In this thought-provoking session, we will delve into the recent surge of attention and investment in women's health. From President Biden's groundbreaking Executive Order to the ambitious ARPA-H Sprint, and even celebrity advocacy, the landscape of women's health is undergoing a significant transformation. Join us for an insightful discussion as we navigate the evolving landscape of women's health. We explore how health IT leaders can capitalize on this unprecedented attention to drive meaningful advancements in care delivery, research, and innovation. Together, we will assess whether women's health is finally receiving the attention and investment it deserves and chart a course for a more equitable and empowering future. As health IT leaders, it is crucial to understand how these developments will impact our strategies, investments, and the overall direction of the industry. We will explore the following key aspects:
Katie McMillan, CEO, Well Made Health, LLC
Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive, Officer HealthIMPACT
00:00:30] Megan Antonelli: Welcome to the Digital Health Talks podcast, where we explore the intersection of technology, innovation and healthcare. Get ready to be inspired by our next segment. I'm so excited to welcome Katie McMillan back to the show. She CEO of Well Made Health.
With over 15 years experience in digital health strategy, product development, and communications, Katie has made a profound impact on the industry. As a startup advisor and a champion for women's health innovation, she has dedicated her career to empowering early to mid stage health Technology, Femtech and Famtech companies to reach their full potential.
But Katie's impact extends far beyond her work with individual companies. Through her monthly newsletter, The Evidence Edit, she delves into the science and results behind digital health solutions for women, providing invaluable insights, thought leadership to the industry at large. I look forward to getting it in my box every week.
In today's episode, we focus on a critical and timely topic, women's health. Recent events have brought to light the urgent need to address the challenges and disparities faced by women in accessing comprehensive health care services. The attack on women's health and access by certain factions of the government has put the well being of millions of women at risk.
From attempts to restrict reproductive rights, To the defunding of essential health care programs, these actions have far reaching consequences that extend beyond individual choice and autonomy. They threaten the very foundation of gender equality and the right to quality and health care for all. At the same time, there are some bright spots.
And as we do here on the digital health talks podcast. We like to focus on the good things making a positive impact. And one good thing that will have far reaching implications is the Biden's administrative executive order on advancing women's health research and innovation. Today. I'm talking about Katie about these issues and exploring the ways in which digital health can be leveraged to advance women's health equity in a time when It's so deeply needed.
So join us as we envision a future where every woman has access to healthcare she needs and deserves. Get ready to be energized, educated, and inspired as I have been by Katie's passion, expertise, and unwavering commitment to advancing women's health through innovation. Let's give a warm welcome to Katie.
Hi, Katie. Welcome back.
[00:03:04] Katie McMillan: Hi. So good to see you, Megan. Always fun to talk.
[00:03:06] Megan Antonelli: Good to see you. So, we're here today and there's been some good news around women's health.
There's been a lot more attention to it lately, which is great to see particularly maternal health and menopause and women's late stage later stage health, but traditionally, and we've talked about this a lot, at node and other events that we've been to together, it's been underfunded and often overlooked.
So, you've been focused on this space in terms of women's health and fem tech for a long time. What are some of the, innovations you're seeing and developments in this space that you're excited about?
[00:03:44] Katie McMillan: Yeah. So it's funny, like I started working in digital health over 10 years ago, but my master's, my public health degree was focused in maternal and child health.
And I felt like I kind of put those interests aside for a while because of my passion for leveraging technology across healthcare. But then about five years ago, I started seeing so many companies coming out that were at the intersection of women's health and digital health. And I was like, this is the time I've been waiting for.
So it's been really wonderful to see such growth in that area.
Fem Health Insights just released their annual report and it was great to see sort of a validation of what I've, I think that I've been noticing, which is this hockey stick growth in the amount of companies that are coming out to serve women's health needs.
For example, like there was, 200 companies that came out in 2020 and five years before that there were 35 companies. So, wow. And now there's over 1400 that they're tracking. So that's all been really fun to see just the incredible growth in the sphere itself. And we can see it across different things.
So I think there's this general term of like, Femtech, but I've sort of broken it into the idea of like women's health innovation and femtech and the women's health innovation stuff I see as more like the consumer product goods or medical devices or care models that are changing and the femtech stuff I see more aligned with like the traditional digital health things that I would look at.
So telehealth connected devices, apps, et cetera. I've been very intrigued lately by what the consumer product or the consumer health tech companies, I guess, are doing. So, there's definitely niche companies that are looking at, fertility issues, pregnancy, postpartum, menopause, et cetera. But what's intriguing in sort of the way that like Apple successfully launched their health records product and doing some of the things that they've done with the watch is that the products are so ubiquitous that like you have.
A very large sample size to collect data from and be a very large population to potentially serve. And so those companies are not trying to, like, just scrape a little piece of the market out for themselves. Like, they already have a nice size in the market. And so then it's like, what good can they do with that?
And so, for example, like, WHOOP put out a study about how they looked at women that wore the band while they were pregnant, and then they were able to retrospectively identify markers for preterm labor based upon when these women actually gave birth. And so I think that stuff is really interesting because it's not just a product for essentially the worried well, people that are trying to get 5%, more steps during the day or, lift 10 pounds more at the gym or something like that. It's actually like looking at potentially real clinical problems that you could solve or identify needs for intervention based upon things that are already commonly used. So I think that's. Really fascinating.
[00:06:47] Megan Antonelli: Yeah, well, and it's interesting as you think about both. I'm reading rebel health Susanna Fox book. So she talks about kind of the needs, there's a quadrant of needs within health care of unmet and then met and heard, and you hope that a lot of the innovation is coming around those folks that need it and where the problems are.
And I think there's also a larger discussion happening across digital health around. There's a lot of innovation out there. Who's going to pay for it? Is it a consumer product? Is it an employer? Are the employers going to pay for it? So what are you seeing in that, market? I mean, I think the barrier, often the barrier, starts with funding and getting, getting the right attention.
But once you're there. These companies are struggling with finding who's going to pay for it. So where, what are you seeing in trends and, your newsletter, obviously on evidence and you've been focused on that. Where do you think that is coming to play? And how have you seen that develop?
[00:07:43] Katie McMillan: Yeah, I think who pays for it? I think there's. Probably a graph to be made with how mature the company is. And, but I do think that in women's health, a lot of companies have been focused on consumer consumers paying for things because women are so used to being like sidelined essentially. And while they are need whole person care that relates to.
All of their human needs in addition to their reproductive health needs. Oftentimes they're only seen as this small piece with just reproductive health needs. And so, we've just naturally found ways to sort of, like, circumvent the existing system to get what we need. And so I think that consumer market has been pretty strong from a health equity standpoint, it's kind of a problem because a lot of these consumers Services and devices, there's at home fertility tracking devices that are, 300 and that's not going to be a price point.
That can be comfortable for a lot of people to use, especially if it's something that you may only use for, say, 6 months or 12 months. I think that. As we've discussed before, like my interest is a lot on the evidence backing these devices. And so I think that while I have done some research on that, it's an area that needs a lot more light shined on it.
And I think with more understanding, and this is an issue in digital health across the board. Like there was an article I saw maybe in the last year about how most of the unicorn companies don't have science. Backing like their products. And so, it's, people like Meg Baron are doing great work on that, but we just need more light shined on that in women's health space.
And then I think more of the reimbursement will come from payers. When people go to employers, I think like, this is a, An ecosystem problem in general, like employers are just bombarded with people with digital health solutions and they're just tired and I think like they may have something already and then it's also the issue of like having how many niche solutions do you have to provide to your employees and like, do they trust that?
Yeah, years ago, OVIA was top employer solution and, they were using it to, when we were using it to track, like trying to get pregnant and then they had the app for after they got pregnant and you could, see how your baby's growing over time. But the, a, the employers were getting data on who specifically was using it in the company.
So then you could actually get mommy tracked, which is a huge problem. And then Be like what you're doing within the apps, like, they were able to see, when you're having sexual activity and stuff. And so, like, right, that stuff that
[00:10:18] Megan Antonelli: Even with security and privacy disclosures and guardrails in place that you would necessarily feel comfortable sharing with your employer for sure, which is, I mean, again, it's a challenge.
That's part of the employer. Pipeline challenge anyway, right? I mean, it's not unique to women's health, but for sure some of these around fertility and that is particularly tough. Well, when it comes to the science, right? So the NIH is part of this you know, big 200 million research effort with ARPA H and they've committed 100 million to women's health.
So where do you think, as you're looking at it, I know you've been working with some companies, for that are applying, where do you see these new funding streams going? And do you think that is going to be innovative digital health solutions for women?
[00:11:08] Katie McMillan: Yeah I think it's super, super exciting. I was thrilled when I saw the two announcements and like with ARPA H, I think there's plenty of people that have good ideas and that sort of early stage of funding is so tough and so the fact that their first round of funding Funds that they're giving out, or I think 3, 000, 000 for the lower tier and up to 10, 000, 000 for the next year is a nice cushion for somebody to actually start a company or for a company that has maybe done some.
Initial product building to get that boost that they need to, like, take it to the next level. So I also would love to see some of that funding go towards studies as well. So, you're building a product and oftentimes people use convenient samples the people that are close to you to initially vet it.
And then maybe you might find, somebody that goes to your OBGYN practice or something like that to see if they can run a small study with that group of patients to start to validate things. And I think with that kind of funding, we can open that up to a much larger and more diverse population.
That will hopefully, we've discussed it, other events, so much happening in AI and machine learning and like, We just need more data around women's women's specific data, I guess, in general. And so, I think that funding will help with that as well. Also I'd love to see some more like formative research.
So the ARPA H actually evaluates proposals on what they consider technical readiness scores, which is like a common federal terminology. But basically, a one is like. Bench science and a 10 is like, this has already gone to market and maybe we're finding a new way to use it within the market.
And so I'll be intrigued to see where things fall on that continuum between like the ones to tens. For example, like one woman I was speaking with about a potential ARPA H proposal was very curious about diminished ovarian reserve. Like it was something that she had been diagnosed with when she was trying to start having children in her thirties and They were basically like, you can't, you'll need assisted reproductive health if you're going to go forward with a child, but then kind of as a throwaway comment, it was, oh, and by the way, you might be a greater risk for osteoporosis and early cardiac diseases and these other kind of conditions or things that she may not actually have manifest for the next 20 years.
And she was curious about whether or not, like, Should I be doing anything? Like, should I be doing strength training or taking calcium or something like that? Like, in the next, I'm 35, what do I need to do until I'm 55 when these problems may start showing up in my clinical history? And we spoke with a few They're top reproductive endocrinologist and menopause specialists in the US to figure out whether or not like there could be a digital health solution to address this.
And essentially we decided not to because it's such a long period of time for somebody to engage with something to try. Like if we figured out some sort of health coaching based upon this, but the other big takeaway that really kind of moved her away from pursuing that was that they just said, It's really anecdotal evidence that we have right now.
And we essentially outlined a study like on the phone call. We were like, Oh, could we look at women that had. been diagnosed with diminished ovarian reserve like 10 or 15 years ago and then see in their chart like what are their comorbidities that they're diagnosed with later on and can compare that to like a similar cohort like a matched cohort and they were like yeah great nobody's done that and we're like let's see like we have been exploring this topic for five minutes you guys have been in this your entire career and you're telling us that like nobody has done this
[00:14:51] Megan Antonelli: I mean, I think I just saw literally on LinkedIn.
John Lee who's out of Chicago was talking about a similar story where they, it was like a patient came in with a, with X and they then looked it up to see how often was it? I think it was oh, it was around pediatric kidney stones actually that there was an. uptick and I'm paraphrasing and remembering, which is not my strength.
I'll blame perimenopause. But in terms of the, there was an uptick of kidney stones during COVID in children. And why was that? And I think what they ultimately discovered was that it was because children, because people, it was such severe pain and they came in. So it wasn't so much that there were more, but that it was during COVID.
It seemed like more because other people with less. Severe pain, weren't presenting weren't coming to the ER. So, but those types of negative studies, I think, when we talk about negative results, when we talk about the power of AI and data and this accessibility that we have, even as patients, let alone as physicians and researchers.
We're going to realize the promise of some of this now where, some of the barriers, don't require a hundred million dollars to do that research, but we can identify some of these problems, so that is exciting in terms of, were there any other sort of significant trends in kind of what you were seeing in terms of the companies and organizations and innovations that were applying for the grant?
[00:16:20] Katie McMillan: Yeah, so I. Spent a lot of time digging into like what all of this meant and like what the application process was like. And as part of the kickoff of the sprint, the ARPA agents and their partners basically allowed people to just dump their contact information into a forum and it populated a giant spreadsheet.
And everyone had access to it. And so there was, I mean, close to 2000 people in there. And so I gave some time looking through it, trying to see what type of things, because you basically just put in, like, what are the things that you're interested in? What do you want to solve? And so. The ARPA H sprint specifically had certain topics that they had six topics that they wanted people to particularly focus on.
One of them is a wild card, so it's like, you don't know what's going to come out of that. But their number one topic was women's health at home. And so I feel like that is a space that digital health is meant to play in. So I think there was some intriguing things there. Some of it's, Incremental growth on some of the things that we see right now with telehealth or at home monitoring.
So, for example, like during maternity with COVID, a lot of the normal visits that you would have when you would go in and see your provider, where they would do an ultrasound or a non stress test or something like that in the clinic, they were having to figure out how to do that at home to, women and their babies at significant risk and risk.
And so like, I definitely saw some of those companies out there thinking about how to improve the quality of the products that they're delivering. There was some women that I spoke with that were interested in pursuing the topic around pain. So they're trying to figure out better measurements for women's pain, which You could argue why we need to have that in the first place.
Like, we just believe people when they say they're in pain, but perhaps, like, with the existing opioid crisis, it is a good idea to find better ways to have some, actual quantitative data on how people are experiencing pain and treat them appropriately. And yeah, I mean, people were all over the board.
There was, bench science researchers that were trying to connect with people that had developed actual products and brought them to market. And there were, designers that wanted to help build the next, at home pelvic floor want to help people with incontinence. And so, there's really a broad spectrum of probably anything in women's health somebody was interested in.
And so I am. Anxiously awaiting what the announcements are going to be for the next. Grounded funding so
[00:18:49] Megan Antonelli: well, it's encouraging to see and certainly there are a spectrum of, various innovations that we need. And I mean, I'm excited about health care at home too. And we've been talking about it a lot lately at health impact and, seeing where.
And then they just released the I think the AMA is looking at coding for RPM and things like that. And, when you think about, we have our watches and we have our or rings and we have the various devices that we, use to track our own, health. But the idea of, taking that a step further, particularly, I mean, women's health for sure.
But then also with pediatrics, I mean, I think a lot my sister. Okay. Just had a baby and it's so different now than when I did, um, where they send them home with the respiratory tracker, the owl that goes on their foot, so they're really, watching and, being quite vigilant around these sometimes it's my, perhaps a little a little too much data.
But it's also, it's a different, it's great. I mean, cause they get released from the hospital and they need that to have that kind of monitor and tool to be able to check those things is great. And there's just so much potential there. So it's exciting to see around the, as we look, government funding and where it comes from, and then what's needed we have, do you have any insights? Maybe it's, too early to say on the president's initiative, but maybe it's not in terms of, like, how some of these organizations are looking to partner around kind of public and private partnership.
What are the, there's some best practices out there or examples of, ways that this has worked to accelerate the pipeline of new products and women's health.
[00:20:24] Katie McMillan: Yeah, I have some hunches, I guess, but like you said, like, some of it is yet to be seen. So, for example, there are some big companies that have come on as prime contractors to ARPA H, and then there's some that seem like maybe they're more positioned to be supportive for the women's health sprint, because ARPA H is not just that, like, they have a lot of other things that they're working on.
And each of those companies have their own specific Areas of expertise. So some of them are just, packed with subject matter experts that can come in and advise people, so they have this, niche OBGYN that does something maybe in minimally invasive gynecological surgery and like, great, they can be the advisor for that company.
There's people that are experts on statistical mod modeling and like software development. But then I think they've also done some very intriguing things such as partner with VentureWell, which would help those companies with those go to market strategies. And I'm glad to see that because I think often and especially from like my days when I worked at Duke, researchers are so, the way that the model is built, especially in like academic metals and is to just like continually chase.
The research dollars and you need to be bringing in funding to, like, support your position in your lab and you may have discovered something wonderful especially some of the digital health researchers I used to work with, like, they developed some great intervention and then, like, the grant funding ends and then they're just, the people are sad that those things go away and they don't get to use them anymore.
And they're like, Oh, I have to go for the next thing. And like, there may be. A year or two of lag in between with like the next round of money coming in. And so I, I see these like strategic decisions coming in where they're bringing in the research folks and the product folks and the business folks and the go to market folks.
And I really love that because I think that will hopefully set up more solutions for success of actually like. Being operationalized, which is what we really want to see in digital health,
[00:22:19] Megan Antonelli: right? Yeah. I think that the funding is the is a great place to start and then how it actually gets executed.
And as you said, I mean, I think we see it in on the private sector, sort of the pilots and death by pilot and partnership and stuff. So it has to sort of be sustained throughout the research and then commercialization. So we talked a little bit about kind of the AI and the buzz around that and machine learning.
And when we look at women's health, given that there have been research gaps over the years, what role do you see kind of AI and machine learning? I know I just got involved in this women and Jenny. I group. It's not specific to health care, but. A lot of what they're looking at is, a lot of the content that it's reading has been, wasn't written by women for women, and so that the models are being trained and does it propagate and continue to, put forward sort of inherent biases.
And it's, of course, not only true for women. It's true for all. But when we're looking at, All of these new innovations kind of collecting data. What are what do you see? Some of the potentials for these discoveries and innovations and, kind of where some of the data gaps might be filled.
[00:23:25] Katie McMillan: Yeah, it's funny, like I was thinking last week, I was on ChatGBT and I was trying to use it to streamline some research. So I was looking, I found a piece that had 500 software as a medical device companies in it. And I was like, Hey, ChatGBT, like, can you tell me which of these are serving women's health?
And like, It was just like, uh, like, it didn't give me a good answer. It does not compute. It does not compute. And then they were like, two of these are tagged as obstetrics and gynecology. Like, is this what you're looking for? And I was like, okay, I guess I'll have to do this manually. And so I was like, well, that's a start.
But then yesterday I started combing through that 500 company list. And I was like, there is more in here. Like, there are these. Software is a medical device companies that are using AI and machine learning to do things in like radiology and anesthesiology and endocrinology. And there was another one.
Oh cancer as well. And so. It's promising, I would say, like, we need to improve the existing data sets to train them on, like, even though the FDA wants companies that are submitting drug data to have it differentiated by sex, it doesn't always happen that way. We don't always study how things affect women differently, like, it may just say, like, oh, 40 percent of the study population was women, but they didn't say they need a lower dose or the dose response was different based upon the women.
So I think, like, It's promising and it needs more data. And I also wonder about like. With the chat, GBTs and the generative AI is if there are women using these tools as much, like I was thinking when I was asking it, these questions related to women's health, like, what are their top company, top consumer wearable companies that are doing things in women's health?
Like I knew more than what it was putting back at me. And so I was kind of using it to validate my own assumptions to make sure I wasn't missing something. And that's when I was like, okay, this is, Problematic. Like if there's not enough people feeding the machine, then it's not going to have the right information to send back, like you'd like to think that it could scrape the entire internet.
Right. And it
[00:25:44] Megan Antonelli: doesn't seem like that's exactly right. I live in a house of boys who, were very early adopters to chat GPT, both for, schoolwork and, everything else that they need to do. But yet in my. Circle of friends, perhaps they're not as early adopters, so it's this, it gets propagated just by the nature of, where we exist in the circle of our, lives, if you will, but it is mean, I think there's hope for it and, but around that, there's also obviously with the change, healthcare breach and what's going on with unite and there's a lot more attention towards, Cyber security at the moment.
And and I think even with the legislative environment, these critical issues around privacy and women's health, and we talked about it a little bit, this is sensitive data and, becoming more increasingly sensitive because of the world we live in. How much of what you're seeing in the tools and innovations that are coming are they taking that into account, particularly with.
A I and data collection and all of that.
[00:26:45] Katie McMillan: Yeah, I mean, I think it really needs to be taken seriously, particularly in the current legislative environment. I co wrote a piece for stat news a little while ago about how the government was trying to put in additional protections around reproductive health data in the same way that they sort of separate your mental health record from the rest of your records so that it can't be used against The thesis for that was that they needed to go a step further than what was actually being suggested. And so, like, I think that's one component to it is the legislation protection of that information, but. The reality is, like, most people are, most women between the ages of 13 and 40 are probably using some type of period tracker app, and within that, they may also be tracking their sexual activity if they're trying to use it as a way of natural family planning.
And so, like, unfortunately, the impetus is really on those companies to leverage best practices, make sure that there's end to end data encryption, make sure that people have the ability to enter that information, honestly, if they want to, or without creating an account, potentially. Like, I think that's Another thing is like everything is so interwoven now that, use the same email address that it can easily be tracked across 100 different accounts that you have on the Internet.
And so I even at one point put together a An article that was like, if you're crossing state lines for reproductive health care, like, this is what you need to protect your phone so that you don't, you can't have, like, these are all the things your phone is probably potentially tracking from a GPS or Bluetooth standpoint and how to kind of lock it down if you were in that situation, how to protect yourself.
[00:28:25] Megan Antonelli: That's great. We'll have to put those in the resources for sure. Both the stat news article on that. Yeah, I mean, it's, scary times and it is both just in general with cyber security and healthcare information being such a high commodity. Yeah, in terms of the privacy and what's there and, it's interesting as you look at generations in terms of their willingness to use technology and put that information out there.
It seems like the younger generation might be having a little bit of a backlash. I've read a little bit about that, but, and I don't backlash is probably too negative of a word, but they're becoming a little bit more sensitive to it. Whereas some of the older kids and older 20 somethings were less so, but as the time and the politics change they respond to that.
But then, and then thinking about sort of the global bigger environment there has been a lot of kind of celebrity attention to. Women's health, right? I mean, from Christy Turlington a long time ago with her maternal health charity. But, Oprah and Gwyneth Paltrow, as they go, as women go through stages, we like to call attention to those things.
And the celebrities now are bringing some valuable attention to women's health issues and kind of having those discussions happen. I think, from a PR perspective or from a marketing perspective again, also, even, as we talked about sort of employer versus the consumer product and the pipeline for some of these innovators, do you see some of the digital health innovators, sort of leveraging that type of advocacy or doing their own PR?
What are some of the kind of marketing and sales advice you give to some of your clients?
[00:29:59] Katie McMillan: Yeah, I got one last point about our last question, and then I'll jump into another thing that I suggest to people is to look at European companies for reproductive health trackers because of the additional coverage of GDPR.
And I think that that legislation kind of protects your personal data a little bit better, even than what we allow in the United States. And I also just do education to women about the fact that consumer. Apps are not subject to HIPAA in the same way that their healthcare data is. And I think that's often comes to people as a surprise as well.
Right. That's really important. For sure. Two little helpful tips that I like to share with people as to the celebrity stuff, it's super interesting. Earlier this morning, I was looking at Serena Williams latest investments and she is, I mean, I think there's two ways that celebrities kind of are used.
Some is just for like shining the light and the advocacy piece and like you said, like Chrissy Turlington with the every mother counts has been able to. Build up like a nice sort of long term NGO where she supports women around the world will have healthy childbirth. Serena has done a different model, which is like raising investment capital, using some of her own money, and then partnering with other investors to make Help fund the companies that she wants to see out in the world, which I think is really awesome.
She's invested in like, do you know, health, which is doing brick and mortar stuff and sort of underserved areas. So standing out clinics. She has invested in huge, which tries to train medical writers on the bias that they may have personally and how they deliver health care and understanding of race and social economic status and how to combat that.
And there was one other one I was looking at. Oh, and mom. He's invested in mommy also. So which one? Mommy, M A H E E, which is trying to help improve birth outcomes for black women. So she doesn't specifically, or she doesn't only do things in healthcare. She's done other things in consumer product goods and companies as well.
But I think that's been really fun and exciting to see. And I think like for those companies itself, it's always like good PR when somebody that people already know about. Invest in your company. And then it's like, Oh, well, Serena Williams backed me. And Serena Williams had her own experiences, like harrowing experiences with childbirth.
And so she can all lend that personal story to the validation of why she thinks these companies are important.
[00:32:26] Megan Antonelli: Yeah, and that's what's amazing. I mean, I think so much of innovation in health care does come from personal experience within the system. Right? And particularly for her, she did have that experience and it's a, it's an incredible story that someone at her level could still face that.
Right? And so, that's awesome, though. I didn't know that she was such an active investor. That's great to hear. Well, and that's another thing I wanted to sort of talk about a little bit. I mean, this is attention. It's funding. That's all good. What do you hope to see?
Right? So what? So it's really good news. What do you hope that you're going to see? As a result of these initiatives?
[00:33:04] Katie McMillan: Yeah, I think, like, I'm optimistic across the board and as you said, like, we all bring our personal experiences to the things that we're interested in. And so, when I was trying to get pregnant, I was very interested in the fertility space and then I had kids and I was very interested, in the pregnancy and immediate postpartum space.
And now my kids are getting a little bit older and I'm like, in my late 30s, but I'm already starting to think about perimenopause. And so, I'm paying more attention to that. But I also am very intrigued by what's happening and just diseases that affect women differently or just proportionately as well.
And so I think that's often like, Piece of the puzzle that's not really addressed and I spend a lot of time looking at what companies are out there and reading the news and seeing what's happening. And I'm inherently like every week excited about something that I read about. And I think with the influx of the federal funding, especially the ARPA funding, because of the fact that is so focused on kind of next gen things I'm excited about the things that I don't even know about yet.
The things that I may not have even considered even though I spent a lot of time thinking about this because like, my own brain can't possibly think about every issue within women's health and give it the depth and the time that it takes to, Problem solve all of these things. I mean, that's why we have people that are niche experts and spend their entire career studying something.
And so I am just very excited to see what is coming in the years. It is
[00:34:31] Megan Antonelli: exciting. And luckily they have folks like you who are there to amplify the work that they're doing. And we often have female founders on the program to talk about the, the work that they're doing.
So if you come across any that, that might want to come on the show, you should invite them connect me for sure. Cause we're always interested in amplifying their work. So, but this has been so, so great and it is exciting to see. And I think it's just the tip of the iceberg, right?
We're going to see a lot more innovation in this space as the attention and then value comes to it, right? And the evidence that's there when you do look at these, sort of niche areas of need and start to innovate around them, that the value will come. So thank you so much, Katie, for joining us share with our audience where, how they can reach you.
[00:35:17] Katie McMillan: I'm available by email at Katie at well made health and on LinkedIn, Instagram by websites, well made health. com. And you can always find me through.
[00:35:28] Megan Antonelli: Yes. Everybody should subscribe to her newsletter because it's great. There's always good stuff about women's health, but then also fashion tips.
Everyone. I love it. All right. Thanks again, Katie. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in until next time. Remember innovation is a journey, not a destination. Keep pushing boundaries, challenging the status quo, and always keep the patient at the heart of everything you do. This is Megan Antonelli and you're listening to the digital health talks podcast, where we make an impact one episode at a time.