Grace, Bola;
Wise, Lauren A;
Nieroda, Marzena;
Egbunike, Jennifer;
Usman, Nafisat O;
(2025)
Digital health technologies to transform women’s health innovation and inclusive research.
BMJ
, 391
, Article e085682. 10.1136/bmj-2025-085682.
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Abstract
Despite comprising over half the global population, women bear a disproportionate burden of adverse health outcomes with unique challenges.1 Historically, women were routinely excluded from clinical trials because of concerns about risks during pregnancy, fluctuating hormones, and a bias that viewed men’s bodies as the norm for medical research.2 Recently, there has been a gradual increase in the inclusion of women in clinical research; however, across a broader range of health conditions there is still room for improvement. Barriers faced by women in research participation include access, education, low incentives, digital literacy, transportation, time commitment, and research design.3 Addressing factors that influence inequities in women’s health requires innovation, not only in treatments and technologies but also in research designs and methodologies. Digital health technologies (DHTs) —defined as “systems that use computing platforms, connectivity, software, or sensors for health care and related uses”4—have facilitated the inclusion of diverse populations throughout the research lifecycle by improving accessibility, engagement, efficiency, and personalisation of interventions. In this article, part of a BMJ Collection on Women’s Health Innovation (www.bmj.com/collections/womens-health-innovation), we describe how DHTs, together with inclusive designs across the research lifecycle, can transform research from an extractive to a participatory process driving inclusion in scope, scale, and systems for improving women’s health.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Digital health technologies to transform women’s health innovation and inclusive research |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1136/bmj-2025-085682 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2025-085682 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215385 |
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