The fact the impacts of inequalities in women's health are being felt across society, means women's health offers one of the greatest opportunities for improving productivity, workforce resilience and system sustainability in the NHS. And innovation offers a clear route to capitalising on this opportunity, in support of  economic and health care productivity. 

Late last year, the Health Innovation Network convened a roundtable to explore exactly that potential. Discussions explored the current barriers to making the systemic - and seismic - progress needed to turn policy ambitions into practice, both for women as patients, women innovators and those innovating in women's health.

Insights from this roundtable shaped our report, which sets out three recommendations that capture the multi-dimensional and cross-Government approach needed to truly realise the potential for women's health to support economic growth.

Firstly, the report recommends a more proactive and intentional focus on women's health reform to drive economic and workforce productivity. This matters not only for women as patients but also because women make up the majority of the NHS workforce, meaning improvements in women's health strengthen system capacity as a whole and drive economic growth. Data, innovation and economic evidence must be aligned to track the impact of improving women's health on national productivity to strengthen accountability on progress across sectors.

Femtech and female entrepreneurs can also support the ambitions of the Life Sciences Sector Plan for a thriving life sciences sector, however, the British Business Bank Equality Tracker (2023) found female founders were less likely to secure funding for their businesses. Addressing this gap could help to drive economic growth.

The Rose Review found if women had started and scaled new businesses in the UK at the same rate as men it would have added £250bn to the economy. Support such as developing better real-world evidence for femtech products could support investor confidence.

Secondly, the report calls for greater use of innovation as a vehicle for improving women's health and delivering the three shifts. Improving women's health means earlier intervention, improved support for self-management, better designed services and more personalised support throughout life. These all lend themselves to the opportunities presented by digital intervention, as well as new models of care closer to home and preventative care.

Local leaders must be empowered to prioritise women's health effectively for transformation, by engaging and involving women in the redesign of services and using disaggregated data to measure what matters and scale what works.

The final recommendation highlights the need to tackle health inequalities. Closing the gender health gap requires tackling inequities faced by marginalised groups. Innovation must be inclusive by design, using diverse data and co-production to ensure equitable benefit. 

By embedding intersectionality in research, commissioning and funding, rewarding inclusive design and equitable access across ethnicity, disability, geography and socioeconomic status, ensures innovation works for all women and drives even wider societal benefit as a result.

As well as detailing the room for improvement, the roundtable discussion highlighted examples of best practice, including Accelerating FemTech, a programme designed to support early-stage femtech founders develop commercially viable, evidence-based solutions that improve outcomes for women and girls, delivered by Health Innovation Network South London in partnership with Innovate UK and the Medical Research Council. The programme has supported 33 businesses and secured more than £1m in funding for technologies, demonstrating the economic and social value of dedicated innovation support for women's health. 

Similarly, in 2023, Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex and University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust established the Women's Health Research Network. It now includes more than 250 members, representing women with lived experience, clinicians, academics and voluntary, community and social enterprise partners, and aims to build a collaborative research ecosystem that connects ideas, expertise and evidence.

Women's health is central to improving national productivity, but improving outcomes will require accountability, equity and leadership across sectors to deliver on the potential. The greatest shift of all perhaps for the success of any focus on women's health will be involving women in design of the services intended to support them. Co-production is not a ‘nice to have'; it is how trust, uptake and impact are achieved, and integral to making women's health a foundation of a stronger, fairer and more productive nation.