Nutte van Belzen
Physician & Entrepreneur. Chief Medical Officer at CC Diagnostics, where we detect cervical cancer before it appears.
The Netherlands
There is a significant change coming. There are more and more initiatives on female health from ngo’s, government, investor funds and companies. We observe a growth in the amount of self conscious women who get informed and make independent decisions with regard to their health. In diagnostics we see that since the covid19 pandemic sampling yourself and testing yourself has become very normal in society.
In several countries cervical cancer can be performed with self-collected swabs in stead of doctor collected cervical scrapings (Pap smears). This makes screening more women friendly. Our test is compatible with these self-collected samples.
Financing for prevention is a struggle. Most business cases in healthcare are complex. They party who pays usually doesn’t directly benefit from the product or service. More ambition is needed at healthcare payers (government & healthcare insurance) to make financially incentives for disease prevention.
Since the current regulatory frameworks in the EU, it has been hard for start-up companies to bring their novel technologies to market. This has serious consequences for the availability of those innovations. Several companies have already decided to not launch in Europe, but in the USA. This will negatively impact the health of the women in our societies, as the new FemTech innovations often come from these start-ups.
