10 European women’s health startups and scaleups to watch

FemTech entrepreneurs are a small but growing and booming group of HealthTech startups and scale-ups worldwide.

What is FemTech?

They are specifically engaged in building digital health solutions to female health needs:

reproductive health
pregnancy & nursing care
pelvic and uterine healthcare
general healthcare and wellness

Femtech categories — Image credits to Frost & Sullivan – 2018

2018 breaktrough year in Europe

Already 2% of European HealthTech was situated in FemTech in 2017.

2018 was a breaktrough year in Europe.

Here’s why:

Pelvic trainer Elvie partnered with the National Health Service (NHS) this year. This might be leading to less pelvic surgeries and cost reduction of 233 million pounds a year for the NHS budget.
some of the most important European headquartered women’s health startups have raised more than 94 million euros of funding in 2017 and 2018. This involves both mobile health solutions, medical devices and therapeutics.
Swiss AVA leads European funding in 2018 with an investment of 30 million euros. AVA is a multi-sensor bracelet, allowing women to predict fertile days while they sleep.
Likewize KaNDy Therapeutics (non-hormonal treatment for multiple symptoms of menopause), Pregnolia (measuring the stiffness of cervical tissue-important to assess preterm birth), Aspivix (a pain-free device for gynaecologists) got funding in 2018.
Some women’s health companies mainly targetting the American market have European roots: Bloomlife and Sonaura/Fertihome for example.

10 European women’s health startups and scaleups to watch

Next are 10 European based startups and scale-ups in women’s health to watch.

Switzerland takes the lead. 2 are based in Germany, UK and Belgium. I also added Bloomlife, a Belgian founded company but based in San Francisco (USA).

Update september 2019: the European FemTech ecosystem is getting stronger. Femtech is here to stay.

If you are at the beginning of your entrepreneur’s journey inwomen’s health or other healthcare subsector, you will find a lot of practical information in the ‘Basics to grow in health’-ebook:

Sources: