Relating to improvements in healthcare, Maneesha Ghiya means enterprise.
As a enterprise capitalist and investor at hedge funds, the Harvard Enterprise grad has spent greater than 25 years — just about her whole profession — investing in healthcare.
However when a medical emergency nearly took her life, Ghiya noticed firsthand the necessity for innovation in ladies’s healthcare particularly. So, she began her personal enterprise capital agency, FemTech Ventures, to fill that hole.
FemTech Ventures companions with companies to advance ladies’s well being via drugs, gadgets, digital and synthetic intelligence, and diagnostics (imaging, exams and instruments).
The agency’s funding method appears to be like at ladies’s well being circumstances in 3 ways: “Solely ladies” (endometriosis), “principally ladies” (breast most cancers) and “in another way in ladies” (heart disease).
“We created and printed this framework in 2019, and it has since been adopted by many others throughout the healthcare business. By defining ladies’s well being extra broadly, we’re capable of determine and convey ahead improvements that tackle circumstances throughout ladies’s well being,” Ghiya mentioned.
We requested Ghiya for her ideas on the technology-based options which might be making waves in ladies’s well being, and the way her personal well being scare impressed her ardour for change.
Our interview follows, edited for readability and size.
HealthyWomen: Inform us about your expertise with postpartum hemorrhage and the way it led to the launch of FemTech Ventures?
Maneesha Ghiya: After I gave start to my daughter at Columbia College beneath the care of a high OB-GYN, I encountered critical problems.
What started as an emergency C-section changed into a disaster with an undetected inside bleed. 4 surgeons carried out a reoperation that was finally unsuccessful in finding the supply, and I used to be transferred to the ICU, the place I underwent 10 transfusions of blood and platelets.
Thankfully, my physique caught up with the bleed, and I survived. However that ordeal fueled a need for me to make a distinction in ladies’s well being, which led me to discovered FemHealth Ventures.
Read: Postpartum Hemorrhage Is a Deadly Problem >>
HW: Traditionally, we all know that ladies’s well being has been ignored and underfunded. How is femtech serving to to broaden curiosity in ladies’s well being?
Ghiya: We spend money on medicine, gadgets, diagnostics, and digital and synthetic intelligence within the ladies’s well being area. We think about femtech a subset of girls’s well being and would see any software program or AI platforms tailor-made in the direction of ladies’s well being falling into our digital and AI funding focus.
For instance, we invested in an organization known as Cercle. Cercle AI’s product analyzes affected person data inside a fertility clinic, permitting medical doctors to rapidly entry knowledge on how comparable instances had been handled, together with protocols, success charges and unwanted effects.
This helps optimize remedy plans, resulting in larger success charges — which, for these accustomed to the IVF journey, is extremely impactful.
Read: Infertility Isn’t Just a Physical Journey — It’s an Emotional One, Too >>
HW: What are you discovering most fun on this planet of femtech proper now?
Ghiya: I’m excited to see how AI and robotics can increase the usual of care throughout medical facilities.
One thrilling utility we see within the robotics and AI class is for needle-based procedures. As an example, think about epidurals throughout labor — 1 in 10 both fail or want adjustment as a result of every particular person has a special anatomy, which makes it difficult even for specialists to realize exact needle placement.
One in every of our portfolio corporations, Mendaera, has created a robotic needle-guidance machine that mixes ultrasound imaging with robotic supply.
Past epidurals, this expertise may be utilized to procedures like nerve blocks and breast biopsies. This can be a sport changer as a result of, beforehand, solely extremely expert clinicians might carry out a majority of these procedures with effectivity and accuracy. With this robotic and AI steerage system, extra clinicians can ship needle-based care extra exactly, which is extremely impactful for sufferers who could not have entry to main medical facilities.
HW: Since launching FemHealth Ventures, inform us a couple of product/innovation that has been notably memorable for you.
Ghiya: We had been very excited when our portfolio firm Gynesonics was acquired in January by Hologic. Presently, greater than 200,000 ladies within the U.S. endure hysterectomies annually because of the extreme and sometimes debilitating signs of fibroids.
Gyenosonics gives a brand new resolution: a non-surgical, outpatient process utilizing radiofrequency ablation. The process is incision-free, permitting ladies to return to work as quickly as the subsequent day — in comparison with the months-long restoration related to surgical procedure. Due to Gynesonics, tons of of 1000’s of girls will keep away from hysterectomies. It was thrilling to see this wonderful innovation be delivered to extra ladies via this acquisition.
HW: What large developments are you hoping to see in ladies’s healthcare within the close to future, or what ought to now we have on our radar?
Ghiya: I’m excited to see extra options for girls within the postpartum depression (PPD) area. Sadly, maternal mortality charges within the U.S. have been on the rise in recent times, with PPD being a major contributor. In response to this pressing want, we invested in Reunion Neurosciences, which is creating a breakthrough drug remedy to handle PPD.
It entails a one-time, four-hour remedy administered in a specialised facility by skilled medical professionals [and has shown promising results in clinical trials]. The drug remedy is at the moment present process a full FDA trial and approval course of and can solely be out there beneath medical supervision.
Read: When Postpartum Depression Hit, I Heard Only the Lies My Depression Told Me >>
HW: What’s your recommendation for the way readers might help assist improvements in femtech?
Ghiya: We encourage anybody thinking about supporting ladies’s well being to remain knowledgeable.
My firm commonly posts articles on our LinkedIn about key updates within the ladies’s well being area and updates from our ladies’s well being centered portfolio corporations. An ideal instance of a current replace within the ladies’s well being area is the Gates Basis pledging $2.5 billion to ladies’s well being initiatives. We’re thrilled to see the rising focus and momentum within the ladies’s well being area.
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