Even as healthtech investments fell in 2023, funding to women's health grew 5%

Venture funding in the overall health tech market fell 27% from 2022

It's been a rocky couple of years for healthtech investments: 2022 saw investments drop in every single quarter from the one prior. While things seemed to bounce back a bit in the first quarter of 2023, Q2 and Q3 both once again saw drops, showing that the highs of the pandemic were indeed over.

Yet, despite the downturn, one space has managed to buck that trend: women's health.

According to a report out from Deloitte on Tuesday, investments in women’s health startups grew 5% between 2022 and 2023, even as venture funding in the overall health tech market fell 27% in the same time period.

In all, $481 million was invested in these companies in 2023, rebounding after investments in women's health fell 27% in 2022 from the peak of $629 million and 39 deals in 2021. While funding was up, however, the 21 deals in 2023 were down 27.5% from the 29 deals in 2022, however, indicating larger check sizes into fewer companies.  Even with this growth, women’s health still only represented just 2% of the $41.2 billion invested in the heathtech space overall, including health care services, health care technology systems, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, and medtech companies.

However, there are tailwinds showing that the space could be seeing healthy growth going forward, including that over 60% of women’s health-focused companies were founded in the six years leading up to 2022 and that, over the past decade, there has been a 1,000% increase in the number of businesses in this space. That means that a number of women's health companies are now starting to mature and could soon be seeing exits.

The space is also being helped by the government, including The White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, launched in November 2023, which focuses on improving the way the federal government approaches and funds research into women’s health.

As part of the Initiative, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will introduce The Transforming Maternal Health model, a payment model to assist states as they develop and implement programs supporting pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care for patients enrolled in Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. The model also backs increased access to providers such as doulas, midwives, or birth centers.

"Investors appear to be gaining interest in women's health, according to interviews with venture capitalists, startup technology firms, and other stakeholders. This is likely being fueled by a greater public awareness of gender disparities. However, a startup focused on women’s health might have difficulty attracting the same valuation as other health innovators. As a result, some women’s health companies might be undervalued," wrote Deloitte in the report.

Women's health companies funded in 2023

Among those companies in the women's health space that raised funding in 2023 included Midi Health, virtual care clinic focused exclusively on women navigating midlife hormonal transition, which raised $25 million; precision women’s healthcare company Evvy, which raised $14 million; fertility care and benefits provider Kindbody, which raised a $100 million round, followed by another $25 million; LunaJoy, a provider of mental health services for women, raised $2.4 million; and Herself Health, which raised $7 million to provide primary care for senior women.

(Image source: shifaclinic.org)