Episode Details

For years, women were told, “It’s just pain.” What happens when that pain is turned into hard data that doctors can’t ignore?

In this episode of FemTech at Work, we have Samantha (Sam) Costa, nurse practitioner, midwife and founder of Charlie Health, a clinically designed women’s health platform built in Australia for women across the reproductive lifespan. Sam shares how years of working in fertility and women’s health clinics, from tertiary hospitals to remote Indigenous communities in Cape York, exposed the huge gap between what period and fertility apps promise and what women actually experience. That frustration and award‑winning research into cycle‑tracking apps sparked the idea for Charli Health- a hybrid model that combines a powerful cycle and symptom tracker with access to real clinicians via a virtual clinic.

For listeners, this episode is an invitation to know your body better, track your health before there’s a problem, and be part of closing the gender health and pain gaps one data point and one conversation at a time.

Key Takeaways:

• Find out how a nurse practitioner’s frustration with popular period apps led to the creation of a clinically designed women’s health platform
• Discover why turning “it’s just some pain” into longitudinal data can change how seriously GPs take women’s symptoms
• Learn how Charli Health’s hybrid model (app + virtual clinic) is redefining access to women’s health care across rural, remote and metro Australia
• Understand how ring‑fenced, women‑specific AI and local clinical guidelines make Charli Health different from generic tools like ChatGPT
• Discover why well-women, not just those with diagnoses, should be tracking their cycles, pain and hormones from their teens onwards
• Find out how data from Charli Health could help with earlier recognition of conditions like endometriosis without relying solely on invasive surgery
• Understand how Charli Health is working to be culturally safe and relevant for First Nations women and diverse language and education backgrounds
• Discover what most founders get wrong when they start with tech instead of a real clinical problem and how Sam avoided that trap

Resources:

Samantha Costa: LinkedIn

Charli Health: LinkedIn

Charli Health: https://charli.health/

Maaike Steinebach LinkedIn

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

Instagram Femtech Future: @femtech_future

Your body has been talking to you for years. Are you finally ready to listen? Press play now to hear how Charli Health is transforming women’s pain, periods and fertility journeys into powerful data, real diagnoses and life‑changing care and to discover what’s possible when women refuse to be dismissed.

If this episode moved you, be part of the movement: share it with a friend who needs to hear it, hit like, and leave a review so more women can find these stories. See you next week for another episode of FemTech at Work, where we spotlight the founders and innovators reshaping women’s health.