For years, women’s health has been neglected in research and funding and the repercussions are still evident today. In Australia, the 2024 End Gender Bias survey, the first of its kind, reported that 2 in 3 women experienced bias or discrimination while receiving healthcare. Delayed diagnosis, chronic health issues that are neglected and unregulated health services designed for male bodies fall disproportionately on women. The global initiative FemTech targets healthcare issues that only or mainly affect women and uses technology to provide solutions. It is changing the status quo and Australia is in the forefront of developing groundbreaking technology in this area.
What is Australia’s Women’s Healthcare Startup Ecosystem?
Tracxn has data showing that there were more than 120 FemTech startups in Australia as of May 2026, 25 of which were funded, with 3 going beyond Series A funding. Cumulatively, the sector has received over AUD 16.8 million in the past decade, which illustrates both the growth and funding gaps of the sector. All-female founding teams have received only 0.6% of VC funding in 2025, while founding teams with a mix of male and female co-founders have received almost 45% of this funding.
Why are Women’s Health Care and Issues Such Big Opportunities for Tech Startups?
It’s a big market segment due to a big market gap. In Australia, women are about 30% more likely to experience chronic health issues and delayed diagnoses. In Australia’s first End Gender Bias survey, 2/3 women surveyed experienced bias and discrimination in health care. Endometriosis, for instance, takes an average of 7 to 12 years to diagnose. Almost every woman going through menopause experiences a health crisis, yet research for menopause is lacking. For startups, this means large, well-defined problems with existing user pain that is both well-documented and emotionally resonant. The FemTech market is expected to reach USD $206 billion by 2033. In Australia, the 2024 Investing in Women Funding Program in New South Wales recently saw a $1 million investment in women’s health, well-being and empowerment. It’s a small investment, but it signals that policy is starting to notice the business opportunities.
What Are the Biggest Challenges for Australian FemTech Startups?
The primary obstacle facing most female technology startups in Australia is funding, just as everywhere globally. The second largest barrier is regulation. The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) oversees fem technology along with the digital health service regulations and data privacy laws. The complex compliance system is particularly burdensome to small, early-stage companies and startups. Femtech startups frequently lack the workforce to meet demands. In fact, research conducted at Harvard Business School showed that compared to other startups, those that focus on women’s health and women’s wellness have a 25% lower applicant rate.
Australian Startups to Watch
From FemTech startups prioritising data sets based on women’s health, to AI-based tools to assess the quality of IVF embryos- these are some of the top Australian startups to keep an eye on:
Presagen/ Life Whisperer
Presagen, with the assistance of the South Australian Government and other private investors, received AUD 4.5 Million in initial funding to further develop their company and their commercial product Life Whisperer, an AI-based tool that is used to assess the quality of IVF embryos. The tool was developed in collaboration with the University of Adelaide. Life Whisperer was found to have a 25% to 53% increased accuracy over the assessment of viability of embryos when compared to expert embryologists as part of a multi-center clinical trial conducted in 12 IVF clinics across Australia, the US, New Zealand and Malaysia.
Life Whisperer is made up of three individual AI tools:
Viability- This assess the likelihood of pregnancy for the embryo
Genetics- This assesses the morphology of the embryo and its likelihood to be genetically normal.
Oocyte- Oocyte assesses the quality of the oocyte and assesses which are likely to form a viable embryo.
Ovum
Ovum is creating a large, long-term (longitudinal) women’s dataset in Australia to tackle the gendered health gap and change how women interact with healthcare. Founded by Dr. Ariella Heffernan-Marks, Ovum is the first Australian app to offer a fully integrated, holistic AI health assistant in the app. “Existing AI can perpetuate bias in healthcare outcomes for women,” said Dr Heffernan-Marks. “Ensuring that our AI is women-centric and draws from a diverse dataset is essential to its effectiveness.” Over three million Australian women engage with apps focused on reproductive health and fertility, yet the other apps focus on individual health issues. Ovum takes a system-based approach to women’s holistic health incorporated into one app.
Baymatob
Baymatob is an AI platform that analyses health risks, specifically for the assessment of pregnant women, for clinicians. Having developed a labor management software with features for predicting the risk of postpartum hemorrhage and other maternal health-related issues, Baymatob seeks to resolve a critical gap in the timely assessment of the risk for postpartum hemorrhage that is currently heavily reliant on the judgment of clinicians and is made under severe time constraints.
VitalTrace
VitalTrace cares about mother and child health during labour and delivery. They provide medical devices for foetal monitoring and aim to solve the issue of accurate and continuous monitoring of foetuses during labour, which is one of the most difficult problems in maternal health. The Device-Based Solution has the potential to decrease the burden on clinical staff and reduce the risks of missed deterioration of foetal wellbeing. Real-time labour biosensor data is rapidly merging the fields of both hardware and artificial intelligence and VitalTrace is at the centre of it.
