Moving from Women’s Health to the Future of Health. Fall Conferences Push the Narrative
Fall conferences on women’s health were enlightening and engaging…and most importantly included conversations that are changing the game in health.
Women’s Health Innovation Summit (WHIS) had many terrific speakers, panels, products, and events. The panel “Moving from “Women’s Health” to Changing the Health in Women Paradigm” WHIS (Nov 6, 2025) including insights my expertise, Naseem Sayani, director of The Innovator’s Circle, Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM) and Unicorn co-founders Denielle Finkelstein and Thyme Sullivan. In this panel we challenged the audience to consider a new paradigm that moves from niche, to essential. This happens when we consider 100% of the life course and the conditions that affect women differently or disproportionately.
Naseem Sayani, Denielle Finkelstein, Lisa Marceau, Thyme Sullivan
I also contributed to the panel, Building the Digital Infrastructure to Succeed in Women’s Digital Health. WHIS (Nov 5, 2025) with Himani Thakkar Senior Frontier Engineer at STN, Chris Platt Field Strategist and CT with HPE, and moderated by Katherine Heffernan Senior Director, Strategic Product Management at UPMC. This focus was on thinking differently about AI as infrastructure so that we can build truly game-changing products, with technology as a tool to accelerate and amplify, not as innovation itself.
These presentations and my takeaways from the conference centered on the broader evolution of the healthcare market, addressing four key takeaways:
New Care Models - Care is moving outside the system toward autonomy and consumer ownership; what might this mean for access?
Role of AI - AI is not innovation; it’s the infrastructure that enables connection and integration, with the potential to deliver on humanized and efficient care.
Data - Data safety, security, and ownership are the next frontiers; whoever solves this will redefine health equity.
Women’s Health - The market is shifting from 'women's health' to the 'future of health'; disaggregating data by gender across the life course addresses broader issues affecting women.
The trillion-dollar opportunity isn’t only in what we create to solve female specific diseases; it is also in what we are missing by not building for gender differences across the lifespan.
I also attended and presented at the inaugural Women’s Health Horizons conference in Boston. It was an exhilarating and action-oriented conference driving toward solutions. Being part of this varied group of experts was a great way to kick off the sessions; driving home the point that data, technology, creative thinking, and collaboration will be the key elements future innovation in women's health.
Our panel, The Future of Women’s Health: The Evolving Landscape. Women’s Health Horizons (Oct 2025) was moderated by Vasanta Pundarika, and include me, Rachel Butler, Neel Shah, Georgie Kovacs, and Jenny Carrillo.