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Five female founded mental health start-ups to watch
We list some of the best female-founded mental health apps
As the femtech world and wellness industry start to combine. We explore the mental health apps, startups and female-founded businesses you need to know.
Mental health conditions, especially after two years of pandemic restrictions and lockdowns, are on the rise. It is estimated that 1 in 4 people in England will experience some form of mental health issue such as depression or anxiety each year.
Spiritune
Spiritune combines principles of neuroscience and music therapy to inspire positive mental health outcomes. It aims to help reduce stress while increasing emotional regulation, productivity and performance through the music-based app.
The app was created by Jamie Pabst after she struggled with her own stress levels while working in the finance industry in New York. She realised the lack of accessible resources and wanted to create something impactful. The company highlights that headphones can become health tools allowing people to support their emotional health and perform better.
Jamie wrote: “Music is one of the most powerful stimuli that addresses the brain networks that underlie stress, emotions, motivation and reward. My vision to combine the effectiveness of music therapy and the accessibility of audio to help people better manage stress drove the creation of Spiritune.
Appreciating the role our auditory system plays in our health through my mom’s hearing loss, and understanding the significance of music in neurological function through my sister’s pursuits in music therapy, I am dedicated to bringing the vast benefits of music to people and organizations globally to create better health outcomes.”
It also offers a workplace setting that can help employers to boost productivity and employee well-being.
Thymia
Thymia is a health tech company with a difference founded by CEO Emilia Molimpakis.
Thymia researchers developed a game based on neuropsychology combined with facial micro-expression analysis and speech pattern analysis to make faster mental health assessments. Its’s system allows clinicians a fun and engaging way to monitor their patient’s health. The game records subtle differences that doctors may miss and it also offers a way to monitor patients from home.
The app may have increased benefits for women in that it is also being developed to search for early signs of Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons’ Disease. Although both diseases affect both sexes, studies show Alzheimer’s is more prevalent in women. This is reversed when it comes to Parkinson’s Disease as men are 1.5 times more likely to develop the condition. However, women have a higher mortality rate and faster progression of the disease.
Speaking with Health Tech World, Emilia said: “In the patient’s view, they are just interacting with beautifully animated screens. However, what we are doing on the backside is where we are looking for specific patterns of behaviour because depression is associated with differences in cognitive function, psychological and behavioural patterns. Put all of those together and you get a signature for depression, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.”
Thymia secured €920k at the end of June 2021 from investors to help grow the company.
Moody Month
While practising good mental can be essential for every day of the month, there are times when it may be a little more difficult than others.
Pre-menstrual stress (PMS) can cause mood swings, tension, anxiety or depression. It can also cause social withdrawal and irritability. Although people with periods will recognise the start of their period, it can be tricky to know what is PMS or what may be depression or anxiety.
Moody Month, founded by Amy Thomson, helps users to receive a forecast of information on what is happening in their bodies each day. Amy was inspired to create the app after her periods stopped due to stress, travel and burn-out while working in event management in London. She began searching for answers but was shocked to find a severe lack of information available for women. She also felt that period tracking apps stopped short at providing long term care for the entire cycle.
The app can help users to optimise their well-being by changing their mood, food and following fitness advice. It also tracks your hormonal cycle to better understand your moods and symptoms making it easier to recognise when it may be PMS. The more information input to Moody Month, the better the app is able to track and deliver information.
The best part?
The app is free unless you purchase something when using it.
Heart it out
Femtech products or solutions are often designed after founders become frustrated by a gap not addressed in women’s healthcare. When it comes to mental health start-up, Heart It Out, that’s exactly what happened.
Nithya J Rao became concerned by the lack of psychologists practising in India which led to the creation of the platform. The result was a data-driven platform that can help to train psychologists for 16 weeks before they meet a patient. It also offers therapy to address issues such as depression and anxiety.
The startup also launched a free helpline called Briefly during lockdown which aimed to provide access to a network of 27 volunteers psychologists. They went on to help more than 600 patients with trauma and anxiety.
Patients can self-refer themselves through the platform for a number of different therapies including couple, family and child services. It also offers a ‘supervision’ service where professionals can join two or more psychology professionals in a continuous, collaborative, and supportive process. It aims to facilitate the exploration, monitoring and enhancement of professional functioning.
The website states: “Heart It Out began humbly as a ‘Room on the Roof’ in a quaint neighbourhood, providing a safe space for people to talk their hearts out. Today, it is a tech platform poised to provide confidential and non-judgemental access to mental healthcare, to 1.5 billion people by 2030.”
Altopax
Altopax combines care with community by offering a virtual group therapy platform aimed at connecting mental healthcare providers with patients who need care.
Pharmaceutical and health investor Narmeen Azad created the platform to help others connect with a group of peers who are also experiencing the same mental health condition or chronic illness. Healthcare providers can also connect with other professionals to discuss personalised, integrated care.
Female sex may not raise stroke risk across all atrial fibrillation (AF) patients, with higher risk mainly seen in women aged 75 and older, a study suggests.
Researchers said stroke prevention for women with the condition should be more personalised, especially for patients under 75.
Dr Amitabh C Pandey, director of cardiovascular translational research at Tulane University School of Medicine, said: “For years, female sex has been included as a risk factor along with other factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes, meaning women were more likely to be prescribed anticoagulants.
“Our study shows younger women may not have as much added stroke risk as previously thought, while older women, particularly those over 75, appear to have a higher risk that deserves close attention.”
The new Tulane University study challenges a long-standing assumption in heart care that being female automatically increases stroke risk for patients with atrial fibrillation.
Atrial fibrillation, often called AF, is a common heart rhythm disorder that causes the heart to beat irregularly.
It is associated with a higher risk of stroke and is often treated with anticoagulants, also known as blood thinners.
The study found that stroke risk did not increase equally across all female patients with AF.
Instead, researchers said being female may act more as a risk modifier, with increased stroke risk seen primarily among women aged 75 and older or those with a greater burden of other health conditions.
Clinicians often use a scoring system to decide whether people with AF should be prescribed blood thinners.
The system gives points for factors including age, heart failure, diabetes, previous stroke, vascular disease and high blood pressure.
Women also receive one point for sex alone.
Researchers said this can mean women with AF become eligible for blood thinners earlier or more often than men with otherwise similar risk profiles.
While blood thinners can help prevent clot-related strokes, they can also increase the risk of bruising, prolonged bleeding, gastrointestinal bleeding and other serious complications.
The researchers analysed approximately 950,000 patients with AF using TriNetX, a large anonymised electronic health record database.
They compared stroke outcomes between male and female patients across three age groups: younger than 65, 65 to 74, and 75 and older.
Male and female patients were matched based on age, other health problems and whether they had been prescribed anticoagulation medicine.
Among patients younger than 75, the study found no significant difference in one-year stroke risk between men and women.
However, among patients aged 75 and older, women had a modest but statistically significant increase in stroke risk compared with men.
In patients aged 75 and older with no additional risk factors beyond age, women had about one additional stroke per 629 patients compared with their male counterparts.
The findings support growing interest in a newer AF risk score, known as CHA2DS2-VA, which removes sex as a standalone risk factor.
However, researchers said more studies are needed and medical guidance remains inconsistent.
Han Feng, assistant professor at Tulane University School of Medicine, said: “This general approach came from women being underrepresented in AFib trials and studies comprising only about one-third of study populations.
“Our study shows not all women with AFib have the same risk profile, and these decisions should be individualised.
Pandey said: “These findings highlight the need for modern tools and approaches that can personalise risk profiles to individuals.
“The goal is not to undertreat patients who need stroke prevention, but to better identify who is most likely to benefit from anticoagulation and who may be exposed to unnecessary risk.”
AI may help speed breast cancer diagnosis for high-risk women after abnormal mammograms, a study suggests.
Women with abnormal mammograms often wait weeks to learn whether they have breast cancer.
Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley said an AI-guided workflow could help reduce that wait by quickly identifying those most likely to have the disease. Some women could move from imaging to evaluation, and sometimes biopsy, in a single day.
Dr Maggie Chung, first author of the study, said: “This is a really an exciting time.
“This moves us closer to personalised care, where we can tailor a plan so that each patient gets the right intervention at the right time.”
The study used an open-source AI model called Mirai.
The model was trained on hundreds of thousands of mammograms linked to patients’ cancer outcomes.
A mammogram is an X-ray scan of the breast used to look for signs of cancer. A biopsy involves taking a small tissue sample to test for disease.
The AI tool is designed to detect subtle patterns in screening mammograms and predict a woman’s cancer risk.
Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley applied the model to more than 4,100 screening mammograms at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.
Mirai identified 525 women, about 12.7 per cent of screened patients, as high risk.
Those patients could receive an interpretation of their mammograms immediately after the scan and have additional diagnostic imaging for suspicious areas on the same day.
Some women who needed biopsies were also able to have them on the same day.
The researchers said Mirai reduced the wait time for diagnostic evaluation from several weeks to about an hour.
For women who were ultimately diagnosed with breast cancer, it reduced the average wait for biopsy from more than two months to fewer than 10 days.
The researchers stressed that Mirai does not replace radiologists or make diagnoses on its own.
Instead, it acts as a triage tool to help physicians identify the patients who can benefit most from accelerated care.
The team analysed more than 114,000 archival mammograms before launching the programme, to ensure the model would capture enough high-risk patients without overloading the clinic with too many expedited evaluations.
The researchers said they hope AI will support a more personalised approach to breast cancer screening tailored to each patient’s breast cancer risk.
Chung said: “Right now, many women follow the same screening schedule but their individual risk can be very different.
“AI risk assessment gives us the chance to identify the women most likely to benefit from expedited care and get them what they need.”
Adam Yala, senior author of the study and a data scientist at UC Berkeley, said: “This is a powerful example of how AI can be a collaborative partner for physicians.
“It shows how we can improve care when we bring clinicians and data scientists together to design these systems.”
Women with primary infertility may face a higher risk of early menopause and reach it about a year earlier, a study suggests.
The findings suggest women with primary infertility may be more likely to enter menopause before the age of 45.
The increased risk appeared most notable among women with unexplained infertility or a history of endometriosis.
Dr Stephanie Faubion, medical director for The Menopause Society, said: “This study shows that women with primary infertility, specifically those with unexplained infertility or a history of endometriosis, were at risk for early menopause.
“Given that early menopause is linked to adverse long-term health consequences, these women may benefit from counselling that they are at risk of early menopause.
“This will allow them to monitor for early menopause and to seek treatment with hormone therapy, if indicated.”
Early menopause is usually defined as menopause before age 45, while premature menopause is menopause before age 40.
Women who experience menopause earlier may face symptoms for longer and have a higher risk of long-term health problems.
These can include cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and neurocognitive disorders. Osteoporosis weakens bones, while neurocognitive disorders affect memory, thinking or brain function.
The study, highlighted by The Menopause Society, involved nearly 700 people, roughly half of whom had been diagnosed with primary infertility.
It found that women with a history of primary infertility underwent natural menopause about one year earlier than those without such a history.
Researchers found no association between infertility and premature menopause.
Infertility affects around one in six people globally and can have consequences beyond family planning.
Previous research has linked infertility with higher rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease, although causes vary and may involve genetic, hormonal, in-utero or lifestyle factors.
In-utero factors are influences that occur while a baby is developing in the womb.
Earlier studies looking at links between infertility and early or premature menopause have produced mixed results, with some not accounting for different types of infertility.
The new study suggested that women with unexplained infertility or a history of endometriosis may have an increased risk of early menopause.
Endometriosis is a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows elsewhere in the body. It can cause pain, heavy periods and fertility problems.
Known risk factors for early or premature menopause include tobacco use, low body mass index, not having given birth and starting periods at a younger age.
Women who have had more childbirths and those with a history of oral contraceptive use have previously been linked to later menopause.
The researchers said women with primary infertility may benefit from additional counselling because of the systemic and long-term health effects of early menopause.
They also said women should be encouraged to seek evaluation and treatment if they experience a new loss of menstrual cycles.
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