Innovation in healthcare is complex. Unlike other industries where speed, scale, and disruption are often celebrated, healthcare operates under a different set of rules. Safety, evidence, compliance, and equity come first – and rightly so. But for those trying to build better solutions in women’s health, this environment can feel particularly opaque.
Many women’s health founders and operators come from outside traditional healthcare settings. They bring fresh perspectives and bold ideas, but often find themselves navigating systems they were never formally trained to understand. Clinical trials, procurement cycles, regulatory approvals, reimbursement codes – it’s a lot to figure out while also running a business or building technology.
And the stakes are high. Women’s health has long been underfunded, under-researched, and underserved. Innovators in this space aren’t just building tools – they’re challenging long-standing gaps in care, data, and delivery. Understanding how healthcare innovation actually works is not just useful – it’s essential.
What Makes Innovation in Healthcare So Different?
Unlike in tech or consumer goods, healthcare innovation isn’t just about novel ideas or fast execution. Success depends on alignment across multiple systems – clinical, regulatory, financial, and cultural. A few core principles help explain why healthcare moves differently:
Innovation ≠ Invention
An invention is a new idea. An innovation is a new idea that creates value. In healthcare, value typically means better outcomes, improved access, or lower costs. A product may be technologically advanced but still fail to deliver meaningful impact if it doesn’t fit the context in which it’s used.
Scale Doesn’t Happen Automatically
Good ideas don’t spread on their own. Adoption in healthcare is influenced by evidence standards, institutional inertia, professional norms, and procurement structures. Knowing how to navigate the adoption curve – from early pilot sites to mainstream implementation – is a discipline of its own.
Local Context Shapes Success
The same innovation may work well in one health system and fail in another. Understanding how geography, resources, policy, and population needs influence uptake is critical – especially in women’s health, where disparities in access are still widespread.
Innovation Is a Team Sport
From the start, healthcare innovation is interdisciplinary. Clinical insight, engineering, behavioral science, design, and business strategy all play a role. Innovation happens not just through solo founders or visionary scientists, but through networks of people who understand the system from different angles.
What This Means for Femtech and Women’s Health
Women’s health startups often operate at the intersection of consumer experience and clinical care. That means navigating a fragmented ecosystem: Medical validation, regulatory clearance, reimbursement, and user trust. Too often, the frameworks used to evaluate innovation in general tech are applied here – when in fact, the rules are different.
Building effective, sustainable solutions in women’s health requires an understanding of how the system works – not just how to disrupt it. That doesn’t mean abandoning bold ideas, but grounding them in the realities of health system change.
A Course That Can Help Build That Foundation
One useful starting point is the course “A Guide to Healthcare Innovation: Principles and Practice”, created by Imperial College London and offered through Coursera.
The course introduces key models and frameworks for understanding healthcare innovation, including:
- The difference between invention and innovation
- Types of innovation (e.g., disruptive, frugal, reverse)
- How to develop, fund, and scale new products
- Why innovations succeed – or fail – to spread within healthcare systems
It’s beginner-friendly, self-paced, and rooted in practical examples from across the global health ecosystem. While it doesn’t focus specifically on women’s health, the ideas are directly applicable to anyone trying to bring meaningful solutions into practice.
👉 Learn more about the course on Coursera
This piece is part of an ongoing series by Femtech Insider in partnership with Coursera, spotlighting educational resources that help make sense of healthcare’s complexity – and support those working to change it.
