“Your market is really niche.”
Those were the words Rachel Bartholomew repeatedly heard from potential investors when she pitched them on her startup, Hyivy Health.
Hyivy’s product, a pelvic rehabilitation vaginal dilator, could potentially help a third of all women in the world who experience pelvic health issues at some point in their lifetime.
“If you haven’t had your time yet, either you or your daughter or mother will be impacted by this.”
Andrea Guest, Femtech Canada
“I also had a lot of investors saying, ‘Can you talk to my wife, to my sister, or to my daughter to confirm that this is a real market?’” Bartholomew added. “I thought, ‘This is very strange.’”
Instead of giving up, she opened a spreadsheet and began sending emails to Canadian companies working in women’s health. She soon had a monthly call lined up with founders asking the same question: why does it feel like the system isn’t built for us?
That was the spark for Femtech Canada.
“Within our healthcare system, for centuries, ‘male’ has been seen as the default,” said Andrea Guest, Senior Manager at Femtech Canada and Innovation Factory. “Women were just seen as smaller men. So now we have a whole system that’s been built up to exclude women.”
In 2022, Bartholomew connected with Innovation Factory to see if the hub could help operationalize the initiative and use some of its existing strengths in the life sciences ecosystem to support women’s health innovation.
What began as a volunteer-led side project and simple group calls has grown into a national platform. Femtech Canada and Innovation Factory have kept founders at the heart of the initiative, while drawing in national partners like Sun Life and the National Research Council of Canada.
Femtech Canada now connects more than 200 founders, focusing on three pillars: ecosystem development, education and advocacy, and programming. Its flagship grant program, wHealth MedPath, also helps founders unlock up to $20,000 worth of commercialization project support.
But the vision stretches further, with Femtech Canada having presented recommendations to the Canadian federal budget three times.
“We’re taking a fresh approach to our advocacy work. Women’s health can no longer be seen as a social issue,” Bartholomew said. “It’s an economic issue that could help the federal government fulfill key priorities.”
A 2024 report from McKinsey found that a dollar invested in women represents a three-dollar return on investment, and with recent government cuts south of the border, Guest believes that Canada has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to lead globally.
“Women’s health experts in the US are being fired from their jobs, their budgets are being cut, and their research at major universities is being slashed,” Guest said. “These experts need to go somewhere. They are not going to sit on their hands.”
For the women building companies inside the network, the impact is tangible. Toronto-based July Health, a startup offering care to women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, found unexpected collaboration with other startups through Femtech Canada.
“They’ve shared everything from market data to UX designers’ research, because they said that they can move faster together by sharing this rather than gatekeeping,” Guest added.
Toronto-based fertility startup Juniper Genomics was also navigating fundraising challenges before Femtech Canada connected the team with a key investor, later leading to its $4.6-million USD seed round, announced in July
In July, Femtech Canada brought its advocacy directly to the highest levels of Canada’s government. Bartholomew was invited to address the 43rd Annual Meeting of federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for the status of women, where she spoke about femtech as an emerging Canadian industry and the connection between better care and women’s ability to succeed in their careers.
Guest said their dedication comes from the fact that once you see the inequities in women’s healthcare, you can’t unsee them.
“If you haven’t had your time yet, either you or your daughter or mother will be impacted by this,” she added. “I think that’s part of the reason that keeps us going as well, too. It’s impossible to turn away from it.”
PRESENTED BY
Be part of the network putting women’s health at the centre of Canada’s innovation economy. Learn more.
All photos provided by Innovation Factory.