UK's bold Women's Health Strategy tackles NHS delays and research gaps

The government's new women's health strategy is good policy, but it will not close the health gap. That's where the City comes in, writes Maryann Selfe

The UK government published its renewed Women's Health Strategy this week. Health secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS is a system that 'too often gaslights women, treating their pain as an inconvenience'. He is right. The strategy is a genuine step forward. But for the City, the more important question is not whether it is good policy. It is what that policy signals about where capital should move next.

The headline innovation measure is a £1.5m femtech challenge fund. For context, women's health receives only around five per cent of global R&D funding, despite representing half the population and a disproportionate share of disease burden. That is not a criticism of the government's ambition. It is a reminder of what policy can and cannot do. Public funding creates the conditions for innovation. Private capital scales it into products and businesses. That dynamic is not new. What has changed is that the conditions for private capital to move are now being built deliberately and not left to chance.

The strategy commits to cutting gynaecology waiting lists currently affecting more than 565,000 women and moving back towards the NHS 18-week treatment standard. It integrates menopause into routine NHS health checks. It also mandates that publicly funded research account for sex-based biological differences if it is to qualify for funding.

That last point matters more than it may first appear. It means data infrastructure is now being built, systematically, in a category that has historically lacked it. And markets that lack data are markets that are mispriced.

Women's health has long been framed as a wellness story: niche, values-led and subscale. That framing has kept institutional capital on the sidelines. What the 2026 strategy makes clear is that women's health is not a niche category. It is a core healthcare market that has been structurally undercapitalised and that mispricing is now beginning to correct.

Acquisitions in women's oncology and reproductive health infrastructure are no longer isolated events. They are starting to form a pattern across both US and European markets. Large strategics are recalibrating towards a category they have historically underweighted. The businesses being acquired are increasingly platform assets with clearer commercial pathways. That points to a materially different exit environment from even five years ago.

What the government's strategy does, if it holds, is accelerate the conditions for private capital to deploy with confidence. Regulatory pathways become more predictable. Reimbursement frameworks begin to shift. NHS infrastructure built around women's health hubs creates a procurement pipeline that previously did not exist at scale. The NIHR accelerator for female founders strengthens the talent and IP pipeline. All of it helps to de-risk private investment.

Government action alone will not close the women's health gap. But it has just told you which direction capital needs to move to close it the rest of the way.