It’s time for femtech to move beyond fertility tracking
Femtech has come a long way in helping women understand their reproductive health. But what happens when women move beyond fertility, often just as they reach the peak of their careers?
If you want to track your menstrual cycle, there’s an app for that. If you’re trying to conceive, there’s an app for that. If you want to track your pregnancy – there’s an app for that.
But what about midlife women whose priorities are no longer about fertility? What happens when a woman enters perimenopause and starts experiencing hormonal changes that affect her sleep, confidence, physical health and ability to perform at work?
Femtech has a significant gap to fill
I was diagnosed with a chronic hormonal condition with symptoms including chronic fatigue, difficulties concentrating and so-called “brain fog”. These are also very common among women experiencing perimenopause and menopause. Many begin thinking they’ve lost their edge – research shows that one in ten women have left their jobs because of menopause symptoms
I started looking for apps that could help me understand what was happening and what I could do about it. What I found was plenty of fertility apps. Or tools that targeted one specific area, say sleep. Or tools that focused on perimenopause and menopause, but required daily manual symptom tracking.
Worse, even with regular data entry, they often offered generic AI-generated recommendations. Since perimenopause is highly individual, with symptoms greatly differing from woman to woman, this just doesn’t work.
So, I started to wonder: why is so much of women’s health technology focused on fertility, while leaving another important stage of women’s lives underserved? Perimenopause typically begins in a woman’s 40s, and menopause marks the beginning of a stage of life that lasts decades. That is a significant part of women’s lives that gets largely ignored.
Don’t entrepreneurs see the potential of this huge untapped market?
Women don’t stop being relevant after fertility
Clearly, only women can carry and give birth to children. Society’s repopulation is important for the economy; thus, there are plenty of support mechanisms for women to become mothers.
But what about their value in the workplace, especially in senior-level positions?
Perimenopause often coincides with a particularly important stage in a woman’s career. Many have spent years building their professional experience and reaching senior positions. Then perimenopause hits, and with hormonal fluctuations, women start to undermine their confidence and ability to perform at their best. Instead of helping women remain at the top, we leave them to navigate this major health transition without adequate support.
This isn’t only a question of individual wellbeing. There is a real business interest in supporting women through perimenopause. And particularly as AI reshapes the workplace.
AI can already handle many entry-level tasks. It cannot easily replace the experience of employees who have spent 20+ years in their profession. Employers cannot afford to lose these professionals – they provide the judgment, context, and accountability organisations still need. Replacing their expertise is both difficult and costly.
In other words, if women have already reached senior positions, it makes economic sense to help them stay there. The UK is moving in the right direction. Its Employment Rights Act 2025 introduced a framework for menopause action plans. Starting in spring 2027, organisations with 250+ employees might be required to publish action plans outlining how they support employees experiencing menopause.
But workplace policies aren’t enough.
Women want answers, too
While employer recognition matters, women also want answers to questions: what is happening to me, and what can I do to feel better? This is where technology should come into play.
Wearables track almost everything about our health, from sleep quality to resting heart rate, heart rate variability, activity, and more. The problem? Women are left with dashboards of data they have to interpret themselves. But raw data doesn’t explain why you have brain fog and – even more importantly – what you can do today to feel better tomorrow.
We don’t need to provide women with more data. We need to make the data they already have more meaningful. And by “meaningful”, I mean personalised, evidence-based guidance for women who are desperately trying to understand the radical changes in their bodies.
That is why I created anna app. It connects to Apple Health, reads 30+ metrics, and concisely explains how they affect their wellbeing in perimenopause. The app also provides women with one concrete action they can take to feel better the next day.
We developed anna app with an advising clinician. It draws on more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and uses a deterministic rules engine, meaning that every recommendation can be traced back to the research supporting it. We don’t diagnose or prescribe medication, but the app can help women bring their health data into conversations with clinicians, supporting more informed assessments.
Femtech has spent years helping women understand their fertility. I’d say, it’s time we gave as much attention to helping them navigate the decades that follow.
For more startup news, check out the other articles on the website, and subscribe to the magazine for free. Listen to The Cereal Entrepreneur podcast for more interviews with entrepreneurs and big-hitters in the startup ecosystem.
