Blog

As we approach International Women’s Day, it’s time to reflect not just on participation, but on who gets to contribute, lead and shape health innovation.

Women remain underrepresented across health innovation and technology. Not because of a lack of ideas, insight or ambition, but because access to networks, funding, role models and safe spaces to test ideas remains unequal.

Across Healthtech and FemTech, women continue to face stark systemic disparities. Globally, women make up just 26% of the tech workforce, with even lower representation in senior and technical roles such as AI and data (12% and 14% respectively). Startups founded solely by women accounted for 2% or less of total venture capital investment in Europe and the United States in 2023. In women’s health innovation specifically, women-founded ventures capture a tiny share of funding, despite a market projected to reach significant scale by the end of the decade.

These disparities do not begin at investment stage. They begin much earlier — at the starting line, where confidence, connection and early validation shape who progresses and who quietly steps back.

Why early-stage support matters

In health and care, this imbalance has real consequences. The ideas women bring forward are often rooted in lived experience, of navigating healthcare systems, caring responsibilities, unmet clinical needs, and gaps in provision that disproportionately affect women and marginalised groups. When these voices are missing, innovation becomes narrower, and the system becomes less equitable by default.

Yet many women with early health innovation concepts lack access to:

• opportunities for early feedback and validation
• representation in tech and investment networks
• low capital flows to female-founded ventures
• Environments where women’s lived experience is valued as insight

This is the gap the Women in Health Innovation and Technology (WHIT) Springboard programme was designed to address.

 Springboard started as a simple idea…

What if we created a supportive, practical support package for women at the very earliest stages of health innovation, before the pitch decks were polished, before the confidence had fully formed, and often before they even felt ready to call themselves “innovators”?

 Why programmes like WHIT Springboard are important

The programme was designed to address a simple but persistent problem: women with early health innovation concepts often lack access to the spaces, people and therefore confidence required to move ideas forward.

This early intervention matters because research shows that access barriers impacts the innovation lifecycle; when women struggle to access networks and early validation, they are less likely to reach more formal investment pathways later.

The programme supports women to:

• Refine their ideas and value-stories
• Build confidence in complex health systems
• Access mentors with lived expertise and sector knowledge
• Connect into networks that matter beyond the programme

What we’ve built over the last 12 months

Over the past year, the Springboard programme has grown from a small, intentional piece of work into a broader platform for change.

Participants have attributed early shifts in confidence and clarity to Springboard’s blended model of workshops, mentorship and community support, a combination that enables progression.

What has stood out most for me is not just the quality of the ideas (which has been genuinely inspiring), but the shift in confidence I’ve seen in the cohort. Women who arrived saying “it’s just an idea” are now speaking about their work with clarity, ownership and ambition. Confidence is not a ‘nice to have’, it’s often the difference between an idea staying in someone’s notebook and becoming something that can improve care for patients.

This work hasn’t been built in isolation. It’s been shaped with our brilliant partners at Amazon Web Service (AWS) and Nexus, reflecting a shared commitment to tackling structural inequality through sustained action, rather than one-off initiatives.

A wider ecosystem taking shape

While Springboard remains a primary focus, it operates within a broader ecosystem of work at Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber.

Our organisation is actively supporting innovation that aligns with regional women’s health priorities and the national Women’s Health Strategy; convening stakeholders around unmet needs, and creating structured progression routes into broader programmes such as Propel Healthtech West Yorkshire.

Approximately 60% of the most recent Propel HealthTech cohort are female innovators – a promising indication that the pipeline is changing as more women engage with structured support. And events that reserve places for female-founded businesses at investor interfaces, reflect intentional action to tackle access barriers to later-stage capital and scaling opportunities.

These strands are connected; Early confidence-building system-aligned innovation and structured progression pathways together create a more coherent ecosystem

 What comes next

Springboard isn’t the end point, it’s the beginning of a longer shift.

Over the next 12 months, our focus is on:

•  Creating clearer progression routes beyond Springboard
• Strengthening links with academia, industry and the NHS so innovators can access the right support at the right time
• Building a more formal WHIT network so women can stay connected, visible and supported beyond programmes
• Continuing to create space for early-stage ideas, not just those that already look “investment ready”
• Sharing learning more openly so others can replicate, adapt and build similar models elsewhere

 Most importantly, I want this work to continue to challenge the idea that women need to “fit” existing innovation pathways. Sometimes the pathways themselves need to change.

When we design support around real people, real constraints and real lives, we create conditions where more diverse innovation can thrive and that ultimately leads to better outcomes for patients and communities.

 A final reflection

International Women’s Day is often about celebrating achievements, and that matters, but for me, this moment is also about recommitting to structural change.  Programmes like WHIT Springboard don’t fix systemic inequality alone. What they do create is momentum, belief and perhaps most importantly, they create starting points.

When women are supported early, trusted with their ideas and connected into the system, they do not simply participate in innovation. They shape it.

And that changes the starting line for everyone.

For more information or to discuss how you can get involved, please contact kimberley.frost@healthinnovation.com