Vira Health gets $12M to dial up menopause support –

▤ Summary

Over what has generally been a boom decade for digital health, we’ve also seen the rise of femtech as a distinct category — and raised awareness has increased the volume of funding to female-led startups that are tackling issues which exclusively affect women. That said, as the product evolves — notably as Stella expands from dishing out purely information-based support into becoming a telehealth platform which may be involved in issuing prescriptions for pharmaceuticals or being able to provide a service like fitting a Mirena coil — the nature of the interventions are set to change. And if they say they’re not feeling better then we need to do something.” So while she says the startup is not in a position to quantify exactly how much of the benefit users report from engaging with its app-based programs is — or could be — linked to a placebo effect, ultimately if women are finding the targeted support helps them to navigate a challenging period of life change does it really matter how or why it’s working for them? Winding back to the beginning of Vira’s journey, she says the idea for the business began with a personal urge to do something to address the lack of women in senior leadership positions — having seen little progress on this very visible problem over a long career at McKinsey and also working for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her co-founder, Dr. Rebecca Love, is a chronic disease epidemiologist and an expert in behavior change — bringing the dedicated medical expertise needed to credibly underpin a recasting of lifestyle change-based therapeutics in digital form.

$ Funding

▦ Linked Companies

Big Health

$10M to $25M