Recommendation 18

The Government should set out in the renewed Women’s Health Strategy a rigorous approach to tackling the risks from ineffective, unsafe and exploitative for-profit FemTech apps. To combat demand for these apps the Government must increase resourcing of the NHS’s Innovation, Research and Life Sciences team, to drive forward NHS provision of digital tools. The strategy should set out clear priorities for the development of women’s digital health functionality, which we believe should include accurate and effective period trackers, grounded in diverse data, and accessible to girls and women via the NHS app. The strategy should set out a timeline to implementation of this functionality. (Recommendation, Paragraph 78) Workforce training; empathy; pain management