📈 Summary
For Thesis, I’m focused on women’s health because women are not informed about their health and there’s a lack of digestible resources to help them with varying health problems — reproductive, physical, and mental.
I still don’t feel confident in scoping down my topic to focus only on one of the areas listed above. My goal is to do so within the next 1–2 weeks because it will help me better define my problem statement.
🤔 Assumptions
I chose this topic with the assumption that women need more ways to better understand and deal with problems around their bodies and health so they can feel empowered. And there are many more assumptions I have—here’s the start.
- Women mostly talk to their friends more than their mom about this topic
- Having women health issues can be awkward to share and still considered taboo to talk about
- Building a relationship with an OBGYN can be hard
- Most women are on some type of birth control
- Women are ill-prepared with how their bodies will change throughout their life (puberty, menopause, post-menopause, and potentially motherhood)
- There is pressure on women to look and behave a certain way especially with social media
- Traumas (miscarriages, postpartum depression, irregular periods, etc) women go through are rarely talked about
💡 Interview Insights
This week, I interviewed one woman within the third user group and a Yale medical resident student.
I connected with a friend’s mother who fit into the 50+ yr old user group. She is a mom of three and currently lives with her husband in a small town in Washington.
- Because of age and motherhood, her body changed drastically which she was not always prepared for
- She feels medical information from doctors can be insensitive and hard to digest
- She likes to keep the same doctor because she feels they can better identify patterns in her health
- She is organized and on top of her annual checkups and mammograms
My conversation with the soon to be doctor was centered around me trying to find any tensions within medical care for women. Her experience wasn’t specialized for women-specific but she was able to connect me with a colleague of hers who specializes in OBGYN. However, there were a few points she made that got me thinking –
- Patients are open and willing to share personal information with doctors
- WebMD’s information is probably medically accurate but what’s missing is fully knowing the context of the person. Medical professionals are there to understand the context of health issues to then diagnose problems.
📊 Competitive Research
There’s a traditional focus within “femtech” (women-focused health products) on reproductive health. Rock Health reported, of the 51 US Femtech companies, the majority of solutions are primarily around fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood. TechCrunch also reported on the opportunity space outside of fertility.
Companies within this space include:
- Flo, a mobile app tracking periods and ovulation, pregnancy, and daily health symptoms
- Clue, a mobile app to track periods and ovulation
- Elvie, silent breastfeeding pump
- Ava, a wearable to track fertility
For mental health women are using:
- Calm, a meditation and mindfulness app
- Headspace, a meditation and mindfulness app
There’s a space for new products to emerge, but finding the right problem area is a challenge.
📌 Next Steps
- Talk to more women. My sample size is still low so I’m having trouble identifying trends and problems.
- Find more specialists. I reached out to a few OBGYNs but have yet to hear back.
- Scope down my topic. Doing more research and conducting more interviews can help with this but I also need to find the areas I am interested in helping with.
