AI provides surgeons with a second pair of eyes

A world-first operation at University College London Hospitals has demonstrated how artificial intelligence could support surgeons during some of the NHS’s most complex procedures.

Rhys Hibbert, a 48-year-old father of two from Bedfordshire, underwent surgery to remove an 11mm non-cancerous tumour from his pituitary gland after it began affecting his vision.

The tumour was located close to the carotid arteries and optic nerves, making surgery particularly delicate. During the procedure, an AI system analysed the live video feed from the operation, tracked surgical instruments and highlighted where important vessels and nerves were likely to be located.

Rather than replacing clinical judgement, the technology acted as an additional source of information for the surgical team, with surgeons remaining in control throughout the operation.

Professor Hani Marcus, consultant neurosurgeon at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and Professor of Neurosurgery at UCL, described the technology as an expert “second pair of eyes”.

The system had been trained and evaluated using hundreds of videos of previous pituitary tumour operations, giving it exposure to more procedures than an individual surgeon is likely to perform during much of their career.

For Hibbert, the impact was immediate. After experiencing worsening peripheral vision before the operation, he reported a dramatic improvement following surgery and said the treatment had “given me my life back”.

Government backs AI with safeguards

The development comes as ministers increasingly look to artificial intelligence, digital technology and data to improve NHS productivity and patient outcomes.

Health Innovation Minister James Frith MP welcomed the breakthrough and said he was pleased Hibbert had received “life-changing surgery” through government-funded research.

He added:

“AI needs proper safeguards and we will always ensure that safety is taken seriously.

“But we will also ensure we benefit from the opportunities it brings.”

The fuller announcement from UCLH also makes clear the Government sees the procedure as an example of how AI could contribute to faster and more effective NHS care, provided innovation is accompanied by appropriate safeguards.

The research has been funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research and Google, following years of laboratory development.

Professor Mike Lewis, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Scientific Director for Innovation, said the development demonstrated the potential for advanced AI to support surgeons and improve patient care. He also linked the research to the Government’s wider ambition to use technology and innovation as part of its long-term plans for the health service.

AI-assisted brain surgery: the next challenge is adoption

The significance of the operation extends beyond one procedure.

The NHS is home to world-leading clinicians, researchers and technology companies, but one of the longstanding challenges for policymakers is turning successful research and individual pilots into technologies that can be adopted safely and consistently throughout the health service.

AI-assisted surgery demonstrates how clinicians and patients understand the role being played by an AI system. Yet, several questions remain – including who remains accountable for decisions? How should healthcare data be used to develop and evaluate new technologies? What standards should apply to interoperability and cybersecurity? How can new systems be introduced without adding additional complexity to already stretched frontline services?

Perhaps most importantly, how does the NHS move from proving that an innovation works to making it available to patients at scale?

A spokesperson for UKAI said:

“Rhys’ surgery is a powerful example of AI being used not to replace clinical expertise, but to give highly skilled professionals better information at the moment they need it.

“The opportunity now is to create the conditions in which technologies that demonstrate real improvements in safety, outcomes and productivity can move from research and individual pilots into responsible adoption across the NHS.

“That requires industry, clinicians, patients, regulators and policymakers to work together on issues including evidence, infrastructure, data, interoperability, procurement, and trust.”

These questions are also being examined through the UKAI Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) Working Group, which brings together organisations interested in the development and responsible adoption of AI across healthcare and life sciences.

The group provides an opportunity for innovators and healthcare stakeholders to examine the practical barriers standing between technological capability and real-world implementation, and to contribute evidence on how policy can support safe adoption and scaling.

Welcoming the news as Chair of UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation’s (UKHSLI) AI Working Group, Dr Mark Ratnarajah, Clinical Director, Sword Intelligence said:

“This world-first shows what’s possible when clinical expertise and AI work hand in hand – but the real test for the NHS is turning breakthroughs like this into everyday, trusted care at scale. That’s precisely the challenge we’ll be exploring in the NHS Modernisation Bill’s ‘From Analogue to Digital’ session next month, and it’s the gap our work at Sword Intelligence is focused on closing.”

From Analogue to Digital

The same issues will be at the centre of UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation’s (UKHSLI) NHS Modernisation Bill Programme.

On Monday 14 September, UKHLSI will convene its From Analogue to Digital session in Central London, examining what needs to change if digital technology, data and AI are to become embedded successfully throughout NHS services.

Chaired by Dr Mark Ratnarajah, with NHS Digital Academy among those confirmed to contribute, the session will examine privacy and consent, cybersecurity, interoperability, accountability and public trust.

It will also consider a question that can sometimes be overlooked in debates about health technology: whether new digital systems actually work for frontline professionals and patients across primary, secondary, community and social care.

The world-first operation at UCLH demonstrates what can become possible when clinical expertise, research and advanced technology come together.

The challenge for the next phase of NHS modernisation is ensuring breakthroughs such as this do not remain isolated examples of innovation, but help inform a health service capable of identifying, evaluating and adopting technologies that can improve care at scale.

To find out more about the UKAI Healthcare and Life Sciences working group, please contact benmcdermott@ukai.co and to find out more about the UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) AI Working Group, please contact bmcdermott@ukhlsi.co.uk

Athena Lamnisos

Chief Executive, The Eve Appeal

With cervical cancer elimination within reach, this is the time to turbo charge progress and keep the pressure on, writes Chief Executive of The Eve Appeal, Athena Lamnisos. This week, the Government announced the rollout of at-home HPV self-testing kits for women and people with a cervix who have not attended cervical screening following an invitation.

Eliminating cervical cancer isn’t just a grand ambition – it’s an achievable reality. Research, investment in understanding cancer development and risk factors, vaccines and tests, including HPV Testing, that can be scaled and used at the right time, with the right people, have brought us to this amazing point. For the first time, we have the tools to eliminate a type of cancer. How brilliant would that be? Now we need to make sure that everyone has equitable access to use them.

Science gave us the critical information that the vast majority of cervical cancers develop because of a very commonly occurring virus – Human Papillomavirus (HPV). It has many strains, and most people’s immune systems will clear it from their bodies within two years. Around 80% of us will come into contact with it at some point during our lives, and for some of us, it sticks around and causes cell changes that can result in cancer developing. The high-risk strains of HPV (the ones which can lead to the development of cancer) can cause some head and neck cancers, anal, cervical, vulval, vaginal and penile cancer.

Vaccination and screening are essential to eliminating cervical cancer

We can only eliminate cervical cancer by improving uptake of our successful NHS programmes: HPV vaccination and cervical screening. The HPV vaccine is delivered through the schools’ vaccination programme and is available to all Year 8s (and S2s in Scotland). It’s a gender-neutral vaccination (HPV doesn’t discriminate!) and it’s vital that parents and carers heading back to school in September sign the consent letter which might be lurking in their email inbox or at the bottom of their child’s rucksack. Evidence from people vaccinated against HPV in England, who are now in their early 30s, shows that no cases of cervical cancer have been diagnosed within the group studied.

Vaccination offers incredible protection, but we still need eligible women and people with a cervix aged 24 – 64 to attend cervical screening when they’re invited. The HPV vaccine doesn’t cover all strains of high-risk HPV, and there are millions out there who are too old to have been offered the HPV vaccination at school. The NHS Cervical Screening Programme is extremely effective at preventing cervical cancers and it is estimated it saved 5,000 lives a year in England.

How at-home HPV testing could overcome barriers to cervical screening

This week, a new option is being rolled out, which offers an HPV self-testing kit to women and people with a cervix who have not attended cervical screening following an invitation. This is brilliant news because we know from the patients we speak to at The Eve Appeal (the UK’s leading gynaecological cancers charity) that there are many reasons why those eligible for cervical screening don’t attend.

Challenges around the type of test it is, limited awareness around HPV and its role in cancer development, as well as practical barriers such as problems around booking and attending an appointment, stop many from going. Some people face particular barriers to cervical screening, making them less likely to attend and thereby exacerbating existing health inequalities.

Cervical screening uptake rates have been falling in England and are still below the 70% target needed to reach elimination by 2040. Self-testing, which can be done at home, will be a step change for many. It will enable people who don’t attend cervical screening to find out if they have high-risk HPV with a less invasive test, in the privacy of their own home.

They will be sent a kit in the post, with clear instructions and a pre-paid envelope for posting the sample back. If someone finds out they have high-risk HPV, they will then need to go for a cervical screening test so their cervical cells can be checked for changes, which need monitoring or treating to prevent them from progressing to cervical cancer.

HPV self-testing won’t replace cervical screening, which is still the gold standard test for preventing cervical cancer, but it will help many by presenting another option to take the first step of the screening pathway. At Eve, we welcome this new option within the NHS screening programme and its focus on supporting the people that need it most. Addressing the existing health inequalities through new service developments is absolutely vital.

There’s a lot of talk about the need for innovation in health and in the NHS. Global brands adjust their services and models of delivery swiftly and seem to embrace change. In health, things seem to take much longer. That’s often for a very good reason. Innovating is one thing, ensuring that new services are equitable and reach those who need them most and benefit the biggest population takes time. With the introduction of self-testing this week, the NHS has demonstrated that it can embrace innovation and deliver more and better options for those who face the biggest barriers to looking after their health.

Having more flexible options, tailored information and appropriate support is important in helping people attend cancer screening when invited. HPV self-testing is not a replacement for clinician-taken cervical screening. Although it will help many people, it will not overcome every barrier. We will continue to support people attending screening, help make appointments more comfortable and accessible, and press for further innovation to improve uptake. We have a national goal and a plan to achieve it. Now we must maintain the momentum and prevent every case of cervical cancer that we can.

Intensive care admissions fall by half

The number of babies admitted to intensive care with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) has fallen sharply following the introduction of the NHS maternal vaccination programme, according to new figures from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

Data published on 13 August shows that across the 20 NHS trusts participating in UKHSA’s surveillance programme, 63 infants under six months were admitted to intensive care or higher dependency units with confirmed RSV chest infections during the 2025–26 winter.

That compares with 131 admissions across the same trusts during the previous winter – a reduction of around 50 per cent.

The figures provide the first indication of the impact of a full year of the maternal RSV vaccination programme, which began in September 2024.

The vaccine is routinely offered from 28 weeks of pregnancy, allowing antibodies generated by the mother to pass through the placenta and provide protection to the baby during the first months of life, when RSV can present the greatest risk.

UKHSA has previously reported that maternal vaccination can provide more than 80 per cent protection against hospital admission for newborn babies.

Uptake remains at around 60 per cent

Despite the positive results, the latest figures also highlight the number of pregnant women who are still not receiving the vaccine.

Between March 2025 and February 2026, 61.7 per cent of women giving birth had received an RSV vaccination.

UKHSA has warned that this means many thousands of babies remain at risk of an infection which can cause severe bronchiolitis, breathing difficulties and, in the most serious cases, require intensive care.

The reduction is also being seen elsewhere in the health system. Peak weekly A&E attendances for infant bronchiolitis were lower during the latest RSV season, while the peak itself was shorter than in previous winters.

Dr Conall Watson, Immunisation Consultant at UKHSA, said the figures demonstrated that the vaccine was already preventing serious illness, while urging pregnant women who have not yet been vaccinated to contact their maternity service or GP.

Health and Social Care Secretary Yvette Cooper said maternity and child health must be “at the heart of our NHS”, adding that the Government wanted to see the vaccine effectively rolled out across the country.

The next challenge: reaching the remaining 40 per cent

For policymakers, the figures create a new question. If the programme is already delivering significant reductions in serious illness at current uptake levels, how much further could those benefits be extended by reaching the women and communities that the existing system is not reaching?

Curia has previously developed proposals for a Vaccination Infant and Maternity Scale Up Programme, designed around targeted interventions in communities with lower vaccine uptake.

The proposed approach would work with NHS trusts, integrated care systems, local authorities, GP surgeries, maternity services, child health clinics and family hubs to identify barriers to vaccination and test locally tailored approaches. It also proposed using community engagement, multilingual information and frontline healthcare professionals to address cultural, socio-economic and practical barriers to uptake.

Rather than relying solely on a national communications campaign, the programme envisaged working directly with local health systems to understand why particular groups were not taking up vaccination and developing interventions around those findings.

Caroline Temmink, NHS director of vaccinations, said:

“Today’s analysis is fantastic news, thanks to NHS staff dozens of new-borns have potentially avoided being admitted to intensive care after their mother received her RSV jab during pregnancy – the vaccine is highly effective at protecting babies from experiencing RSV related complications in the first few months of their life.

“Although RSV spreads most in winter, this virus poses a risk all year round, so if you’re more than 28 weeks pregnant, we would encourage you to speak with your local maternity service or GP practice to find out how you and your newborn can get protected.”

From National Success to Targeted Local Action

Speaking to Politics UK following the publication of the latest UKHSA figures, policy institute Curia’s Chief Executive Ben Howlett welcomed the impact of the vaccination programme but argued that the remaining uptake gap now requires greater attention.

“The halving of intensive care admissions demonstrates just how effective the maternal RSV vaccination programme can be, and the Government and NHS should rightly be encouraged by these results. But with uptake still only around 60 per cent, there remains a significant opportunity to protect many more babies.

“The next challenge is ensuring that the programme reaches those communities where uptake remains lowest. Curia has already developed a targeted model bringing together local health systems, maternity services, GPs, and community organisations to understand the barriers to vaccination and deliver interventions that work for individual communities.

“We have written to the former Secretary of State offering to work with government on this and have yet to receive a response. In light of today’s evidence, we would urge the Department of Health and Social Care and UKHSA to work with us to explore how targeted local interventions could help close the remaining uptake gap and ensure the benefits of this programme are felt by families in every part of the country.”

Working with UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI)’s member, Essential Parent, Curia’s previous model proposed measuring changes in vaccination rates against baseline data alongside parent engagement, healthcare professional participation and wider public health outcomes, allowing successful approaches to be identified before wider rollout.

From national success to targeted delivery

The latest results represent a significant public health success. Fewer babies requiring intensive care means fewer families experiencing severe illness and potentially less pressure on NHS services during the winter months.

But the figures also underline the importance of implementation.

With close to four in ten women giving birth still not vaccinated against RSV, the next stage of the programme may increasingly be about understanding the reasons behind that variation – whether they relate to awareness, access, confidence, language, local service design or engagement with healthcare services.

The evidence published by UKHSA suggests the intervention itself works. The policy challenge now is ensuring that protection reaches more of the families who could benefit from it.

Find out more

To find out more about Curia’s work on increasing the vaccine uptake rate and work of UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) to bring new innovators into the healthcare system, please contact enquiries@ukhlsi.co.uk or team@curiauk.com

The proposed UK Scale-up Fund is intended to address one of the most persistent weaknesses in Britain’s innovation economy: the country has a strong record of creating promising companies but often lacks the domestic capital needed to help them expand internationally.

Under the plans, pension providers would pool investment through a new vehicle targeting successful UK businesses seeking to commercialise technologies, increase production and create skilled jobs. The fund would also seek to generate competitive long-term returns for pension schemes and their members.

The British Business Bank is working with the pension providers on the fund’s development and intends to invest alongside the consortium. The Office for Investment is also supporting the work, while a market engagement process to identify a potential fund manager is expected to begin shortly.

Closing Britain’s scale-up funding gap

The announcement reflects growing concern that British businesses frequently depend on overseas investors once they reach the scale-up stage.

Although the UK has one of the world’s largest venture capital markets, ministers argue that too few British pension savings are invested in the domestic companies capable of producing significant long-term growth.

Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey acknowledged this challenge directly, arguing that Britain creates successful companies but does not do enough to grow them using British capital or retain the profits they generate.

The Chancellor said the Government wanted the UK to become “the best place in the world both to start and scale a business”, with investment, employment and skills distributed across every region. He described the proposed £1 billion tech fund as an opportunity to direct more British money into British scale-ups while improving potential returns for pension savers.

That distinction will be central to the fund’s credibility. Pension schemes are not public development agencies and remain responsible for protecting the interests of their members. The Government’s argument is therefore not simply that pension capital should support national economic priorities, but that successful British scale-ups could represent attractive commercial investments in their own right.

Burnham links pension investment with reindustrialisation

Prime Minister Andy Burnham presented the initiative as a “vote of confidence in British business, British talent and British ambition”.

His comments placed the fund firmly within the Government’s wider economic programme, particularly its emphasis on reindustrialisation and creating high-value employment outside the established investment centres of London and the South East.

Burnham said the tech fund could help deliver “good growth in every postcode” by connecting pension investment with the entrepreneurs and technologies capable of creating future industries. He argued that the model could produce stronger returns for savers while giving more British businesses a reason to start, expand and remain in the UK.

The Government will, however, need to demonstrate that the tech fund can genuinely reach innovative companies across the country. Regional economic benefits will depend not only on the location of the businesses receiving investment but also on whether that capital supports local supply chains, research partnerships and skilled employment.

Government wants successful companies to remain British

Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the UK’s existing strengths in science and technology needed to be matched by a stronger environment for commercial growth.

He described the pension providers’ involvement as an important expression of confidence in UK innovation, arguing that institutional investment could help more promising businesses “start, scale and succeed” domestically.

Reynolds also said pension savers should be able to share in the success of the companies their capital helps to build. His message that Britain is “open for business, open to investment” reflects the Government’s wider attempt to position science, technology and innovation at the centre of its economic strategy.

The proposed tech fund would not guarantee that every supported business remains headquartered or owned in Britain. However, access to larger pools of domestic capital could reduce the pressure on founders to seek overseas funding or sell their businesses earlier than planned.

Pension providers emphasise commercial returns

The organisations involved have consistently presented the proposal as an investment opportunity rather than a concession to government policy.

Andy Bord, Chief Executive Officer of Railpen, said the primary responsibility remained delivering strong long-term outcomes for scheme members. However, he argued that the UK’s innovation economy offered a potentially compelling destination for “disciplined, patient capital”.

Bord said the tech fund could help ambitious companies with global potential build their futures in the UK, while providing attractive returns and contributing to a stronger economy for pension members to retire into. Railpen has also played a role in shaping the proposed initiative.

That emphasis on patient capital is significant. Science and technology businesses, particularly those developing advanced manufacturing, life sciences or infrastructure technologies, can require substantial investment over long periods before generating reliable commercial returns.

Traditional investment structures may not always offer the time or scale required to support that development.

Nest sees alignment between investment and growth

Ian Cornelius, Chief Executive Officer of Nest, similarly argued that pension capital could support economic growth without compromising its obligations to savers.

Nest invests on behalf of more than 14 million members, giving its participation considerable weight. Cornelius said the UK had a strong history of nurturing world-leading science and technology companies, but successful businesses still needed access to funding as they expanded.

He said there could be a “strong alignment” between securing attractive long-term results for pension members and supporting innovation, employment and economic growth.

The scale of Nest’s membership also raises questions about how the risks and potential benefits of investing in growth companies will be communicated to savers. Scale-up investment can deliver substantial returns, but it can also be less liquid and more uncertain than established public markets.

Collaboration intended to create investment at scale

The proposed vehicle is based on the principle that pension institutions can access opportunities collectively that may be difficult to pursue individually.

Chris Rule, Chief Executive Officer of Local Pensions Partnership Investments, said Britain was already a global centre for innovation and entrepreneurship, but that many growing companies remained unable to obtain the funding required to reach their potential.

He said the cross-industry initiative could allow pension funds to generate sustainable long-term returns while backing the next generation of British companies.

Rule argued that collaboration would be central to the fund’s prospects, drawing on the experience of the Local Government Pension Scheme, where institutions have increasingly combined resources to achieve greater scale and improve investment outcomes.

Pooling capital could also help pension investors undertake the specialist due diligence needed to assess science and technology businesses, where commercial prospects may depend on complex intellectual property, regulation and emerging markets.

Welcoming the announcement, Chief Executive of UKAI, Tim Flagg said “UKAI welcomes the announcement of a new UK Scale-up Fund. Access to scale-up funding has been one of the biggest barriers holding back British tech, and unlocking pension capital at this scale is exactly what’s needed to encourage more UK companies to stay, grow and build sovereign capability here at home.

“This didn’t happen overnight. It reflects years of work by many people across government, industry and the pension sector, and they deserve real credit for getting it done.

“The next step now is public sector reform. If we want taxpayer money to actively support the growth of Britain’s AI businesses, the Government needs to make it far easier for the public sector to buy British. Capital unlocks growth, but procurement is what turns that growth into sovereign capability.”

Local government pensions could support domestic growth

Richard Law-Deeks, Chief Executive Officer of LGPS Central, said the fund could provide a practical route for long-term Local Government Pension Scheme capital to support British entrepreneurs and growing companies.

He stressed that every investment decision must begin with the responsibility to deliver strong long-term outcomes for partner funds and scheme members.

However, Law-Deeks said the proposed structure could bring institutional investors together at sufficient scale and give them access to opportunities that might be difficult to secure independently.

Rachel Elwell, Chief Executive Officer of Border to Coast, also pointed to the role pension capital could play in backing high-quality UK investments. She said the organisation was proud to participate in an initiative designed to help more “home-grown innovative businesses” expand.

Elwell argued that combining investment scale with collaboration, discipline and a strong pipeline of credible opportunities could benefit savers while helping British companies compete internationally.

The quality of that investment pipeline will be decisive. A tech fund of more than £1 billion will need access to a sufficiently large group of companies capable of absorbing substantial investment without lowering commercial standards.

British Business Bank seeks a stronger funding ecosystem with tech fund

The British Business Bank’s involvement is intended to provide additional investment expertise and connect the tech fund with the wider market for growth capital.

Leandros Kalisperas, Chief Investment Officer at the British Business Bank, described the announcement as an important milestone in strengthening the UK’s “capital formation ecosystem”.

He said bringing pension investment together with ambitious growth companies could create a “virtuous cycle”, supporting innovation, attracting further private capital and generating long-term value for pension savers.

The British Business Bank’s intention to invest alongside the pension consortium may also help attract additional institutions by demonstrating public backing for the vehicle. However, the final amount, structure and allocation of any government-supported investment have not yet been confirmed.

Jo Bekis, Chief Executive of UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) and Digital 4 Health UK (part of the Digital 4 Health Worldwide) who works closely with the British Business Bank said:

“This announcement represents one of the most exciting opportunities we have seen in recent years to connect long-term pension investment with the extraordinary innovation emerging across the UK. The concept of unlocking pension capital to support high-growth science, technology, and health businesses has been a recurring theme in discussions we have held with innovators, investors and policymakers, including roundtable conversations with Sir Chris Bryant earlier this year during a exploration visit to Madrid and the British embassy Madrid and at open innovation days where innovators pitched for investment.

“For many of the pioneering companies we work alongside, access to scale-up capital has often been the missing piece of the puzzle. The proposed UK Scale-up Fund has the potential not only to generate strong returns for pension savers but also to accelerate the commercialisation of British innovation, create skilled jobs and ensure that more world-class companies can start, scale and succeed here in the UK.”

Ambition must now be converted into investment

The announcement represents an agreement to explore the creation of the UK Scale-up Tech Fund, rather than confirmation that £1 billion has already been committed or invested.

Important details remain unresolved, including the identity of the fund manager, its investment criteria, sectoral priorities, fee structure and expected launch date.

The consortium will also have to balance several potentially competing objectives: generating returns for pension members, investing in innovative UK companies, supporting regional growth and demonstrating that commercial decisions are protected from political interference.

Nevertheless, the involvement of major pension providers, the British Business Bank and the Office for Investment means the proposal has substantial institutional support.

Should the tech fund proceed, its success will be judged not by the size of its initial announcement but by whether it can help promising British companies become global businesses without requiring them to leave the UK to find the investment they need.

Find out more

To find out more about UKAI visit: www.ukai.co and to find out more about UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) visit: www.ukhlsi.co.uk

(Photo: Lauren Hurley/No 10 Downing Street)

Catherine Thompson

Former Associate Director of Clinical Policy, Strategy and IFR, West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership (NHS ICB

Women’s health services have too often been organised around fragmented pathways, leaving women to navigate a system that does not reflect the full reality of their lives. Drawing on insights from the North of England Accelerating Innovation in the NHS Women’s Health Sprint, Catherine Thompson argues in the foreword of the report that the NHS already has examples of what works. The priority now is to move beyond pilots and embed community-based, life-course women’s health services as standard provision across the system. (Photo: Catherine Thompson presenting the sprint findings to the group in Barnsley)

Women’s health services do not need another exercise in describing what is wrong. The problems are well understood. Too many women still face fragmented care, long waits, inconsistent access, and a system that too often expects them to advocate for themselves before support is offered.

The more urgent question is whether the NHS is prepared to act on what it already knows.

That is the key message from Catherine Thompson’s foreword to Reframing Women’s Health: From Fragmentation To System Reform. Drawing on the North of England Accelerating Innovation in the NHS Women’s Health Sprint in Barnsley, Thompson makes the case that the challenge is no longer one of diagnosis, but delivery.

Across West Yorkshire and beyond, the system has already seen what better women’s health provision can look like. Community-based services, integrated pathways, and more holistic models of care are not abstract ideas. They exist and operate effectively in many parts of the country. They are already improving access, reducing pressure on secondary care, and giving women a clearer route to the support they need.

But there is a postcode lottery in service delivery – these examples remain too dependent on local leadership, local conditions, and local capacity. The result is a mixed picture, where pockets of excellence sit alongside areas where provision remains underdeveloped. For women, that means access to good care can still depend too heavily on where they live.

The gap in the middle

At the heart of the problem is a model of care that has not kept pace with need. Women’s health services are still too often organised around a binary structure: general practice on one side, secondary care on the other.

That leaves too little space in between.

Yet it is precisely this middle layer where much of the opportunity lies. It is where earlier intervention can happen. It is where continuity of care can be built. It is where women can receive support before conditions worsen, before hospital referral becomes necessary, and before avoidable distress becomes normalised.

For many women, the current system does not provide that route. Instead, they are passed between services, asked to repeat their story, or left waiting for care that could have been delivered sooner in a more joined-up community setting.

This is not just inefficient. It is unfair.

Women’s health is not only a clinical issue

One of the strongest arguments in Thompson’s foreword is that women’s health must be understood in its wider social context. The way women experience health is shaped not only by clinical symptoms, but by culture, stigma, trust, work, family responsibilities, and expectations about what is considered “normal”.

“The challenge is not identifying what works, it is all about implementing it consistently.” Catherine Thompson

For too long, women’s health has been reduced to a set of individual services or conditions. That approach misses the broader life-course reality: adolescence, menstrual health, reproductive health, pregnancy, menopause, later life, and the long-term impact of prevention or its absence.

Without a clear shared narrative of what good women’s health looks like, women themselves may not know when something is wrong or what support should be available. The system, in turn, struggles to design services around women’s lives rather than around institutional boundaries.

This is why awareness and empowerment are not optional extras – Thompson argues they are core parts of reform.

Women need clear, trusted information. Services need to be easier to access. Professionals need the confidence and structures to respond properly. And the system needs to stop treating women’s ability to self-advocate as a substitute for good design.

The answer is implementation

The Sprint highlighted two immediate priorities

1. Empowerment and awareness. There remains significant unmet need, with many women unaware of what support should be available to them. Better education, clearer communication and stronger public confidence are essential if women are to engage with their health earlier and more effectively.
2. Development of community-based services. Crucially, this is not primarily a workforce skills problem. The capability already exists across the NHS and wider system. The problem is that it is not organised cohesively enough.

Bringing that capability together into accessible, community-based models of care offers one of the clearest opportunities for improvement. It would support earlier intervention, reduce unnecessary referrals, improve patient experience and help shift women’s health from reactive care to prevention.

But this cannot be left to isolated pilots. The system has tested many of these approaches already, with significant data available. It was demonstrated at the sprint that women’s health services can work, the question is whether commissioning, funding, and national expectations will now support them to work everywhere.

From optional innovation to standard provision

The main report, Reframing Women’s Health: From Fragmentation To System Reform, argues that women’s health reform must move beyond fragmented services and towards a coherent, life-course model of care. Thompson’s foreword speaks directly to that central theme.

Local insight has shown what is possible. Women’s Health Hubs and community-based models demonstrate how care can be brought closer to women, organised around need, and delivered in a way that feels more accessible and joined up.

The task now is to make that the norm.

As was demonstrated in many places across West Yorkshire, that will require clear direction, appropriate resourcing, and stronger alignment between national policy, regional planning and local delivery. It will also require a shift in mindset: women’s health cannot be treated as a specialist side issue or a discretionary area of innovation. It must be seen as a core part of a modern health system.

The future direction is achievable. In many places, it has already been demonstrated.

What is needed now is the will to move from insight to implementation, from pilots to scale, and from optional innovation to standard provision.

To find out more about the UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation Women’s Health Working Group, contact chair Paula.Sherriff@curiauk.com

That Curia report helped frame women’s health as a national growth and workforce issue, rather than a narrow clinical concern. It showed how unmanaged menopause symptoms, untreated gynaecological conditions, poor access to contraception, and long waits for care can push women out of work, reduce hours, increase pressure on families, and add avoidable demand to the NHS. 

“Women’s health must now be understood as both a clinical priority and as socio economic infrastructure.” 

Curia’s latest report commissioned by membership body for healthcare and life sciences innovators, UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI), Reframing Women’s Health: From Fragmentation To System Reform, takes the argument into its next phase. 

From the Government’s publication of their renewed strategy, it is clear they understand that women’s health matters. Curia argues that it is now down to the NHS and government to make care work properly in practice. 

The report follows the North of England Accelerating NHS Innovation Summit Women’s Health Sprint in Barnsley, which brought together NHS leaders, regional mayors, local authorities, industry, academia, and the third sector. The Sprint was co facilitated by former Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, and Curia Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group Advisory Board member, Paula Sherriff, and then Associate Director for Clinical Policy, Strategy and Individual Funding Requests at West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, Catherine Thompson. Catherine has since moved on from the role. 

What emerges is a practical and at times uncomfortable diagnosis of the problem. Women’s health services are still too fragmented, too dependent on where someone lives, and too often shaped around the convenience of existing structures rather than the realities of women’s lives. 

A System Women Have to Navigate 

The report describes a health system still built around a narrow route into care. On one side, general practice, and hospital-based specialist services on the other. For many women, that means trying to get support through an overstretched GP system, waiting for a referral, then joining a queue for secondary care. 

The missing piece is the space in between. 

Many women’s health needs do not sit neatly in one part of the system. Heavy menstrual bleeding, menopause symptoms, pelvic pain, contraception, incontinence, fertility concerns, mental health, and long-term conditions often cut across primary care, sexual and reproductive health, community services, and gynaecology. 

Yet those services are frequently commissioned, funded, and measured separately. The result is familiar to too many women – repeat appointments, unclear referral routes, long waits, inconsistent advice, and a feeling of having to push the system at every stage. 

“This fragmentation is not incidental. It is designed into the system.” 

This is why the report argues that fragmentation is designed into the current model. It is not just a question of pressure or demand. The architecture itself makes joined up care harder than it needs to be. 

Strategy Is Welcome. Delivery Will Decide Its Value 

The report lands alongside the renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England, which it welcomes as an important step forward. The strategy’s focus on women’s voices, single points of access, redesigned pathways, women’s health hubs, FemTech, menstrual health education and priority conditions such as endometriosis, fibroids, and menopause reflects much of the agenda Curia has been calling for. 

That alignment matters. It suggests the national conversation has moved on from whether women’s health needs greater attention to how services should be redesigned. 

But the report is also clear that national strategy will mean little without delivery machinery behind it. 

The renewed strategy now needs a proper implementation plan, with named responsibilities, timelines, funding, performance measures, and accountability.  

“The challenge is not identifying what works, it is all about implementing it consistently.” 

Integrated care boards need clarity on what they are expected to deliver. Local systems need support to scale models that already work. Women need to see the difference in access, experience, and outcomes. 

Without that, the risk is obvious – strong national language, uneven local change. 

Women’s Health Hubs Show What Better Care Can Look Like 

One of the report’s most useful contributions is its focus on women’s health hubs and community-based models of care. 

The Oxford case study shows what can happen when contraception, gynaecology, menopause management, and sexual health support are brought together in a single community setting. The report points to reduced referrals, faster access, improved patient experience, and a more efficient use of secondary care. 

The West Yorkshire case study is more mixed, and that honesty is important. Women’s Health Hubs are developing across parts of the region, but access is not yet consistent. Some localities have promising models in place. Others still have underdeveloped provision. 

That makes West Yorkshire a useful example of both the opportunity and the challenge. The model works where it exists, but it has not yet become the standard offer. 

The report’s conclusion highlights the blunt statement made by those who participated in the session – it is not fair to women to pilot the same ideas at infinitum. It is to implement them consistently. 

The Three Shifts Women’s Health Reform Needs 

The report frames women’s health reform through three shifts that mirror the wider direction of NHS policy as set out by the former Secretary of State’s three shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and treatment to prevention. 

“The barrier is not innovation, it is implementation.” 

For women’s health, those shifts have a very practical meaning. 

Hospital to community means building services closer to where women live, reducing avoidable referrals, and giving women earlier support before conditions worsen. 

Analogue to digital means using technology to improve access, information, triage, and navigation, while recognising that digital tools must be inclusive and cannot replace trusted face to face care for those who need it. 

Treatment to prevention means helping women understand what is normal, when to seek help, and how to access support earlier across different life stages. 

This is where women’s health reform connects directly to the future of the NHS. If ministers want more care in the community, shorter waiting lists, and a stronger focus on prevention, women’s health should be one of the places where that agenda is delivered first. 

Trust Has to Be Treated as Infrastructure 

The report also makes a point that is too often treated as secondary: trust determines whether services work. 

Many women delay seeking help because symptoms have been normalised, dismissed, or poorly explained. Heavy bleeding, pain, incontinence, menopause symptoms, and postnatal issues are still too often accepted as something women simply have to live with. 

For some women, the barriers are even greater. Cultural stigma, language, low health literacy, digital exclusion, trauma, and previous poor experiences of care all affect whether someone feels able to seek support. 

That is why the report calls for dignity, informed consent, improved pain management, and trauma aware practice to be embedded across women’s health services. This should not sit in a side programme or a training module that staff complete once. It should shape how pathways are designed, how appointments are handled, how procedures are explained, and how women are listened to. 

The Reform Agenda Is Now Practical 

The report sets out a clear set of recommendations. 

The renewed life course model should become the organising framework for women’s health, from adolescence through reproductive years, maternity, menopause, and later life. 

Neighbourhood women’s health services and hubs should become the default model of care, supported by commissioning and payment reform. 

Single points of access should be implemented consistently for non-urgent gynaecology and women’s health referrals, with redesigned pathways for common conditions including heavy periods, menopause, and urogynaecology. 

Workforce development should cover gender bias, women’s pain, communication, informed consent, cultural competence, and trauma aware practice. 

National standards and transparent data should be used to reduce local variation, with patient reported experience measures and patient reported outcome measures built into key pathways. 

The report also calls for targeted outreach and inclusive digital tools, particularly for women facing the greatest barriers to care. 

From Report to Accountability 

The most important message in this report is that women’s health reform has not been short of evidence for several years. 

There are plenty of examples of better care. There are committed professionals, and community models that reduce pressure on hospitals and improve experience. There is a renewed national strategy that points in the right direction. 

As with many areas of the Government’s wider health strategy, the problem is implementation. 

Last year’s The Women’s Health Dividend showed why investing in women’s health makes sense for the economy. This new report shows what needs to change in the health system itself. 

The next test is whether women in different parts of the country start to see the same standard of care. A woman’s access to trusted, timely and joined up support should not depend on how services happen to be arranged locally. 

Women’s health has spent too long being squeezed between structures that were never designed around women’s lives. The report puts a clear challenge to government and the NHS: stop asking women to navigate fragmentation and start building services around them. 

“The time for incremental change is over.” 

Next Steps 

Reframing Women’s Health: From Fragmentation To System Reform has been distributed to women’s health leaders in Whitehall and across the NHS. UKHLSI looks forward to working with NHS leaders across the country to deliver the system change women so desperately need. 

To find out more about UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation and the Women’s Health working group chaired by Paula Sherriff, please contact enquiries@ukhlsi.co.uk

For a sitting Health Secretary to use the word “gaslighting” about his own department’s flagship public institution is, by any measure, a significant moment. But does the strategy that’s been laid out actually deliver?

The Problem It’s Trying to Fix

The backdrop to this strategy is bleak. The Women and Equalities Committee, chaired by Labour MP Sarah Owen, delivered a damning parliamentary report in December 2024 that used the phrase “medical misogyny” without apology. It found that women experiencing painful reproductive conditions: endometriosis, adenomyosis, heavy menstrual bleeding, PMDD –  routinely have their symptoms dismissed, normalised, and minimised. Women, for years, were told to “suck it up.” Their pain, the committee concluded, was treated as a personality failing rather than a medical complaint. 

The statistics sit behind that language like a wall. As of December 2024, there were over 586,000 women on incomplete gynaecology pathways in the NHS, with nearly 45% of those patients waiting more than 18 weeks, far beyond the NHS standard. Almost 19,000 had been waiting longer than a year. Endometriosis, affecting roughly one in ten women, currently takes close to a decade to diagnose on average. The gynaecology waiting list has more than doubled in eight years. Female life expectancy has declined. Only the wealthiest third of women, the strategy’s own authors note, can expect to remain in good health until retirement.

This is not a niche policy issue. It is a crisis affecting millions of people’s daily lives: their careers, relationships, fertility, and mental health.

What the Strategy Actually Does

The renewed strategy is built around four pillars: centring women’s voices and choices; transforming NHS performance in the services that matter most to women; supporting all women to live healthy, prosperous lives; and creating a structural approach to reform under the wider 10-Year Health Plan.

Several concrete commitments stand out.

1. For the first time, the strategy introduces a guaranteed standard requiring that women are offered appropriate and effective pain relief for invasive gynaecological procedures, including contraceptive coil fittings and hysteroscopies. This is long overdue. Campaigners and clinicians have been pushing for this for years following high-profile accounts, including from BBC presenter Naga Munchetty, of traumatic coil fittings conducted without anaesthesia. A Mail on Sunday investigation found that up to a third of women received no pain relief at all during coil insertion, even after guidance recommending it was issued in 2021. The strategy now moves that guidance to a mandatory standard of care; a meaningful shift, if enforced.
2. Women will be directed to the right specialist at the first attempt through a new single referral system, rather than being “passed from one appointment to another,” in Streeting’s words. Action will be taken to cut the near-decade-long diagnostic wait for conditions like endometriosis.
3. Perhaps the most structurally significant element is the proposal to link women’s feedback directly to provider funding through a new trial. Streeting was explicit about the logic: “We need to hit medical misogyny where it hurts –  the wallet.” Services that fail to listen to women would, in theory, face financial consequences.
4. The strategy reaffirms the government’s earlier commitment to set an explicit target to close the Black and South Asian maternal mortality gap, an issue of profound inequality. Black women are currently approximately 2.3 times more likely to die during or shortly after pregnancy than white women; South Asian women are around 1.4 times more likely. The government says it will invest £50 million through the National Institute for Health and Care Research to tackle maternity disparities.
5. A £1 million investment in a menstrual education programme aims to help girls distinguish between normal and abnormal periods earlier. This matters: the parliamentary report found that sex education has consistently failed to teach girls what constitutes “normal” menstruation, which contributes to diagnostic delays that stretch into adulthood.

The strategy is embedded in the government’s wider 10-Year Health Plan and its ambition to shift care from hospitals into communities. New Neighbourhood Health Centres are envisaged as single, accessible points for women’s health — if they can replicate the success already shown by the existing Women’s Health Hubs model, where GP practices pool specialist services in areas like menopause care and coil fitting, this could be transformative.

What the Strategy Doesn’t Do — Yet

Progress has been “too slow” before. 

The 2022 Women’s Health Strategy, published under the Conservatives, contained similar commitments and similar rhetoric. The parliamentary inquiry found its progress had been insufficient. The risk with this iteration is the same: a well-intentioned document that struggles to translate into consistent practice across a fragmented NHS. Structural reforms, like shifting commissioning to bring gynaecology and contraception under single funding streams, remain complicated and have historically been resistant to top-down policy fixes.

The waiting list problem is immense. 

While the strategy pledges to cut the gynaecology waiting list, the scale of the backlog is daunting. Even the commitment to move patients from the independent sector — where spare private capacity exists — into state-funded treatment represents a significant logistical undertaking. The elective reform plan announced earlier this year aims to reduce the longest waits from 18 months to 18 weeks, but the timeline remains unclear.

“Medical misogyny” requires cultural change, not just clinical protocols. 

The Women and Equalities Committee was unambiguous: the problem is not simply a lack of resources. It is a culture of bias, normalisation, and dismissal, embedded across primary and secondary care. Sarah Owen, chair of the committee, described it as “not a criticism of male doctors” specifically, but a “systemic misogyny” that runs through the whole structure. A new standard of care mandating pain relief is a policy. Changing the underlying attitudes of clinicians requires sustained training, accountability, and cultural leadership over years.

Intersectional inequalities need more than targets. 

The commitment to close the black and Asian maternal mortality gap is welcome and long overdue, but setting a target is not the same as achieving it. Significant variation in access to perinatal mental health services by ethnicity persists. ICB budget cuts risk undermining the specialist programmes that disproportionately serve the women who need them most.

Does It Tackle Misogyny? 

That depends on what you think tackling misogyny in healthcare looks like.

If it means naming the problem honestly and committing the government’s authority to confronting it: yes, this strategy does that more forthrightly than anything that has come before it. The language is not a bureaucratic euphemism. Calling out a “system that gaslights women” from the despatch box, and then legislating pain standards and accountability mechanisms to match, represents a qualitative shift.

Weighing in here myself (as a woman), I am split into two minds: we are finally moving in a positive direction for women’s rights in healthcare, but the fact that it has taken this long for us to acknowledge the sexism occurring frustrates me.

The menopause, for example, has only been given recognition in recent years, and that was mostly through relentless campaigning from the Menopause Mandate, an incredibly powerful movement from dedicated women for the menopause to be recognised properly in healthcare. It was through an aunt of mine that I discovered the sheer amount of symptoms that occur during the menopause, and upon further research I realised just how little women are taught about their health in schools.

Testosterone is not included in NHS prescriptions, costing from £60 monthly, something that most women need to feel like “themselves” again. Out of curiosity, I recently read a book on how to deal with the perimenopause (called the Feel Good Fix), and despite it not being in my imminent future, it made me truly admire all the women who have fought so hard to raise awareness of menopausal symptoms, and that women should not “disappear” once they reach a certain point in their lives.

Women’s contraception currently has one of the longest lists of side effects possible from a medication, and Plan B was only recently made free in pharmacies. After watching a Loose Women debate about medieval contraceptive methods, the pain described from inserting an IUD without anaesthetic to me feels, quite frankly, torturous. The lack of education surrounding the pill and its effectiveness is also alarming – it is not common knowledge that antibiotics stop it from working, or that Plan B is less effective if you are over 155-165 pounds.

So while this new Women’s Health Strategy is a step in the right direction, it is important to note that it is just that – a step. There is much more awareness and education needed surrounding women’s health, but for now, a government that names the problem honestly has at least cleared the first hurdle. The women who’ve been waiting a decade for a diagnosis will be watching closely to see if it clears the rest.

Featured Image Credit: House of Commons on Flickr

At the heart of the strategy is a new accountability model, with plans to link women’s lived experience directly to provider funding. Under a proposed trial, patient feedback could determine whether services face financial consequences – a move designed to address long-standing concerns that women’s symptoms and pain have too often been dismissed.

Alongside this, a single referral pathway will be introduced to streamline access to care, supported by expanded digital services and community provision. The aim is to reduce delays in diagnosis and treatment, particularly for conditions such as endometriosis and fibroids, where waiting times remain significant.

Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting said: “We inherited a broken NHS…[that] too often gaslights women, treating their pain as an inconvenience and their symptoms as an overreaction…Women’s voices must be central to delivering effective, respectful and empathetic care.”

From Policy to Accountability

A main feature of the renewed strategy is the shift from policy ambition to system accountability.

For the first time, patient voice is being positioned as a mechanism for system leverage rather than mere traditional feedback – directly influencing how services are funded and improved. This marks a notable evolution in NHS reform, moving beyond traditional engagement models towards more tangible incentives for change.

As a longstanding advocate for this change, former Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, and Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Social Care, and Curia, Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group Advisory Board, Paula Sherriff said: “This is a welcome and necessary step forward. For too long, women’s experiences have been overlooked in the design of our health system. Embedding women’s voices into how care is delivered and funded is a significant shift, and one we have consistently called for.

“The challenge now is ensuring these commitments are matched by sustained investment and delivered at scale across the country.”

Commenting on the reset, Chief Executive of UKHLSI, Joanne Bekis said: “The renewed Women’s Health Strategy marks an important shift from ambition to accountability. By embedding women’s lived experience into funding decisions, prioritising integrated care pathways, and backing innovation in areas such as femtech and community-based delivery, the Government is acknowledging the systemic failures that have held women back for too long.

“The challenge now is delivery at scale – with sustained investment and clear outcomes – so that better women’s health becomes not only a clinical priority, but a driver of economic growth and workforce participation. An area that UKHLSI are able to support, provide advice, help develop and deliver.”

At the same time, the strategy explicitly acknowledges systemic failures within women’s healthcare, positioning reform as both a clinical and cultural reset.

NHS England’s Clinical Director for Women’s Health, Dr Sue Mann said: “Too many women are still dismissed for serious symptoms…The renewed women’s health strategy will build significantly on the work the NHS has been doing to ensure women are heard and get the specialist care they need.”

Integrated Care and Pathway Redesign

The move towards a single point of access and integrated care pathways reflects a broader shift away from fragmented services.

Clinical pathways for heavy menstrual bleeding, menopause, and urogynaecological conditions will be redesigned to improve speed and consistency of care. Community-based provision, supported by digital tools such as NHS Online and expanded diagnostic centres, is intended to reduce pressure on hospitals while improving access closer to home.

President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Dr Alison Wright said: “The refreshed Women’s Health Strategy marks an important renewal…There is a clear opportunity to embed Women’s Health Hubs within the neighbourhood health model.”

Innovation, Research and the Role of Femtech

The strategy also places greater emphasis on innovation and research, including a new £1.5 million Femtech Challenge Fund to accelerate the adoption of technologies that could transform women’s healthcare.

Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Chief Executive Officer of the NIHR, Professor Lucy Chappell said: “By tackling long-standing disparities…and making it easier for women to take part in clinical trials, we are ensuring that the research that we fund benefits all women in society.”

This focus reflects a growing recognition that addressing gaps in data, diagnostics, and treatment pathways is essential to improving outcomes at scale.

A Life-Course Approach to Women’s Health

The renewed strategy adopts a life-course approach, recognising that women’s health needs are interconnected and evolve over time.

Initiatives include:

• Improved menstrual health education.
• Expanded access to contraception and abortion services.
• Integration of menopause support into NHS Health Checks.
• Review of support for families experiencing baby loss.

Women’s Health Ambassador, Professor Dame Lesley Regan described the strategy as: “An opportunity to embed the voices of girls and women at the heart of the design and delivery of their healthcare…when we get it right for women, everyone benefits.”

Sector Response: Progress, but Delivery Will Define Success

Across the sector, the strategy has been broadly welcomed as a necessary and overdue intervention.

Chief Executive of Wellbeing of Women, Janet Lindsay said: “Real progress in women’s health is only possible through true collaboration… we are committed to working across the sector to ensure the refreshed strategy drives meaningful, long-term improvements.”

Chief Executive of Endometriosis UK, Emma Cox added: “Diagnosis times…are going up not down…Leadership and decisive actions will be vital to drive these times down.”

However, stakeholders have been clear that delivery, investment, and system capacity will ultimately determine whether the strategy achieves its ambitions.

Chief Executive of the British In Vitro Diagnostics Association (BIVDA), Helen Dent said:
“We are pleased that the government is making a clear commitment…but the key will be consistent implementation nationally. Without sustained and ring-fenced multiyear investment…the ability of providers to respond quickly, using the best diagnostics available in the community will be difficult. CDCs could deliver significant diagnostic testing for women, but current plans do not go far enough.”

Commenting on the strategy refresh, Former Minister of State for Health at the Department of Health and Social Care and Chair, Curia Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group Advisory Board, Rt Hon Andrew Stephenson CBE said: “Today’s announcement shows clear progress in recognising the structural challenges within women’s health. The focus on integrated care pathways and faster access is particularly encouraging.

“However, to fully unlock the economic and societal benefits outlined in Curia’s Women’s Health Dividend, we must go further – with long-term funding, clear delivery plans, and a stronger link to workforce participation and economic growth.”

Curia Analysis

The strategy reflects several priorities set out in Curia’s Women’s Health Dividend report:

1. Embedding women’s voices in system design
   • Curia called for co-production and accountability driven by lived experience.
   • The Government’s decision to link feedback to funding represents a direct and significant alignment.
2. Integrated, community-based care models
   • Curia emphasised the need for:
     • Women’s Health Hubs
     • Single-point triageNeighbourhood delivery models
     • The introduction of single referral pathways and community integration mirrors this approach.
3. Focus on high-impact conditions
   • Curia highlighted:
     • Heavy menstrual bleeding
     • Menopause
     • Contraception
   • Government reforms prioritise exactly these areas, particularly pathway redesign and waiting list reduction.
4. Innovation and adoption (including femtech)
   • Curia called for stronger innovation pathways and adoption frameworks.
   • The new Femtech Challenge Fund and digital services reflect this agenda.
5. Tackling inequalities and adopting a life-course approach
   • Curia’s report highlighted regional, socio-economic, and ethnic disparities and called for equitable access for all including minority ethnicities groups and BAME.
   • The strategy includes commitments to equity, education, and community provision.

Curia and UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) members can read more about the strategy here (NB. Members will be sent a copy of the password).

Addressing Inequalities and Underrepresentation

The strategy explicitly acknowledges the role of inequality in shaping women’s health outcomes, particularly for marginalised communities.

Founding Chair, Caribbean & African Health Network (CAHN), Professor Faye Ruddock DL said: “The recognition of key women’s health concerns… alongside the focus on community voice, co-production, and culturally responsive care, reflects meaningful listening and genuine intent.”

Chief Executive of the British Heart Foundation, Dr Charmaine Griffiths added: “The outdated idea that heart disease is a ‘man’s disease’ has cost many women their health…Now we need sustained action right across the NHS.”

Expanding Access to Reproductive Health

Reproductive health remains a core focus of the strategy, with plans to expand access to contraception and improve service delivery across communities.

President of the College of Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare, Dr Zara Haider said: “We’re really pleased to see women’s sexual and reproductive health placed firmly at the centre…If neighbourhood health centres can replicate the success demonstrated by Women’s Health Hubs, this would be a major step forward.”

Final Thought: Direction Set – Delivery Now Critical

The renewed Women’s Health Strategy represents a positive step forward in recognising and addressing systemic failures in women’s healthcare. Its focus on accountability, integrated care, and patient voice aligns with a growing consensus across policy and industry.

However, as stakeholders across the system have highlighted, the strategy stops short of the scale of investment, delivery clarity, and economic framing required to fully transform outcomes.

The direction is now set and as Curia has highlighted for over many years, the challenge ahead is ensuring that ambition is matched by implementation, capacity, and sustained commitment – so that women across the country see tangible improvements in how care is accessed, experienced, and delivered.

Get Involved: Find Out More

Curia has been commissioned by UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) in 2026 to look at enhancing women’s health commissioning pathways. Outcomes from first of the strategic innovation gateways and sprint sessions with West Yorkshire NHS Health and Care Partnership will be published shortly.

If you would like to find out more about this work, or others, please contact Partnerships Director at UKHLSI, Ben M^cDermott at bmcdermott@ukhlsi.co.uk.  

At a summit in Barnsley, NHS leaders, digital entrepreneurs, and AI specialists confronted an uncomfortable truth: the NHS doesn’t lack good ideas. It lacks the conditions to spread them.

The NHS has never suffered from a shortage of innovation. What it suffers from is a second-adopter problem — the systemic failure to take what works in one place and make it work everywhere else. That was the central challenge at Curia’s Accelerating NHS Innovation Summit, held at Barnsley Football Club in February 2026. 

Furthermore, understanding the impact of obesity on health outcomes remains a priority for the NHS.

The question was not what the health service should do. It was how it could actually move and move quickly.

Chaired by Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group Chair and former Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, Rt Hon Andrew Stephenson CBE, the discussion was deliberately structured around learnings from past failures and opportunities for the future. What barriers keep reappearing? What unglamorous solutions actually work? And what could another Integrated Care System (ICS) lift and reuse tomorrow, without waiting for new legislation or fresh national funding?

When Stigma Became the System Barrier

Head of Population Health at West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, Emm Irving opened with a reframe that set the tone. The hardest barrier the ICS had faced in redesigning obesity pathways was not commissioning structures or data gaps. It was stigma.

“The biggest barrier is stigma,” Irving said. “Trying to understand that this is about people living with a long-term relapsing condition, that’s often looked at as your own fault.”

West Yorkshire spent eighteen months bringing clinicians, finance leads, public health teams, and policy colleagues to a shared understanding: obesity is a chronic relapsing condition shaped by systemic failure and lived trauma, not individual laziness. That reframing, she argued, is foundational. Without it, clinical innovation lands in a system still organised around blame.

The arrival of GLP-1 drugs then destabilised that consensus — pushing decision-making back into a purely budget-driven frame. Irving was direct: “So what are we going to do then? Just leave people to die?”

The West Yorkshire model now rests on five elements: biology, psychology, socioeconomics, treatment, and care — a framework she argued cannot be bypassed even by pharmaceutical breakthroughs.

Most of its foundations, she noted, cost very little to build.

When Commissioning Designs Out the Patient

Programme Director for the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Planned Care Alliance, Catherine Thompson argued that services fail when systems lose sight of why people work in healthcare in the first place. Planned care pathways for women’s health frequently lose out because demand is diffuse and cuts across multiple services, with commissioning structures inadvertently creating gaps that leave patients bouncing between providers.

Digital infrastructure is too fragmented for information to follow a person across their care journey. And professional resistance — consultants reluctant to cede clinical leadership even when evidence supports it — adds another layer of friction.

Her prescription was simple: start with what people actually need. “The point in why I go to work every day isn’t to manage NHS finances,” she said. “It was because I wanted to help people live better lives.”

Thompson also raised what she called the future Horizon scandal for the NHS. If a diagnostic algorithm fails, who is responsible — the clinician who applied it, the developer who built it, or the organisation that deployed it? That question, she argued, needs answering before AI adoption scales, not after harm occurs.

Digital Inclusion and The Three-Client Problem 

Co-Founder of Essential Parent, Diana Hill brought a digital provider’s perspective on embedding digital tools sustainably across health systems. Her organisation’s localised apps — covering midwifery, infant feeding, health visiting,and the full women’s health pathway — now operate across Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside, Birmingham and inner-city London.

It took eight years, she said, to realise the product serves three distinct clients simultaneously: the women and parents using it, the health teams whose workflows it must support, and the commissioners whose targets it must meet. Getting that balance wrong means adoption stalls regardless of clinical value.

A recent National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) grant will deliver services across more than a hundred languages — an impetus that came from focus groups with Somali women in Liverpool. “There’s no word for menopause in quite a few languages,” Hill noted — a reminder that digital inclusion requires cultural literacy, not just technical translation.

From AI Pilots to System Capability 

Chief Executive of trade association for the AI economy in the UK, UKAI, Tim Flagg turned to the question haunting NHS innovation: why do successful pilots not spread?

His answer centred on three gaps. First, the people gap — AI tools that ignore patient centrality or embed bias fail to earn clinical trust. Second, the platform gap — without an interoperable data infrastructure, tools cannot connect across the pathway. Third, the productivity gap — until the first two are resolved, AI remains a collection of isolated tools rather than a shared system capability.

Flagg was candid: “We are really just at the beginning.” Failure is inevitable — the question is whether it happens in safe environments, through sandboxes and synthetic data, or in live clinical settings. 

The most successful implementations he had observed gave clinicians time back from administration and paperwork, rather than replacing them.

On Thompson’s accountability question, he acknowledged the industry has no settled answer — but asking it, he argued, is itself responsible practice. 

Precisely what the companies behind some recent AI controversies failed to do.

What Monday Morning Actually Looks Like

The panel’s closing consensus was practical. Workforce transformation must accompany service redesign, not by training more people into old roles, but by rethinking skill mix and professional boundaries. Digital tools need to be framed as supporting staff, not replacing them, or resistance will derail adoption before it begins.

Above all, trust between clinicians and patients, and between the public and AI, must be treated as a precondition for innovation, not an afterthought.

Stephenson closed by returning to the thread that ran through every contribution: people. How services are designed around them, how relationships are built and sustained, and how trust, once lost, takes far longer to rebuild than any technology takes to deploy.

Health innovation could add £246 billion annually to UK productivity – almost 10% of GDP – yet proven technologies still take years to reach NHS frontlines, often benefiting those with the most resources first.

At an NHS innovation summit in Barnsley in  February, South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard made the case that devolution offers the practical mechanism to accelerate adoption, narrow inequalities, and turn health improvement into regional economic growth.

The Accelerating NHS Innovation Summit, organised by not-for-profit independent policy institute Curia, brought together NHS Integrated Care System (ICS) leaders, innovators, academics, policymakers, and councillors to examine how the North of England can translate innovation ambitions into everyday care.

Devolution and place-based leadership

The Mayor framed devolution not as bureaucratic restructuring but as bringing decision-making closer to the communities that experience health challenges most acutely.

Drawing on his direct engagement with constituents – whether at Tesco, the pub, football matches or Parkrun – he described mayors as uniquely positioned to notice what is changing, understand why it is happening and respond with policies tailored to local reality.

“Devolution gives us the ability to notice what’s changing, understand why it’s happening, and respond quickly with policies that match the reality on the ground,” Coppard said.

He acknowledged that national policymakers care deeply about health outcomes but argued they simply do not have the time or structural capacity to look as closely as regional leaders can.

Health as economic policy 

The Mayor positioned health improvement as inseparable from economic success, pointing to Health Innovation Network research showing healthier populations could add £246 billion annually to UK productivity, which is almost 10% of GDP.

“Improving health isn’t just morally right. It’s fundamental to economic success,” Coppard told the summit.

South Yorkshire has embedded that principle into its local growth plan, with initiatives like the Olympic Legacy Park demonstrating how prevention, research, and economic regeneration can reinforce one another.

The Mayoral Combined Authority is deploying devolved powers over transport, skills, regeneration, and innovation to align health outcomes with regional prosperity.

The reality of health inequality

For South Yorkshire, that proximity reveals inequalities that national systems often miss. Women in Barnsley have the lowest life expectancy anywhere in the country. Across the region, a 20-year healthy life expectancy gap persists – meaning people in some communities spend two decades longer in poor health than those in others.

Coppard argued these divides harm individuals, families, and communities while holding back economic growth. He argued that innovation must be used deliberately to close these divides rather than reinforce them.

Without that focus, he warned, new technologies risk reaching those already closest to opportunity first – leaving the communities facing the greatest health challenges further behind.

“If we are serious about leading the way, then we need to see innovation helping to narrow inequalities rather than widening them,” Coppard said.

Building an innovation ecosystem in South Yorkshire 

Coppard outlines how South Yorkshire has assembled the infrastructure to translate ambition into practice. The Olympic Legacy Park in Sheffield serves as a focal point, bringing together the Mayoral Combined Authority, Sheffield City Council, the NHS, universities, and industry to create a space where prevention, sport, wellbeing research, and economic regeneration reinforce one another.

Within that ecosystem sits the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, where patients, clinicians, and researchers collaborate to test new health technologies.

Soon, the sites will host the National Centre for Child Health Technology, a £22 million partnership between the NHS, central government, and Mayoral Combined Authority, which is contributing £6 million to develop robotics, virtual reality, and tools supporting children’s long-term conditions and mental health. 

When innovation stalls 

Despite those assets, Coppard was candid about structural barriers that devolution alone cannot overcome. Proven innovations, he noted, often take years to move from pilot to frontline adoption, with early beneficiaries disproportionately those already closest to resources and opportunity. He cited new obesity medicines as an example, observing that the vast majority of early prescriptions have been private.

“Too many proven innovations take years to reach the frontline. Too often, the first beneficiaries are those with the most resources,” Coppard said.

He identified three areas requiring national action. 

First, the imbalance in research funding must be addressed – it cannot be right, he argued, that a single London institution receives the same public research funding as the entire North of England. Coppard has written to ministers proposing an Institute for Preventive Health Research for the North, recognising that regions with significant health challenges also possess world-class research assets.

Second, the NHS itself must accelerate adoption. Procurement processes need to become more agile, evaluate faster, and the pathway from pilot to scale clearer.

Crucially, workforce and digital infrastructure require sustained investment, as innovation only works when clinicians have the time and tools to adopt it.

Third, innovation must be woven into economic strategy in ways that narrow rather than widen inequalities, with programmes co-designed alongside communities and tested in real-world settings.

Where mayors can act

During the fireside discussion led by former Shadow Minister and member of Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group Advisory Board, Paula Sherriff, Coppard was asked how mayors can influence health when the NHS remains nationally governed.

His answer focused squarely on prevention – the domain where mayoral powers over transport, employment, skills, and economic policy create conditions for innovation to thrive.

He pointed to a striking statistic: one in five bus journeys in South Yorkshire relates to healthcare, whether nurses, doctors, or care workers travelling to work or patients attending appointments. A functioning healthcare system, he argued, cannot exist without a functioning transport system.

South Yorkshire is bringing buses back under public control, creating an opportunity to align transport planning with public health and prevention strategies in ways that fragmented private operators and national oversight cannot achieve.

“Prevention doesn’t happen through the NHS in the way it could or should, because the NHS is always under pressure to deal with immediate acute problems,” Coppard observed.

Mayors, he suggested, face urgent pressures but not identical ones, enabling them to convene actors across skills, transport, public health, innovation, education, and universities in ways Whitehall structurally cannot.

Leading through outcomes

Asked what would demonstrate that Yorkshire is genuinely leading on NHS innovation in a year’s time, Coppard focused on outcomes rather than activity.

Success would mean innovation reaching people who need it most, benefits not confined to those already closest to opportunity, and services designed around how people live rather than how institutions are organised.

The summit’s broader agenda – focusing on women’s health and obesity pathways through Curia’s sprint methodology – reflected recognition that innovation depends not only on technology and funding but on commissioning structures, workforce support, data infrastructure, and political will.

Coppard’s contribution underscored that for regions like South Yorkshire, devolution provides the mandate and tools to align those elements more effectively than national systems acting alone.

Paula Sherriff

Former MP and Founder of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women’s Health
Advisor to Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group

Following a recent Curia women’s health panel with system leaders and Parliamentarians, Paula Sherriff writes exclusively for Politics UK. Women’s health is no longer a side issue – it is shaping workforce participation, NHS capacity and economic resilience, and the cost of inaction is already being paid.

For too long, women’s health has been treated as a niche issue – something to be addressed when time, budgets and political attention allow. That approach is no longer sustainable. Women’s health is economic policy, public service reform and social justice rolled into one, and the cost of continued inaction is already being felt across the workforce, the NHS and local communities.

At Curia’s recent panel discussion, which brought together parliamentarians, clinicians, researchers, digital innovators and campaigners, there was striking consensus. We are not short of evidence. We are not short of ideas. What we are short of is delivery, accountability and the political will to treat women’s health as a core priority rather than an optional extra.

Women’s Health as Economic Infrastructure

This matters because the economic consequences are now impossible to ignore. Women aged 45 to 64 are the fastest growing segment of the UK workforce. Yet thousands are leaving work or reducing hours due to unmanaged menopause symptoms, untreated gynaecological conditions and years long waits for specialist care. That represents lost productivity for employers, reduced tax revenue for the Exchequer and increased pressure on already stretched public services.

When women cannot access timely, effective care, the impact ripples far beyond individual health. It affects family income, workplace retention, caring responsibilities and community resilience. This is not a women’s issue in isolation. It is a structural failure with national consequences.

From Fragmentation to Delivery: Fixing a System Built Around Services, Not Lives

One of the most persistent problems is fragmentation. Women’s health services are still organised around systems rather than lives. Sexual and reproductive health, general practice and gynaecology are commissioned separately, creating artificial barriers to joined up care. Clinicians described having the skills and capacity to help women quickly but being prevented from doing so by commissioning rules that make no clinical sense.

The result is duplication, delay and frustration. Women are bounced between services, conditions worsen unnecessarily and inequalities widen, particularly for those already facing barriers due to income, language or geography. This is not inefficiency by accident. It is inefficiency by design.

There are clear solutions. Women’s health hubs are one of the most promising. Where implemented properly, they bring together multidisciplinary expertise in community settings, offering a single front door for menstrual health, contraception, menopause support, cervical screening and gynaecology triage. Evidence shows they reduce waiting lists and improve patient experience, yet access remains uneven and dependent on postcode.

That patchiness is itself an inequality. As long as access depends on where a woman lives, too many will continue to put up with symptoms they should never have been expected to tolerate. Scaling women’s health hubs should be a national priority, not a local experiment reliant on short term funding or individual champions.

Digital tools also have a role to play, but only if they are treated as enablers of care rather than add ons. Well designed, evidence based digital support can reduce pressure on frontline staff and improve access for women who struggle to navigate traditional pathways. But fragmented procurement and short-term commissioning mean digital innovation is too often bolted on, then quietly dropped.

If women’s health is genuinely a priority, digital tools must be embedded into core pathways, funded sustainably and designed around real needs, not novelty or procurement convenience.

Research and economic data matter too, but evidence without implementation changes nothing. Women remain under represented in clinical trials, and conditions such as endometriosis, heavy menstrual bleeding and menopause continue to be under researched and under diagnosed. Meanwhile, stark inequalities persist in maternal outcomes, with Black women significantly more likely to die during pregnancy or shortly afterwards.

None of this is inevitable. These outcomes reflect choices about what we fund, what we measure and who we listen to. For years, women’s pain was dismissed, trivialised or normalised. Changing that has required women to speak openly and persistently about their experiences, often at personal cost. Lived experience has driven progress where policy alone did not.

But storytelling is not enough on its own. We now need leadership that turns evidence into action and pilots into policy. That means clear national direction on women’s health hubs, commissioning reform that enables joined up care, and accountability mechanisms that make women’s health outcomes visible and measurable.

For Curia’s Health, Care, and Life Sciences Research Group, the economic opportunity is clear. The task now is to help move the debate from agreement to implementation – to bring together policymakers, clinicians, industry and the third sector around delivery models that work at scale, not just in pockets.

The cost of inaction is already being paid – by women forced out of work, by an NHS dealing with avoidable complexity, and by an economy missing out on talent, productivity and potential. The question is no longer whether we can afford to prioritise women’s health. It is whether we can afford not to.

We know the problems. We know what works. What remains is the choice to do things differently.

For decades, women’s health has been sidelined in policymaking – fragmented across services, under researched and too often dismissed as an individual problem rather than a systemic one.

At a recent Curia panel bringing together parliamentarians, clinicians, researchers, digital innovators and campaigners, the message was unmistakable: women’s health sits at the heart of economic resilience, public service reform, and social justice.

As Paula Sherriff, former MP and founder of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women’s Health, put it in opening remarks, the challenge is no longer about awareness.

“We know the problems. We know what works. What we need now is delivery – and the political will to make women’s health a core priority rather than an optional extra.”

With women aged 45 to 64 now the fastest growing segment of the UK workforce, the consequences of poor access to care are being felt well beyond individual wellbeing. Workforce exits linked to menopause, long gynaecology waiting lists and unmet reproductive health needs are reducing productivity, increasing pressure on the NHS, and widening inequalities across communities.

Women’s health and the economy: an invisible link

Despite being half the population, women’s health conditions are still routinely treated as marginal. Former Minister of State for Women and Equalities, Dame Anneliese Dodds MP reflected on how recently many issues were simply absent from parliamentary debate.

“There were decades where women’s health was never discussed at all. Even when it was mentioned, it was often trivialised or treated as embarrassing.”

That has begun to change, she argued, with greater recognition of menopause in the workplace, urinary tract infections as a patient safety issue and the need to modernise reproductive health services. But progress remains uneven and vulnerable to political drift.

“Let’s stop saying ‘it’s just’. Normalising women’s pain has normalised failure in the system.” 

Rt Hon Dame Anneliese Dodds MP

“What has made the biggest difference has been women telling their stories. The facts matter, but lived experience is what cuts through.”

Dodds urged women not to underestimate the impact of their own voices – locally, professionally, and politically – and warned against normalising poor health.

“Let’s stop saying ‘it’s just’. It’s not just pain, not just heavy bleeding, not just something to endure. It affects women’s ability to work, care, study and participate fully in society.”

Fragmented systems, fragmented care

If awareness has improved, delivery remains hampered by how services are organised. President of the College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, Dr Zahra Haider described a commissioning landscape that actively blocks joined up care.

Sexual and reproductive health services, general practice, and gynaecology are often funded and managed separately, leaving women bounced between services even when the clinical expertise already exists.

“I can have the staff, the skills and the capacity to help a woman the same day – but I am not allowed to because of how services are commissioned.”

The result is long waits, unnecessary referrals and widening inequalities, particularly for women from marginalised backgrounds who find complex systems hardest to navigate.

Dr Haider highlighted post pregnancy contraception as a clear example of missed opportunity. Access after birth, pregnancy loss or termination is patchy despite strong evidence that planned pregnancies improve outcomes for both women and babies.

“This is compassionate care that also makes economic sense. But too often it only happens because clinicians find workarounds rather than because the system supports it.”

Women’s health hubs: making care fit around women

Across the panel, women’s health hubs emerged as a practical way to overcome fragmentation. By bringing together multidisciplinary expertise in community settings, hubs can offer menstrual care, contraception, menopause support, cervical screening, and gynaecology triage through a single front door.

Where they are well established, hubs have reduced gynaecology waiting lists and improved patient experience. But access remains inconsistent, with provision varying sharply by geography.

“Services need to fit around women – not force women to fit around services.”

Susan Murray MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Scotland

MP for Mid Dunbartonshire and Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Scotland, Susan Murray argued that this patchiness is itself a driver of inequality.

“As long as access depends on where you live, women will keep putting up with symptoms they should not have to tolerate.”

She also stressed the importance of physical space – health and care centres that can host specialist nurses, community organisations, and peer support without prohibitive costs.

“These hubs are not just about medicine. They are about dignity, access and making services usable in real life.”

Digital tools as enablers, not add ons

Digital innovation was another recurring theme, with Co-Founder of Essential Parent, Diana Hill cautioning against assuming all technology is equally helpful.

“Digital support works when it is designed around real needs – not when it is a novelty.”

Essential Parent’s work with NHS trusts, integrated care boards and local authorities shows how multilingual, evidence based digital tools can reduce pressure on frontline staff while improving access for families who might otherwise be excluded.

Hill emphasised the importance of accessibility – including visual content for people with low literacy – and local tailoring so that information reflects real services and pathways.

However, she warned that fragmented procurement and short-term funding make it harder to embed digital support into mainstream care.

“If women’s health is a priority, digital tools should be commissioned as part of core pathways, not treated as optional extras.”

Diana Hill, Co-Founder, Essential Parent

Closing the gender health gap

For Janet Lindsay, Chief Executive of Wellbeing of Women, the urgency lies in addressing a gender health gap that has been allowed to persist for generations.

“Women live longer than men but spend significantly more of their lives in poor health. That should concern anyone serious about prevention, productivity, and equality.”

Conditions such as endometriosis, heavy menstrual bleeding and menopause symptoms remain under recognised, while women report being dismissed when seeking help. Education, Lindsay argued, must start earlier – in schools, workplaces, and communities – so that symptoms are recognised and acted on sooner.

Waiting lists for gynaecology services continue to stretch into years, compounding harm, and frustration.

“By the time many women reach specialist care, their condition has worsened unnecessarily. That is a system failure, not a personal one.”

She also highlighted the role of charities and community organisations in reaching women who face additional barriers, from language to stigma.

From research to real world change

Vice President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Professor Asma Khalil focused on the gap between research evidence and everyday care.

“Evidence without implementation does not change lives.” 

Professor Asma Khalil, Vice President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Recent work engaging women directly on research priorities revealed a strong emphasis on access, inclusion, and long-term wellbeing rather than narrow clinical categories.

“We need research that reflects real lives – and systems that actually use that evidence.”

Khalil warned that women remain under represented in clinical trials, leading to poorer understanding of how treatments affect them. She also highlighted stark inequalities in maternal outcomes, with Black women significantly more likely to die during pregnancy or shortly afterwards.

“No single profession can fix this alone. It requires co-ordinated action across policy, public health, and clinical care.”

A political choice

Throughout the evening, speakers returned to a shared conclusion: women’s health outcomes are not inevitable. They are shaped by political choices about funding, commissioning, accountability, and leadership.

Increasing women’s representation in elected office matters, not because women are a single bloc, but because lived experience shapes priorities. As Dodds observed, many of the advances to date have been driven by women prepared to speak openly and persistently.

“Raise your voice. Tell your story. Keep pushing. Change has happened before, and it can happen again.” 

Rt Hon Dame Anneliese Dodds MP

As Paula Sherriff closed the discussion, she offered a final challenge.

“The cost of inaction is already being paid – by women, by the NHS and by the economy. The question is whether we finally choose to do something different.”