Sobremesa(health): The Quantified Female
For decades, medicine’s default research subject was a man. No uterus, no cycle and no inconvenient hormonal fluctuations.
Researchers assumed that made him easier to study.
The consequences are well documented: drug doses tested on male bodies then handed to women with a shrug, heart attacks that didn’t match the textbook, diagnoses that took years because your symptoms “didn’t fit”. Scientists have been raising the alarm for 30 years, yet institutions are still, somehow, struggling to catch up.
Spain got its own reminder this summer: the official guidance on nutrition in menopause borrowed iron and vitamin C values from studies done exclusively on men, and didn't mention it. The report is now "under review".
So women stopped waiting. Millions on Reddit are doing medicine’s homework for it, comparing notes with strangers who know more than their GP. In Belgium, a study asked for 200 women to sample their own microbiome. More than 6,000 signed up. And in California, Kate Tolo, partner to Bryan Johnson (the tech millionaire spending a fortune trying not to die), wakes up to spit into a tube, sleeps wrapped in sensors and logs some 14 million data points on her menstrual cycle, on her way to becoming “the world’s most measured woman.”
Investors noticed: not new evidence, but unmet demand, enough for Google to buy into the period app Flo this October. Women’s health is suddenly one of the hottest corners in healthcare, and apps, wearables and AI diagnostic tools are racing to finally understand female physiology.
It looks like a revolution, but it's also a confession: the industry is building on data medicine never bothered to collect.
Nature Medicine argues that women’s health can’t wait for studies, so real-world data must fill the gap. Men got clinical trials. Women are getting smartwatches. And more data isn't necessarily better... one very expensive woman, is still a sample of one. 6000 enthusiastic volunteers are a cohort, not a population. A wearable gives you a number, not a diagnosis.
Our next guest is Lucía Orozco López, founder of FemTech Spain, the platform connecting the country’s women’s health innovation ecosystem, and co-founder of Orvela Partners, where she helps those companies with funding and international growth. She knows what's being built, who's paying for it, and what happens when the data underneath is missing.
This is not a FemTech showcase. It's a conversation about an older, more awkward problem: what has it cost to be the exception for this long, and can tech fix what science skipped?
On the table:
Is the “most measured woman in the world” a breakthrough, or a symptom?
If AI learns from medicine’s past, whose body will it think is normal?
Are we funding the women's health problems that matter, or the ones easiest to monetise?
If this were happening to men, would we have tolerated it for 50 years?
You don’t need to be a doctor, a founder or an investor. If you’ve ever Googled a symptom at 2am, or love someone who has, you’re already qualified.
🍷 The ticket includes 2 drinks and light snacks.
💡 Refund policy: Refunds are not available. If you choose not to come, you're welcome to sell your ticket in the Sobremesa(health) group or to a friend, just send us a quick message at +34 665 39 92 36 to let us know.