomeAI™ platform to change the focus from beauty product discovery to personalized healthcare and skin products.
