In the rapidly evolving landscape of technology and healthcare, a new frontier is emerging – Femtech. The European FemTech market is projected to grow to $35 billion by 2032, indicating a significant growth trajectory.
As a Senior Product Manager at MVP Factory, I've seen firsthand how user-centricity can lead to impactful solutions that address diverse health needs, especially in the femtech space. In this blog, I'd like to share insights from my journey, highlighting the methodology of building solutions that truly resonate with women's lives.
The evolving landscape and rising opportunities in Femtech
Over the past year, I've been deeply involved in the pregnancy space - one of the most dynamic areas within Femtech, I believe. For Nanell - a digital pregnancy solution with one of our clients, Niterra Venture Lab - our mission was to provide pregnant women with continuous reassurance throughout their journey, empowering them to make data-driven decisions.
To achieve this, we developed a digital companion that allows them to:
- Monitor their health metrics in real-time using smart devices,
- Connect with experts for video calls and chats,
- Receive guidance from our certified content curated on their and the baby's development.
One of the most interesting aspects of this project was addressing gestational diabetes - a form of glucose intolerance that can develop during pregnancy due to hormonal changes and insulin resistance, leading to high blood sugar levels.
There exists significant data gaps due to a lack of research, and I believe that data-driven solutions, like Nanell, that allow pregnant women to monitor their health stats, could help experts analyze patterns, trends, and factors associated with better or worse outcomes.
Leveraging User-Centric Design to build a successful femtech solution
As a product manager, when building a product, the objective is to always enable user-centric design thinking. This approach is particularly important in Femtech due to the diverse health needs of women across different life stages and the lack of data and research on women’s health - both of which can pose a challenge when developing femtech solutions conditions.
As we look to the future of Femtech, it's clear that user-centric design must be at the forefront of our efforts. For me, prioritizing the needs, preferences, and experiences of the end user is crucial.
By placing the user at the center of all product decisions understand the diversity, and identify gaps, which as a result, allows us to craft personalized solutions that cater to various stages of women's health, from menstruation to menopause.
However, just creating a solution is not enough - creating a safe and supportive environment is the key to empowering women to share their stories and discuss their concerns openly. For another MVPF venture, Third Nature, a web platform providing medically-verified content and community to women dealing with hormonal imbalances, we received very positive feedback and high engagement - this proves that there exists a real need for safe spaces where women can interact and share their concerns.
In addition to female-specific conditions and diseases, it's important to not forget that there is a need to build user-centric technology solutions for conditions that affect women differently from men e.g. cardiovascular diseases. There is a huge potential in this underserved market.
Incorporating user insights into the product-building process
To overcome the lack of data and research in femtech, it is essential to find alternative sources for gathering insights. While common recruitment tools like TestingTime and PingPong can be efficient in recruiting participants that represent the target audience suitably, they may sometimes be expensive or limited in reaching specific target audiences.
In my opinion, it's crucial to keep an open mind and explore creative acquisition methods tailored to your project's needs.
For instance, for Nanell, we partnered with local baby stores to recruit expectant mothers. It was a win-win - we got access to our target audience, and the stores got more foot traffic.
Furthermore, we immersed ourselves in various pregnancy communities on social media and online forums - by actively participating in these spaces, we gained invaluable insights into the pain points, needs, and experiences of our target users, informing our product development process.
To ensure that we incorporated perspectives from various industry participants, we partnered with healthcare providers and experts in the field of pregnancy, enabling us to gain a comprehensive understanding of the entire pregnancy journey from a medical standpoint.
When it comes to gaining user insights when building a digital solution, the key is to keep an open mind and not just rely on the usual recruitment tactics. Get creative, make partnerships, join niche online groups - do whatever it takes to connect with your users in authentic ways. After all, the goal is to solve their problems and make life easy for them!
Utilizing the growing opportunities through user-centric femtech solutions
The changing tides and the growing focus on women’s health and needs are good indicators of the growing femtech space, leading to rising opportunities to create impactful solutions that address the unique health needs of women worldwide. Looking ahead, I'm optimistic that we can build solutions that are both useful and viable.
At MVP Factory, we are dedicated to empowering industry players to create impactful solutions that address the unique health needs of women. By leveraging our expertise in digital product development and our commitment to understanding the user, we help companies expand their growth, enable business excellence, and drive meaningful change in the Femtech space.
If you're looking to innovate in Femtech and create products that make a real difference, contact MVP Factory today. You don't need to have it all figured out - that's what we're for!
Reach out to us with your idea or identified problem via our contact form or feel free to connect with me directly on LinkedIn.
For a further read on the health-tech space and what lies ahead, click here to get exclusive access to our resource on the learnings from this year's health-tech conference by Bits&Pretzels.
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About the author:
A seasoned product expert, Laura Becedas Segerström has been a part of MVP Factory since 2018. With projects like Nanell, Deutsche Rotes Kross (DRK) under her belt, she aims to support large-scale enterprises and care providers through their innovation journey in Femtech.
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