Can femtech help the NHS? In our brand new Femtech TV series no other than DigitalHealth.London’s Jenny Thomas sits down with experts from across the NHS and UK digital health ecosystem to explore just that! Tune in and and if you like check out the other episodes in this series on Femtech TV!
In this episode, Jenny Thomas speaks with Katherine Ward, Healthy.io‘s Chief Commercial Officer and UK & Europe MD about how the company almost accidentally ended up doing big things for women’s health in the UK.
Healthy.io’s founder Yonatan Adiri had a vision to turn the smartphone camera into a medical device and introduce the era of the Medical Selfie. Now, women across the UK with urinary tract infections are benefiting from the technology and femtech is one of the company’s most important business lines.
In my interview with Katherine Ward, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer and UK & Europe MD, she tells me how she has got femtech solutions into the hands of women through partnerships with Boots and the NHS. Healthy.io have rewritten the urinary tract infection (UTI) pathway in a way that works for women whilst saving GP time and the NHS money. Getting a UTI sorted out could be a 3-5 day ordeal when you factor in issues like getting access to your GP for a test, taking time out to get to the doctor and pharmacy, and maybe even an unpleasant experience peeing into a pot in a public loo. Now it can all be done from home.
Katherine tells me how she made this happen, what’s next for healthy.io in maternity and her top tips for working with the NHS: “It’s complicated and takes time but with the right partners, champions, navigation and the counsel of patients it’s absolutely possible”. She also gave a nice shout out to AHSNs (academic health science networks) and other partners like the Care City test bed in North London and York health economic consortium, who all played a role in this effort!
And last but not least, I got to share my own personal story of how eating too much Borough Market fudge led to me using healthy.io’s clinical grade urine test when I was pregnant and what I learned from it. I felt empowered and had a ton of questions…mainly ones that my poor NHS emergency doc brother had to answer but that’s another story…
Enjoyed this episode of our “Can Femtech help the NHS?” series? Head on over to our Femtech TV channel for more!
