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 complete profession — investing in healthcare.
However when a medical emergency virtually 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 by way of medicines, gadgets, digital and synthetic intelligence, and diagnostics (imaging, checks and instruments).
The agency’s funding method seems to be at ladies’s well being situations in 3 ways: “Solely ladies” (endometriosis), “principally ladies” (breast most cancers) and “in a different way in ladies” (heart disease).
“We created and revealed this framework in 2019, and it has since been adopted by many others throughout the healthcare trade. By defining ladies’s well being extra broadly, we’re in a position to determine and convey ahead improvements that handle situations throughout ladies’s well being,” Ghiya mentioned.
We requested Ghiya for her ideas on the technology-based options which are 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: Once I gave delivery to my daughter at Columbia College below the care of a high OB-GYN, I encountered critical issues.
What started as an emergency C-section was a disaster with an undetected inside bleed. 4 surgeons carried out a reoperation that was in the end unsuccessful in finding the supply, and I used to be transferred to the ICU, the place I underwent 10 transfusions of blood and platelets.
Fortuitously, 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 medication, gadgets, diagnostics, and digital and synthetic intelligence within the ladies’s well being house. We contemplate femtech a subset of ladies’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 information inside a fertility clinic, permitting docs to rapidly entry knowledge on how related 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 aware of 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 the earth of femtech proper now?
Ghiya: I’m excited to see how AI and robotics can elevate the usual of care throughout medical facilities.
One thrilling software we see within the robotics and AI class is for needle-based procedures. For example, contemplate epidurals throughout labor — 1 in 10 both fail or want adjustment as a result of every individual has a distinct anatomy, which makes it difficult even for consultants to realize exact needle placement.
Considered one of our portfolio firms, Mendaera, has created a robotic needle-guidance system that mixes ultrasound imaging with robotic supply.
Past epidurals, this know-how may be utilized to procedures like nerve blocks and breast biopsies. It is a sport changer as a result of, beforehand, solely extremely expert clinicians might carry out some of these procedures with effectivity and accuracy. With this robotic and AI steering system, extra clinicians can ship needle-based care extra exactly, which is very 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. At the moment, greater than 200,000 ladies within the U.S. endure hysterectomies every year because of the extreme and sometimes debilitating signs of fibroids.
Gyenosonics provides 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 following day — in comparison with the months-long restoration related to surgical procedure. Because of Gynesonics, lots of of 1000’s of ladies will keep away from hysterectomies. It was thrilling to see this wonderful innovation be dropped at extra ladies by way of 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) house. 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 includes a one-time, four-hour remedy administered in a specialised facility by educated medical professionals [and has shown promising results in clinical trials]. The drug remedy is at present present process a full FDA trial and approval course of and can solely be obtainable below 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 may help help improvements in femtech?
Ghiya: We encourage anybody considering supporting ladies’s well being to remain knowledgeable.
My firm usually posts articles on our LinkedIn about key updates within the ladies’s well being house and updates from our ladies’s well being centered portfolio firms. An awesome instance of a current replace within the ladies’s well being house 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 house.
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