AI and Digital in Women's Health

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Pharma digital partnerships in women's health are underrepresented. It features less often than other therapy areas, and where it does appear the activity tends to narrowly track drug companies' existing therapy areas and drug portfolios rather than women's health as a broader category. Encouragingly, though, pharma is starting to look beyond its tightly defined portfolios through a growing set of women's health accelerators.

Breast cancer

A lot is happening in this important area, which is clearly a good thing but the narrow focus does mean other women's therapy areas get missed.

Digital tools are developing quickly. AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo partnered with Mika Health on UNITE, an AI-powered digital therapeutic for women in breast cancer treatment offering psychological support, medication tracking and personalised care, with promising early reductions in depression and fatigue. Novartis and Dawn Health partnered to offer digital support through Cora BC, a breast cancer app for symptom tracking, adherence and communication with the care team. It launched in Germany first but with plans to go global.

Screening and diagnostics is the other key focus. AstraZeneca and Owkin teamed up on AI BRCA-mutation prescreening from pathology slides to widen access to genetic testing, while Novartis and Viz.ai are using AI to speed diagnosis and treatment in breast cancer. And AstraZeneca and Roche Diagnostics are working across nine Asian markets to embed AI-powered pathology in breast and lung cancer into routine practice.

Fertility & IVF

Fertility is a significant focus for pharma, and arguably an even bigger opportunity. Merck KGaA, through its venture arm M Ventures, has backed the Future Fertility AI platform over several years. It uses AI to predict the viability of cryopreserved eggs, trained on more than 650,000 oocyte, or immature egg, images across 300-plus clinics, with a Series A closing in 2026. Bayer and Impli have teamed up on an implantable biosensor for real-time hormone monitoring, aiming to improve fertility treatment and reduce the blood draws IVF normally requires, with the potential to flag complications such as OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a potentially serious over-response to fertility stimulation).

Equity, access & prevention

There are some genuinely positive developments here, concentrated in emerging markets, which is also where the need is greatest. Last month MSD collaborated with Nivi on an AI-powered conversational platform for HPV awareness and cervical-cancer prevention across India, Indonesia and Thailand, offering risk assessment, local-language answers and referral support over WhatsApp. It carries clear commercial relevance too, tied to MSD's HPV vaccine franchise.

Bayer is active on two fronts. Its long-running partnership with Ada Health puts an AI symptom-assessment tool in women's hands for intimate and reproductive health, with more than 430,000 assessments completed to date. Also in India, working with UNFPA, Bayer has deployed an AI-enabled chatbot to widen access to contraception counselling. Elsewhere, Takeda and Health In Her HUE are improving Black women's access to clinical trials through WeConnect, Takeda's digital patient registry, directly addressing the under-representation that has long undermined research.

Digital health acceleration

The range of therapy areas is broadening as pharma partners with, and runs, digital accelerators.

The Organon Women's Health Accelerator is a pharma-run femtech accelerator, now in its third edition and expanded across the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and Ukraine. It backs digital startups in fertility, family planning and wellness, and Organon's related WomenX Collective work with UNFPA includes the AI-powered "NeMa" maternal-health smartbot piloted in India.

Merck KGaA and M Ventures run W Accelerate alongside W Group, now in its third cohort, seeking reproductive and maternal health startups across female infertility, fertility preservation, endometriosis, adenomyosis, PCOS, ovarian insufficiency and preeclampsia. It produces real outcomes rather than just exposure: a past participant, Calla Lily Clinical Care, went on to a strategic collaboration with Merck.

Merck also co-runs the QSTP × Merck FemTech Accelerator in Qatar, which casts the widest net of the three. It backs deep-tech solutions, spanning AI, robotics and materials science, not only in fertility but in cardiovascular disease, autoimmune conditions, mental health and chronic disease in women: precisely the areas most often overlooked. Taken together, these programmes are where pharma explores the whitespace it doesn't yet cover with its own products.

AI in drug discovery

AI in drug discovery is flourishing in terms of investment and beginning to show real output, but women's-health-specific conditions have drawn comparatively little of it. Breast cancer is a partial exception. It attracts substantial AI attention, though mostly on the diagnostic and biomarker side, as above, rather than in designing new molecules. For female-specific conditions such as endometriosis, AI-designed drugs are only now emerging.

Eli Lilly's roughly $40M investment in AI biotech Absci (part of a $100M round) backs ABS-201, an AI-designed antibody being developed first for endometriosis, and also for pattern hair loss in women and men. It isn't alone: ASKA Pharmaceutical has expanded its partnership with Insilico Medicine to apply generative AI to novel targets for endometriosis, uterine fibroids and adenomyosis, three conditions that affect huge numbers of women yet have seen little innovation.

So from a pharma perspective there is quite a lot happening in women's health. It is interesting and appears promising, but remains tempered by its underrepresentation compared with other therapy areas.