Episode Details

What happens when a young doctor, failed by the very system she works in, decides to rebuild women's healthcare from the ground up using AI?

Today, we're chatting with Dr. Ariella Heffernan-Marks, founder of Ovum AI, about how her battle with debilitating vestibular migraines exposed the deep biases and data gaps in women's healthcare and sparked a radically different solution. Ariella reveals how Ovum AI works as an AI health partner for women, integrating medical reports, wearables, symptoms, and reproductive health into a longitudinal 'health brain' designed around women's physiology. You'll hear how she moved from medical school to building and funding a FemTech startup, why generic tools like ChatGPT can't safely serve women's health needs, and how a human-first, privacy-obsessed approach to AI is reshaping doctor visits, workplace wellbeing, and women's long-term health. Ariella also lifts the curtain on investor bias, designing for neurodivergent users, and the self-care routines that keep her grounded while she pursues the audacious goal of closing a trillion-dollar gender health gap.

Let's dive in!

Key Takeaways:

• How Ariella's "mystery illness" led her to create Ovum AI, a lifetime health record and AI advocate for women
• How Ovum AI connects periods, perimenopause, chronic illness, and mental health into one intelligent system
• Understand the gender health gap and why women spending 25% more time in poor health, and what does that really cost our economies and careers?
• Find out how Ariella is tackling AI bias head-on
• What does it take to build a women-specific AI from the ground up, instead of just plugging women’s questions into generic large language models?
• Learn why data privacy is non‑negotiable and Ovum's approach to consent, de-identification, and face ID for secure health data upload
• Discover Ovum's B2B strategy and how it supports women's health at work without accessing individual data
• Understand the fundraising journey, what did the right investors see in women's health and AI that skeptics missed? How can founders identify aligned backers?
• Learn from Ariella's founder routine (treating seasons, self-reflection and coaching) as core parts of building a FemTech company.

Resources:

Ariella Heffernan - Marks: LinkedIn

Ovum AI: LinkedIn

Ovum AI: https://www.askovum.com/

Maaike Steinebach : LinkedIn

Website Femtech Future https://www.femtechfuture.com

Instagram Femtech Future: @femtech_future

Ready to see what women’s healthcare can look like when it’s designed by women, for women, and powered by AI that actually understands us? Tune in now and step inside Ariella’s journey from dismissed patient to doctor-founder, building the “smartest AI woman in the world” with Ovum.

If this episode spoke to you, don’t keep it to yourself, be part of the movement to close the gender health gap. Share this conversation with a friend or colleague, hit follow, leave a review, and help us amplify the voices shaping the future of FemTech.

See you next week for another episode of Femtec at Work, where we spotlight the founders, builders and believers driving women's health forward!