It’s 2026; femtech (female technology) is on the rise with hundreds of new products emerging every year. Awareness of the disparities between male and female health is increasing and long-standing unmet needs in women’s health are being acknowledged through scientific advancement and device development. But can we do more to ensure the products being created are user-friendly, accessible and appropriately designed to really improve women’s experience of healthcare?
This article explores some of the challenges we see in women’s health and how human factors and usability engineering can help address them. Written for engineers, designers and project managers working in femtech or medical device development to help deliver the right products with all intended users in mind.
What is femtech?
Femtech refers to technology designed specifically for women’s health – covering areas like menstrual health, fertility, pregnancy, and menopause. It’s a rapidly growing field, but success depends on more than innovation; it requires a systems thinking approach that considers the broader context of gender bias in healthcare.
What are the challenges?
According to the Women’s Health Strategy for England, women, on average, live longer than men but spend more of their lives in poor health. But why is this? One key reason is because medical research has historically focused on male physiology For example, there has been an underrepresentation of women in clinical trials, which has led to gaps in diagnosis and treatment for women. This means 51% of the population face barriers accessing healthcare.
These disparities are not limited to patients. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis examined performance, pain, and tool usability data based on biological sex and anthropometry in traditional laparoscopic surgery. The study found that female surgeons, took 2.6–30.1 seconds longer to perform standardised laparoscopic tasks and reported pain at double the frequency. On average female surgeons tend to have smaller hand size, shorter stature and lower grip strength. Surgeons with a smaller glove size were more likely to need modified (potentially suboptimal) grip techniques to use standard laparoscopic devices. This highlights the broader challenge in healthcare and medical device design: when devices are not designed with all the intended users in mind, whether patients or professionals, usability issues and even health issues can arise.
How can human factors help?
Femtech is getting the long overdue attention that it deserves and there is a growing number of new technologies and products targeting women’s health. There is therefore an opportunity for Human Factors to be a cornerstone in the design process from an early stage, where it can have the greatest impact on the final design.
While femtech addresses specific health needs for women, Human Factors ensures that medical devices are designed with all intended users in mind – women or men. The fundamental principles of HF do not differ based on gender. Rather effective HF practice requires clearly defining the intended user groups for the product, designing the product with their needs in mind and validating the design through testing with all intended user groups.
Ultimately Human factors and usability engineering, when applied effectively, are key to design safer, more inclusive medical devices. For example:
- Inclusive user research: Ensure the proportion of women included in user needs interviews and simulated-use studies is representative of the intended user group. This ensures that your device will serve the greatest proportion of the target population’s requirements possible.
- Inclusive user design: Include an adequate range of anthropometric data when developing design requirements. Overlooking vital user requirements such as anatomy (e.g. height, hand size), strength (e.g. grip), and comorbidities may result in user dissatisfaction or a greater number of use errors leading to ineffective treatment.
- Inclusive device evaluation: Include representative numbers of women in your design feedback and simulated-use device evaluations. Under-representing women early could lead to failures in regulatory-required HF validation studies or, worse, post-market complaints leading to expensive recalls.
These principles are embedded in international standards like IEC 62366-1:2015+A1:2020, and the FDA’s guidance on Applying Human Factors and Usability Engineering to Medical Devices. These human factors documents recommend that manufacturers:
- Consider human factors early in the design process
- Identify all intended users, uses, and use environments
- Conduct human factors evaluations with representative users, uses and use environments to demonstrate safe and effective use
Both documents stress that usability engineering is not optional – it’s a regulatory expectation.
What needs to change?
To truly address medical bias, we need to:
- Review current products to ensure they satisfy the whole intended user population
- Ensure women are adequately represented in user research and design evaluations
- Design devices with comprehensive human factors principles from the start
The advances in femtech are a promising step forward, but it must be backed by inclusive design, robust usability testing, and a commitment to equity. The same applies to any medical product where women may not be the sole target audience but are part of the intended user group.
Need help applying human factors to your women’s health product? We offer practical guidance, training, and support to effectively embed usability into your design process. Get in touch to learn more.
Written by Barbara Moles, Human Factors Consultant and Lisa Forde, Senior Human Factors Consultant.