Are we ready to put innovation at the centre of women’s health?

The success of the Women’s Health Strategy will depend on whether innovation can be adopted at scale, writes Dr MaryAnn Ferreux, chief medical officer at Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex

The refreshed Women’s Health Strategy for England sets out a clear and necessary ambition to address long-standing inequities in women’s health.

Its focus on redesigning clinical pathways, expanding access through specialist centres and women’s health hubs, strengthening research, and supporting innovation through a dedicated FemTech fund reflects a maturing policy landscape.

The strategic direction is well-articulated, but the question now is how this ambition translates into consistent delivery across the NHS.

The implementation gap

Implementation has historically been the limiting factor in women’s health.

Despite repeated policy focus, women continue to experience delays in diagnosis, fragmented care pathways, and variation in access to services such as menopause care, gynaecology and pelvic health.

At the same time, there is a growing body of digital and technological innovation capable of addressing many of these challenges.

Retrofitting digital solutions into established pathways often results in fragmentation and limited uptake

Realising this potential depends on how these pathways are designed and innovation is integrated. A user centred-design approach must be incorporated from the outset rather than introduced retrospectively.

Experience across the NHS demonstrates that retrofitting digital solutions into established pathways often results in fragmentation and limited uptake.

In contrast, designing pathways with digital and data capabilities as core components embedded into workflows creates the conditions for sustainable transformation.

From pilots to scale

The introduction of a £1.5m FemTech challenge fund signals an important commitment to innovation.

However, without a clear adoption pathway, there is a risk that many solutions will remain within isolated testing sites with limited system spread.

In practice, the NHS oscillates between uncoordinated local pilots that rarely scale and nationally mandated programmes that often struggle with local adoption.

The NHS oscillates between uncoordinated local pilots that rarely scale and nationally mandated programmes that often struggle with local adoption

What is needed is a structured adoption model in which innovation is tested locally, evidenced for clinical effectiveness over time, and successful solutions progressed through defined stages of regional consolidation towards national commissioning and procurement.

Existing infrastructure can support this shift. Health Innovation Networks already have established expertise in the implementation, evaluation and spread of innovation.

They are well positioned to coordinate assessment processes, support real-world evaluation, and facilitate adoption across multiple systems.

In doing so, they can reduce the operational burden on Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and provide a more consistent mechanism for scaling innovation.

The role of women’s health hubs

Women’s health hubs are also central to this delivery model.

Designed to improve coordination across primary and secondary care, they offer a practical setting for implementing new approaches and models for prevention.

With appropriate support, they could move beyond service delivery to function as structured environments for innovation, operating as living labs for women’s health.

Women’s health hubs  could move beyond service delivery to function as structured environments for innovation

Embedding evaluation within routine care would enable real-world testing of digital tools, AI and new service models.

This approach would generate robust evidence on effectiveness and value while supporting timely adoption, thus providing a clearer route for innovators seeking to scale within the NHS.

Unlocking investment and growth

This has important implications for the wider innovation ecosystem. The UK has a growing FemTech sector, yet many companies are choosing to scale internationally.

A key factor is the absence of a reliable pathway from pilot to widespread adoption within the NHS.

From an investment perspective, the ability to scale is as important as the quality of the innovation itself.

Creating structured environments for evaluation and adoption, supported by coordinated commissioning, would send a stronger signal to investors that the NHS is a viable partner for growth.

This, in turn, has the potential to attract and retain investment within the UK.

Rethinking funding models

What we can take away from the strategy is that delivering these goals requires a more sophisticated approach to financing and investment.

While public funding remains important, it is unlikely to be sufficient to support widespread adoption.

There is an opportunity to align NHS priorities with external investment opportunities through outcomes-based approaches

There is an opportunity to align NHS priorities with external investment opportunities through outcomes-based approaches, where funding is linked to measurable improvements in access, experience, outcomes and system efficiency.

Such a model could reduce financial risk while ensuring that innovation is aligned with system priorities.

Ensuring equity in innovation

The strategy’s emphasis on research, supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research is a further strength.

Addressing gaps in evidence for women’s health is essential.

The commitment to embedding sex and gender considerations within research will help ensure that findings are more representative of the population.

Digital tools can complement population health by generating real-world data on outcomes and variations in care, but equity must remain central to any transformation.

The commitment to embedding sex and gender considerations within research will help ensure that findings are more representative

The strategy rightly highlights the importance of inclusion, which must extend to the data, design and deployment of digital solutions to ensure that innovation improves access for all women, rather than reinforcing existing health inequalities.

The Women’s Voices Partnership is another important step in embedding lived experience within policy development.

Ensuring that women’s experiences of care inform the design and evaluation of services and technologies is critical.

From ambition to reality

The refreshed strategy provides a clear and credible framework for improving women’s health, but the challenge now lies in translating this into consistent, scalable delivery across the NHS.

Achieving this will depend on the system’s ability to move beyond fragmented approaches to innovation and towards a coordinated model of adoption.

The strategy moves us towards the goal of improving women’s health.

It is now for the system to turn that ambition into reality.