Femtech funding and innovation

The headline announcement in the innovation space is a £1.5 million femtech challenge fund. This is a grant-based initiative intended to enable healthcare systems to work with promising femtech developers addressing areas of unmet need. The fund is intended to provide a focus on community service models addressing health inequalities.

While some commentators have described the fund as “modest”, the government focus on innovation and development in femtech is to be welcomed as a much-needed way of directing effort to important issues in women’s healthcare. It is to be hoped that innovators partnering with funded healthcare systems under this challenge fund will provide widely-applicable approaches to the benefit of women throughout the country and further afield.

Innovation Catalyst

The Women’s Health Strategy also includes the launch this year of the previously-announced NIHR National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) R&D Innovation Catalyst. As with catalysts in other technical areas (including the Biomedical Catalyst, Growth Catalyst for Early-Stage Startups, Creative Catalyst and Energy Catalyst) it is expected that the Innovation Catalyst will be run through Innovate UK.

The Innovation Catalyst aims to connect innovators to appropriate NIHR infrastructure, venture capital funds, regulators, procurement processes and support for commercialisation. The government strategy requires the Innovation Catalyst to consider women’s health innovation throughout its operation, both to ensure equity in its approach to innovations for any disease and to focus on reproductive and pregnancy conditions.  

Research funding changes

The refreshed strategy also changes requirements for receiving research funding from NIHR; insisting that funding will only be provided for research that considers sex-based differences.

At the same time, barriers to women participating in clinical trials are being removed, with enhanced digital integration through the Be Part of Research service. A future target is also set to automatically match patients with studies based on their own health data and interests.

Support for female founders in healthcare

Over the next year the NIHR will also be involved in a programme to launch a new accelerator for female founders, with innovations addressing women’s health being priorities. This programme will provide funding and support, including mentoring and advice for entrepreneurs, market testing and access, scale-up and commercialisation models.

The accelerator will build on the 2025 NIHR i4i THRIVE (Invention for Innovation, Translate Healthcare Research through InnoVation and Entrepreneurship) funding pilot for academic entrepreneurs and the 2025 SBRI Healthcare Venture Capital Readiness Programme for female founders.

The Venture Capital Readiness Programme for female founders specifically recognised and sought to address the challenge that only 2% of venture capital funding in the UK goes to female-led start-ups. This programme provided a bespoke catalogue of workshops, introductions and events designed to support female founders and CEOs to enhance their knowledge, skills and experience of commercialisation and investment readiness, to build a targeted investment plan and to make connections with investors.

Protection for innovation

The initiatives discussed above all aim to improve female healthcare experiences and outcomes through innovation, equipping female founders and femtech innovators alike with both skills and funding access to generate new solutions and groundbreaking approaches. The need for these measures is undoubtedly very strong, and the fact that funding and support are being provided is to a step in the right direction for female healthcare.

As with any technology, female founders and innovators in femtech healthcare need to protect their inventions. Protecting inventions is central to building durable commercial value for innovators. New technologies underpin the unique products and services that innovators bring to their markets, and patent protection provides significant commercial benefit to such companies. Applying for and being granted patents for innovations can help obtain further funding, as well as providing tools for maintaining exclusivity and for enhancing revenue through licencing.

Innovation by female founders and innovators in femtech is needed to improve equity in healthcare for women, and protecting inventions is an important part of the ongoing success of those innovators: to help those innovations reach more women and to help those innovators to keep inventing for future successes.