HLTH Europe 2025<\/a> conference. But as clinicians, investors, and advocates made clear at the gathering, it is vastly more than that.<\/p>\nThe tide is slowly changing, fueled by data, technology, and a growing chorus of women\u2019s voices. Yet from diagnostics and research to clinical training and policy, systemic gaps remain. Acknowledging and actively closing these gaps is not just a matter of equality, it\u2019s a step toward better health outcomes for everyone, Anna Coates, PhD, a senior gender technical lead at the World Health Organization (WHO), told Medscape Medical News<\/em>.<\/p>\nBusiness Here Are Some Numbers<\/h2>\n The statistics around women\u2019s health remain shockingly grim, and their repetition might be a necessary reminder of the scale of the problem. Here are some numbers reported at the conference:<\/p>\n
\nAlthough women live longer than men, they spend 25% of their lives in greater illness and disability than men, which equates to an average of 9 years of poor health.<\/li>\n Women are seven times more likely to be discriminated against by a healthcare provider.<\/li>\n A woman is three times more likely than a man to be dismissed during a doctor\u2019s consultation. For the same disease, it can take a woman four times longer to receive a diagnosis.<\/li>\n It takes an average of 6-10 years to diagnose a condition like endometriosis.<\/li>\n A woman having a heart attack is seven times more likely to be dismissed and misdiagnosed in the emergency room and twice as likely to die as a result.<\/li>\n While women constitute 70% of patients with chronic pain, 80% of pain medication research is conducted on men or male animals.<\/li>\n Geography and income drastically alter outcomes. A woman diagnosed with breast cancer in a high-income country like Denmark has a 85%-90% 5-year survival rate. In India, that drops to around 60%, and in Nigeria, it is < 50%.<\/li>\n In the US, a woman is now twice as likely to die in childbirth as her own mother was.<\/li>\n Only 4% of venture capital investment in healthcare is directed toward women\u2019s health.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nKristen Cerf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nKristen Cerf, president and CEO at Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan (PHP), pointed out that \u201cthese statistics \u2014 every single one of them \u2014 worsen when talking about women of color.\u201d<\/p>\n
These issues result in 75 million years of life lost due to poor health or early death annually. Closing the women\u2019s health gap could inject $1 trillion into the global economy by 2040.<\/p>\n
Business A Societal Problem Reflected in Healthcare<\/strong><\/h2>\nThese disparities are not solely a healthcare problem. Coates said that healthcare systems reflect broader society. \u201cIf women are not generally valued, then we\u2019re going to see that replicated in the health system.\u201d This isn\u2019t an external problem for medicine to point to, but rather one that it is an integral part of, she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a societal problem, and you are part of that big society problem. So if the health system doesn\u2019t change, it\u2019s not playing its own role in that bigger societal change.\u201d<\/p>\nMoz Siddiqui<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cIt is a system\u2019s failure because mostly men have created that system,” said Moz Siddiqui, a senior gender technical lead at the WHO Foundation. This systemic failure requires systemic stimuli to change. \u201cSystems don\u2019t change unless there are external stimuli,\u201d said Cerf. But while moral arguments persist, many panelists agreed that financial and economic arguments are often more potent drivers. \u201cIf the clinical and the patient perspective doesn\u2019t move governments, certainly the economics should move governments,\u201d argued Tisha Boatman, who is responsible for external affairs and healthcare access at Siemens Healthineers. When the cost of misdiagnosis, lost productivity, and delayed treatment is quantified, the imperative to invest in women\u2019s health becomes undeniable, she said.<\/p>\n
Business Sleep: The Overlooked Pillar of Women\u2019s Health<\/h2>\nTisha Boatman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cSleep is really a core pillar of health, and it\u2019s just as important as nutrition, exercise, and stress resilience,\u201d said Jennifer Kanady, PhD, director of sleep health technology at Samsung Electronics. Yet it is often the first thing to be sacrificed and the last to be addressed in clinical settings.<\/p>\n
Poor sleep is linked to increased risks for diabetes, heart disease, and dementia, and its patterns change significantly across a woman\u2019s life, influenced by menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and menopause. Insomnia, for example, might increase during pregnancy or the menopausal transition, but the causes and treatments might differ significantly depending on which of those phases a woman is in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is where the diagnostic challenge becomes critical. A woman in perimenopause may visit her doctor complaining of fatigue and poor sleep. \u201cIt might be diagnosed as insomnia, and the pattern is completely different,\u201d said Ines Ramos Barreiras, EMEA regional medical advisor at Bayer. The root cause isn\u2019t a primary sleep disorder but a hormonal shift, meaning that a standard prescription for insomnia won\u2019t target the problem at its source. \u201cIt\u2019s not only a problem of sleep, but how sleep is impacted,\u201d she said. \u201cIn menopause, women can go to sleep, but sleep is not as restoring as it needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Business Not a Smaller Man\u2019s Heart\u00a0<\/h2>\n Cardiovascular disease is another space where a knowledge and awareness gap persists, both in the public domain and among healthcare practitioners. The public may not know the risks \u2014 Simic noted that a woman aged 45-65 years is 17 times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than breast cancer \u2014 but the more critical gap is often with clinicians. \u201cWe should stop treating the women\u2019s heart as a variation of the male heart,\u201d said Michiel Winter, MD, a cardiologist at the Amsterdam University Medical Center who specializes in digital health. \u201cThere\u2019s a very distinct difference. Risk factors like hypertension are much more harmful in women than in men, and it also means that they get different heart diseases, and that means different diagnostics and different therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even as technology advances, these old biases are being coded into new systems. \u201cMost algorithms are made for more male-specific cardiovascular disease,\u201d Winter noted. For example, because the ST elevation in a female myocardial infarction is often less pronounced, \u201cthe AI [artificial intelligence] algorithm picks up male STEMI (ST-elevation myocardial infarction) much more easily than it does for female.\u201d Similarly, algorithms for interpreting ultrasounds are often better at identifying systolic heart failure (more common in men) than diastolic heart failure (more common in women).<\/p>\n
![\"Business](\"https:\/\/img.medscapestatic.com\/vim\/live\/professional_assets\/medscape\/thumbnail_library\/ht_250624_petra_simic_120x156.jpg\")
![\"Business](\"https:\/\/img.medscapestatic.com\/vim\/live\/professional_assets\/medscape\/thumbnail_library\/ht_250624_kristen_cerf_120x156.jpg\")
![\"Business](\"https:\/\/img.medscapestatic.com\/vim\/live\/professional_assets\/medscape\/thumbnail_library\/ht_250624_moz_siddiqui_120x156.jpg\")
![\"Business](\"https:\/\/img.medscapestatic.com\/vim\/live\/professional_assets\/medscape\/thumbnail_library\/ht_250624_tisha_boatman_120x156.jpg\")
![\"Business](\"https:\/\/img.medscapestatic.com\/vim\/live\/professional_assets\/medscape\/thumbnail_library\/ht_250624_jocalyn_clark_120x156.jpg\")
![\"Business](\"https:\/\/img.medscapestatic.com\/vim\/live\/professional_assets\/medscape\/thumbnail_library\/ht_250624_dame_lesley_regan_120x156.jpg\")
![\"Business](\"https:\/\/img.medscapestatic.com\/vim\/live\/professional_assets\/medscape\/thumbnail_library\/ht_250624_bayo_curry_winchell_120x156.jpg\")