Overcoming bias in designing women's health solutions
8 November 2023, 3pm (GMT)
Although women make up nearly 50% of the world’s population, women’s health issues are often still considered niche. Reduced participation in clinical research and user studies, reduced funding, and lack of data disaggregation by sex and gender has led to women being systematically overlooked by healthcare systems.
The panellists
Dr. Michelle Oyen
Michelle is the inaugural Director of the new Centre for Women’s Health Engineering, based in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to her current appointment, she was on the faculty at the University of Cambridge. She has researched engineering approaches to pregnancy and women’s health for over twenty years, particularly in methods to prevent, diagnose, and intervene in preterm birth.
Dr. Mark Slack
Mark graduated from the College of Medicine of South Africa in Gynaecology. He was previously head of Gynaecology and Urogynaecology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, University of Cambridge Teaching Hospitals Trust, Cambridge. He is a Co-founder of CMR Surgical, who have developed a novel surgical robot (Versius) designed to increase the use of minimally invasive (keyhole) surgery. This is now the second-largest soft tissue robotic company in the world.
Hélène Guillaume Pabis
Hélène is the founder and CEO of WILD.AI, an AI-driven tool to empower and assist female athletes. She studied mathematics and financial risks, was a quant in a hedge fund and also a management consultant to Fortune500 companies in AI. She was a rugby player; she's an ultra-marathon runner, triathlete, surfer, skier, and ice swimmer. Her favourite combined skillset is vitality+brains.
Valentina Lorenzi
Valentina is a PhD student in bioinformatics, focusing her research on unravelling the mysteries of how the human reproductive system develops prenatally. For the past couple of years, she has been actively involved with the Cambridge Femtech Society, a student-led organisation which aims at promoting knowledge-sharing and tackling challenges in Femtech - the intersection of women’s health and technology.
What will be discussed?
In this webinar, our expert panellists will discuss topics like:
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Cleaning up biases in clinical data used to train AI models.
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Maximising the impact of available funding in women’s health research.
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Enhancing surgical outcomes by re-engineering tools for female surgeons.
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Opportunities for innovation in the treatment, management and diagnosis of female-specific conditions.