Female & Maternity Health Care. A Safe Investment?
3 min read
The global FemTech market size is expected to reach $13.1 billion by 2030 (mainly pregnancy monitoring, pelvic care, cervical cancer, mental health, general health & wellness, and breast cancer), Fertility Treatment $21.7 billion by 2025 (mainly services and related products that are used in various applications to treat infertility) and general Female Health reaching $21.7 billion by 2027 (mainly women centric diseases, breast cancer, menopause).
Female Health Care is overall underfunded in research and this can only increase over the years. This on the one hand falls back to historic views that a woman’s body is like a man’s only with ‘some hormonal fluctuations’ during the month. On the other hand, women are more hesitant to participate in trials. Especially when it comes to ‘maternity foetal protectionary ethics in medical research lead to perceived increased liabilities, risk, and costs of including females, especially those of ‘child-bearing potential’ suggests Lavanya Vijayasingham, Research Fellow at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U. of London. Paul Griffin, an associate professor at the University of Queensland and Director of Infectious Diseases at Mater Research, however suggests that ‘under-representation can generally be addressed in later phases of clinical trials, where researchers are aiming to represent as closely as possible the wider population who will be using the new medication or vaccine.’
Looking more at maternity health care there are promising predictions being shown. The 2019 United Nations medium variant population projections shows that we are yet to expect the highest number of births in 2044 globally. Europe wide (27 Member States) the birth rates will decrease slightly in the coming years but will finally also reach a peak by 2044. Countries such as Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden, and the two EFTA countries Norway and Switzerland even show a positive natural change over the entire projection horizon (2019–2100).
Moreover, studies have shown that birth rates may fluctuate but come back or even extend the baseline after financial, metrological or health crises. One study has shown that the birth rates spike 9 months after hurricanes or tropical storms. For health crises (High Mortality Events), the birth rate drops post 9 month, followed by a sharp rise between 18–24 months and thereafter stabilises as before the event.
While more and more fields focus on virtual exchange, consulting and services the maternity market shows an increased demand for in person services. Google Search Trends show that between 2017 and 2022 searches for ‘Midwife near me’ and ‘Gynecologist near me’ have increased drastically. Moreover, holistic approaches such as ‘Acupuncture Pregnancy’ as well as ‘Pregnancy Yoga’ have shown an increased demand. The global mother and child health care market was valued at 504.9 billion USD in 2020 and projected to reach 1,795.9 billion USD by 2030, states The Allied Market Research paper in June 2021. It not only points out that the rise in interest in developing countries concerning maternal and child health care is a major factor, but ‘willingness among parents to seek the opinions of super-specialists drive growth of the mother and child healthcare market’. Especially the demand for the postnatal service sector is projected to triple.
After recent studies it is said that the female and maternity market is a safe and long term investment. Birth rates will periodically fluctuate due to the crisis, but rebound after the event. Especially as the UN predicts the highest ever counted birth rate globally in 2044, investing in the maternity sector will be a positive long term investment.