Femtech’s huge potential global healthcare market–but needs to connect with payers and employers

January 17, 2020 | by

‘Femtech’ is one of those newish umbrella terms that corrals health tech that enables women to manage their health better. Most of women’s health products cluster in birth control, fertility, pregnancy, and early maternity, with little outside this area or for older women. A number have gotten substantial funding rounds–in Q3, Nurx (birth control, $52M), The Pill Club ($51M, ditto), and Cleo (pregnancy and post-partum coaching, $27.5M). Rock Health

Research2Guidance has dug a little deeper in its new study,
The Global Market Of Digital Women’s Health Solutions 2017-2024  and discovered 3,000 app-based solutions, 151M annual downloads and millions of active users globally. 20 percent of US women in the femtech core demographic use a health app, and R2G projects global market revenue will reach $297 million. Global market expansion is likely to be greatest in countries like India and China

What femtech lacks, according to R2G’s Ralf Jahns, is validation. Those 3,000 companies haven’t quite concentrated on their user case and benefits which could lead to validation and payer/employer reimbursement. And strategies haven’t quite jelled yet.

Pharma company ‘breaks the Internet’ with Kim K, gets FDA testy

August 14, 2015 | by

But it may break them…well, give them a fracture. Or a good hard marketing lesson. Specialty pharma Duchesnay thought it had hit the jackpot with negotiating a promotional spokeswoman endorsement from pregnant celebrity Kim Kardashian of its morning sickness drug Diclegis. The Kardashian Marketing Machine cranked up. Kim (and mom Kris Jenner) took to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter in late July with (scripted) singing of Diclegis’ praises to their tens of millions of followers. The Instagram posts linked to an ‘important safety page’ a/k/a The Disclaimers. That wasn’t near enough for the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) which governs the acceptable marketing of all drugs in the US. On August 7th a tartly worded letter arrived at Duchesnay’s Pennsylvania HQ cited multiple violations of marketing regulations, notably risk information, and told Duchesnay to cease these communications immediately or withdraw the drug, which would be highly unlikely as it is successful. They also were require to provide “corrective messages” to the “violative materials”.

Our takeaway:

* Duchesnay reaped a bounty of free media (see below), on top of the (undoubtedly expensive) Kardashian endorsement. Yes, they did pay the cost of a FDA nastygram and a legal response, and the warning will live on in their file. However, a lot of target-age women now know Diclegis and others know about the relatively obscure Duchesnay.

* This was a calculated marketing risk that tested the boundaries of social media and celebrity endorsement. (more…)