Skip Navigation
DesignMeets ARCTRN
Informed Design

Designing the Future of Women’s Health: The Rise of FemTech in Canada

November 06, 2025 • 5 minute read

Women’s health is finally having its moment, and it’s long overdue. Across Canada and globally, FemTech (technology that supports women’s health and wellness) is transforming how people experience care. But new apps and shiny devices aren’t driving this growth. Design is.

As UX and Service Designers, we’re watching an industry wake up to a hard truth: for too long the healthcare system has overlooked, under-researched, and underserved women’s health. And that’s exactly where thoughtful design can make a transformative difference.

 

Why FemTech? Why Now?

For decades, researchers excluded women from clinical trials. Doctors minimized their symptoms. Healthcare systems treated their needs as niche rather than central. The result? Huge gaps in diagnosis, treatment, and support, from hormone health, endometriosis and PCOS, to postpartum mental health and menopause.

In Canada, these gaps cut even deeper. Women in rural and remote communities often struggle to access care — from limited local services to long travel distances for specialists. Even in major urban centres, women wait months (sometimes years) for diagnosis and treatment. Indigenous and immigrant communities face additional systemic barriers that further restrict equitable access and quality of care.

That’s where FemTech steps in  and design pushes it forward. We’re seeing solutions built around real needs: menstrual health trackers, fertility support, menopause platforms, and virtual maternal care. What unites the best of them? Their creators designed them with empathy, evidence, and inclusivity in mind.

 

The Role of UX and Service Design

Designing for women’s health isn’t about making applications “look pretty.” It’s about reshaping the entire care experience, from how people discover and understand care to how they access, receive, and sustain it long after the first interaction. This approach embeds equity and empathy into every touchpoint. A few patterns are emerging:

  • Long-term journeys matter. Women’s health spans life stages: puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, menopause. Good design accounts for continuity, not one-off interactions.
  • Trust is everything. When care involves stigma, pain, or silence (think miscarriage, pelvic pain, or depression), design must prioritize privacy, empathy, and a tone that feels safe.
  • Inclusion is non-negotiable. Our solutions are designed to work seamlessly across cultures, languages, gender identities, and levels of access because Canada’s diversity demands it. We meet WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards, offer both French and plain-language English, and ensure functionality in low-bandwidth environments.
  • Service ecosystems matter as much as screens. Behind every website, application, product, and service sits a network: clinicians, coordinators, family members, and community supports. Service design helps weave them together.

Case in Point: MOVIN

At Pivot, we partnered with Women’s College Hospital on MOVIN (Maternal Virtual Intervention Network). Our goal was simple but ambitious: close the gap in how we identify and support postpartum depression and anxiety.

Here’s what we learned:

  • Start with empathy. We interviewed expecting and new mothers, listening to their stories. We discovered that many turned to Google at 3am instead of calling a doctor. That insight shaped the entire experience.
  • Ground everything in evidence. The tool integrates the EPDS (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale), a clinically validated screening tool, ensuring that what feels user-friendly also stands up to clinical scrutiny.
  • Design for two users. MOVIN isn’t just for patients, it’s also for care coordinators. Dual interfaces mean women get timely support while providers see the bigger picture.
  • Think beyond the pilot. MOVIN launched as a 15-month pilot study with the long-term goal of scaling across the province. The pilot’s success paved the way for a province-wide randomized control trial, scheduled to launch in Fall 2025. Recently, the team completed a comprehensive modernization of the brand and platform — including a revamped user experience and a diversity and inclusion audit — to ensure the system reflects Canada’s cultural and demographic diversity.

The takeaway? Design can bridge the gap between clinical expertise and lived experience and help women feel seen, heard, and supported in moments that matter most.

 

What’s Next for FemTech in Canada

The Canadian FemTech ecosystem is growing rapidly, but we need to match this momentum with investment, policy, and design-led implementation.

Consider the work of FemTech Canada, a non-profit organization, that’s actively advocating for a $100 million federal investment in women’s health and FemTech innovation through its 2025 Federal Budget Proposal. Their network already connects more than 170 Canadian FemTech companies developing tools across the spectrum of women’s health in fields such as fertility and maternal care, menopause, mental health, and chronic disease.

What makes this advocacy powerful is that it mirrors Pivot’s Service Design principles:

  • Mapping the ecosystem of founders, researchers, clinicians, and policymakers.
  • Identifying friction points in funding, regulation, and adoption.
  • Designing interventions that can scale innovation and deliver real health impact.

By combining grassroots innovation with strategic policy advocacy, FemTech Canada is showing how Canada can position itself as a global leader in women’s health innovation. With the right investment and design-led thinking, FemTech has the potential not just to close gaps in care, but to redefine equity in healthcare delivery.

 

Building Futures, Not Just Filling Gaps

Ultimately, FemTech is not just about technology. It’s about rethinking care from the ground up with empathy, inclusion, and design at the centre. Canada has an opportunity to lead, showing what happens when healthcare innovation is shaped by the people it’s meant to serve.

The MOVIN project with Women’s College Hospital proves it: when we bring together clinical rigour, user-centred design, and a service mindset, we create solutions that don’t just fill gaps — they build futures.

 

About Pivot

Pivot is a healthcare-focused design studio. We combine research, service design, and product craft to turn evidence into services people trust and use. Projects like MOVIN show how design can bridge lived experience and clinical expertise to deliver safer, more equitable care.

 

Sources