Report | Transforming Women’s Health Outcomes through Engineering

Women experience a range of health issues across the lifespan that affect how they live their daily lives and impact the health and resilience of society as a whole.

Many of these conditions are challenging to study using traditional research techniques due to a complex mix of factors: timescales associated with chronic diseases can be far longer than those achievable in laboratory experiments; mimicking complex human hormonal cycling and the sexual development time course is challenging in cell- and animal-based experiments; and human reproductive tissues are often unavailable for experimentation due to ethical concerns.

ERVA convened experts from across engineering, clinical medicine, technology enterprises, and startup companies to evaluate the landscape for novel solutions across the range of women’s health conditions. This report underscores the urgent need for engineering research to create solutions addressing women’s health issues that have been historically underresearched. It offers specific directions for engineering researchers and funding bodies to pursue that have the potential to transform women’s health outcomes through engineering and unleash the vast opportunities to improve women’s lives and health.

Engineering research can play a key role in the women’s health arena. Key research opportunities that emerged from the event, considering a broad umbrella of women’s health from in utero through post-menopause, are described in the report and executive summary.

See all ERVA Visioning Reports