Issue # 112 – 🇮🇳 Why Women’s Health in Rural India Can’t Be Overlooked

We recently educated over 300 girls at Akal University, Talwandi Sabo in Bathinda, Punjab. ( rural India ) These young women learned about healthcare literacy, technology, women’s health, and why access to credible health information is absolutely important. 

This mission is deeply personal to me. Growing up in North India, I didn’t have access to basic health information. That experience shaped my vision to change the narrative for girls like me. It’s what inspired me to create FemTech India—a mission dedicated to supporting companies improving women’s health access.

✨ Together with our partners at Flo Health  we’re bringing this vision to life.

Health education for women is often overlooked and underfunded, but we’re here to change that. 

Recent FemTech India research highlights that by 2025, India is expected to have over 1.1 billion internet users, with 61.5% of rural citizens and 57% of women online. The next generation of Indians are digitally connected, informed, and empowered. This is a demographic that can’t be ignored.

The future is here, and it’s in India 🇮🇳

bhealth is revolutionizing workplace well-being with a hybrid solution combining on-site services and a cutting-edge digital platform. Co-founded by visionary entrepreneur Laura Gruber, it focuses on movement, nutrition, and mental health to empower sustainable habits. By merging expert knowledge and innovation, bhealth creates healthier, more engaged teams, setting a new standard for modern workplace wellness. ✨

The deadline to apply is February 15, 2025. Apply here!

• Dentalkart, an online marketplace for dental shopping, has raised Rs 85 crore in its recent funding round led by foreign institutional investors—Malabar Investment and Whiteoak. Malabar Investment has invested Rs 65 crore and Whiteoak put in Rs 20 crore. The company will use the freshly raised funds for operational scalability and to add more subsidiaries.

• Nuvig Therapeutics, a Menlo Park, CA-based privately held biotechnology company developing novel immunomodulatory therapeutics for patients with inflammatory autoimmune diseases, raised $161M in Series B funding.
• Women’s health company Daré Bioscience has recieved a $2.5m grant  to advance the development of its investigational contraceptive DARE-LARC1 through non-clinical proof of principle studies and other IND-enabling work. DARE-LARC1 is a potential new category of long-acting, reversible contraceptive (LARC). If successfully developed and approved, DARE-LARC1 could provide women with a higher level of control over the management of their fertility.
• Laennec AI, a Cardiff, UK-based medical AI company, raised an undisclosed amount in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included SFC Capital and OVC Ventures, along with grant funding from the Welsh Government, Innovate UK, and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
• PocDoc, a Cambridge, UK-based health-tech startup, raised £5M in Pre-A funding.
• ModifyHealth, an Atlanta, GA-based provider of a food-as-medicine platform and medical meals and nutritional counseling, raised $13.5M in Series C funding.

• Could a prenatal blood test designed to find abnormalities in a fetus also detect hidden cancer in the mom-to-be? A new study says yes: Scientists report they discovered cancer in nearly half (48%) of expecting mothers with abnormal results on the blood test, known as a prenatal cell-free DNA test. The cancers included colon, breast, lung, kidney, lymph gland, bile duct and pancreatic cancer, according to research published Dec. 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• The choice may be bittersweet, but the evidence is clear: New research shows that dark chocolate can lower a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes. People who ate at least five servings of dark chocolate a week had a 21% lower risk of the blood sugar disease, researchers found. Further, the more dark chocolate a person ate, the better — each serving provided a 3% additional reduction in diabetes risk.
• Most children and teenagers can shake long COVID within a couple of a years, a new, reassuring study finds. About 70% of children and teens diagnosed with long COVID recover from the disorder within 24 months of their initial infection, researchers reported Dec. 4 in the journal Nature Communications Medicine.
• Fatty liver disease may contribute to fragmented sleep patterns, robbing already sick people of good rest, a new study finds. These folks woke up more often in the night, and then lay awake longer waiting for slumber to reclaim them, researchers found. These patients also reported taking longer to get to sleep. And their sleep remained poor even after researchers gave them tips for better slumber.
• Take the stairs. Tote heavy shopping bags. Walk up that hill. Play tag with a kid or a pet. Weaving these tiny bursts of vigorous physical activity into everyday life can halve a woman’s risk of a heart attack, a new study shows. An average of four daily minutes of this sort of activity appears to protect the heart health of women who don’t otherwise exercise, researchers reported Dec. 3 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
• A new mammography system has been unveiled which has been designed to provide mammography technologists with a suite of tools that balance the demands of diagnostic accuracy and fast-paced workflows to facilitate more patient-centred breast care.
• Taking even high doses of supplementary vitamin D won’t lower an older person’s odds for type 2 diabetes, new research confirms. Vitamin D supplements may have other benefits, but in otherwise healthy folks with sufficient levels of the nutrient, “our findings do not suggest benefits of long-term moderate- or high-dose vitamin D3 supplementation” in warding off type 2 diabetes, the team of Finnish researchers concluded.
• Genetic tests can show which patients with the blood cancer multiple myeloma should respond to targeted therapy, a new study finds.
•  GLP-1 meds are all the rage for weight loss nowadays, but not everyone can safely take the drugs to shed pounds. Invasive weight-loss surgeries can often be a tough sell, too. Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they’ve developed an alternative: A small, implanted gastric balloon that people can inflate or deflate to feel full or not.
• Maintaining muscle might be one way to help prevent dementia, new research suggests. “We found that older adults with smaller skeletal muscles are about 60% more likely to develop dementia when adjusted for other known risk factors,” said study co-senior author Marilyn Albert. She’s a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
• Moving away from meat to plants as a main source of protein will do wonders for your heart, new research finds. The 30-year study found that folks with the highest ratio of plant-based protein to animal-based protein cut their odds of developing cardiovascular disease by 19%. They also had a 27% lower risk for coronary heart disease.
• A new study provides good evidence that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine may be achieving its goal of slashing rates of cervical cancer. “We observed a … 62% drop in cervical cancer deaths over the last decade, likely due to HPV vaccination,” said study senior author Ashish Deshmukh. “We cannot think of any other reason that would have contributed to such a marked decline.”
• For decades, it’s been known that certain older medications women use to control epilepsy seizures can pose risks to a fetus. However, data now suggests that no such risk exists for newer-generation anti-seizure meds.

📳 – Quick Reads: 

• Could High-Fructose Corn Syrup in Foods Help Speed Cancer? The sugar known as fructose could be a kind of rocket fuel for cancer cells, and lowering fructose intake could be one way to fight the disease, new research suggests.
• As ‘Teletherapy’ Takes Hold, Nearly 12% of Young Adults Now Undergo Psychotherapy Access to psychotherapy has increased substantially among Americans, particularly young adults, a new study has found.

See you next Friday, friends 👋
Navneet

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