The medical and technological advancements of the past two decades have revolutionized medicine, enabling breakthroughs in diagnostics, personalized treatments, and disease management. Yet these advancements have not been equally distributed: Women continue to face significant gaps in treatment and outcomes. A recent report by McKinsey Health Institute found that, globally, women spend 25% more of their lives than men in “debilitating health,” and women of color are doubly burdened by additional race-based disparities.
While policy and sociocultural changes will be necessary to dismantle entrenched gender biases in medicine, new approaches in healthcare data analytics are playing an increasingly impactful role. In September, Komodo Health marked 10 years since the creation of its powerful analytics platform and Healthcare Map™ — a resource that charts demographic-specific healthcare data with unprecedented detail to generate higher-fidelity insights for underrepresented patients. In this past decade, we’ve worked to reduce gender bias in healthcare data and the research it powers, as well as bring visibility to previously unmeasured gender gaps in medicine. We’ve worked to elucidate disparities for women at the intersections of overburdened demographics with insights into race and ethnicity and social determinants of health.
A focus on high-fidelity data and demographic-specific epidemiological research is long overdue in the field of women’s health. Diseases that predominantly affect women tend to be disproportionately underfunded and underresearched. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) still applies a significantly larger share of its resources to diseases that primarily affect men. In 2020, an estimated 1% of healthcare research and innovation dollars was invested in female-specific conditions beyond oncology — conditions that Komodo is actively working to support, such as multiple sclerosis, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, uterine fibroids, and uterine cancer.
Ensuring inclusion and representation is key. Male-skewed research and data can perpetuate higher rates of misdiagnosis and delayed treatment among women, as well as worse treatment outcomes because procedural and pharmacological interventions have been less researched in female populations. For instance, heart disease — the leading cause of death among women — frequently presents differently in women than in men, leading to misdiagnosis or delayed treatment. Women also face worse outcomes when they undergo procedures such as heart bypass surgery, partly due to a lack of female-specific research.
The Biden administration, recognizing the urgency of addressing these disparities, has made women’s health a national priority. In January, President Biden issued an executive order on advancing women’s health research and innovation, emphasizing the critical need to close the gaps in women's health research and care. This order is part of a broader movement to elevate women’s health as a priority in medical research and healthcare delivery.
As Komodo celebrates ten years of mapping healthcare, we remain dedicated to closing gaps in care. Over the next decade, we will continue to leverage our novel technologies in collaboration with our clients and advocacy and academic partners to deliver the next generation of data, analytics, and insights that address persistent gaps in healthcare, improve patient outcomes, and advance health equity.
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