Katie’s Notebook: January 6, 2025
Hello from the other siiiiiiiiide of the holidays. It’s officially “let’s circle up after the New Year” time. I was off for about two weeks and couldn’t be happier about sitting down at my desk again. I kicked off 2025 with some journaling, business planning, and sketching out ideas for pieces I want to write. I am committing to getting loud about women’s health. This will include highlighting disparities in funding, sharing reproductive health policy challenges, as well as increasing transparency related to efficacy and evidence when it comes to solutions marketed to women to improve their health. As we kick off Trump 2.0 this feels more important than ever. I updated my Well Made Health Instagram account description to: Come for the facts. Stay for the feminism. The hang out space of Well Made Health. If this feels like your vibe, join me at @wellmadehealth.
As far as client work goes, I continue to prioritize working with female founders. I am interested in both solutions-oriented digital health companies and what I like to call ecosystem-level organizations. One of my superpowers is to interpret, distill, and communicate complex information in a way that is easy to understand. I’d love to do more of that for patient-facing content as well as large ‘state of the industry’ type reports. Ping me if you know someone who might benefit from my expertise!
Without further adieu, let’s dig into the 5:
Food: I felt the need to cook something stick-to-your ribs cozy during winter break, and found this chicken, rice, and broccoli casserole while I was walking into the grocery store. With over 800 5-star reviews I felt like I couldn’t go wrong. It took around an hour an a half from start to finish, but the final result was worth it. If you are going to try it, definitely use the garlic powder (listed as optional) and add the Ritz cracker topping. Another benefit: leftovers for lunch.
Funding: Women’s Net funds multiple women-led small business grants each year for a total of $435,000. Each month they award a $10,000 grant and then there are bonus rounds and additional $25,000 grants for previous recipients. It’s a great source for $$$.
Findings: Remember when I wrote an article looking at wearables potentially identifying new digital biomarkers for women’s health? And wrote a follow up piece digging into what it would take to add new digital biomarkers? Whoop just published a study that found a new digital biomarker for monitoring menstrual cycles through wearable technology. FemTech Insider broke the news and shared that Whoop “developed a novel metric called “cardiovascular amplitude” that measures fluctuations in resting heart rate (RHR) and heart rate variability (RMSSD) throughout the menstrual cycle. This non-invasive measurement could potentially serve as an indicator of reproductive health and cycle irregularities.” The potential use language is a big vague, but I see opportunities for increased insight into fertile windows (to get pregnant as well as avoid), athletic performance improvement (cycle syncing among the WMBA and scheduling big games on high performance days isn’t a super crazy idea), and improving our understanding around perimenopause. A new biomarker is like a new math equation — we can apply it many ways to understand human health. Exciting!
Flipped pages: I kicked off 2025 with Kristen Hannah’s book, The Nightingale. It clocked in at around 600 pages and I read it in 5 days. I couldn’t put it down! Such a compelling story of the lives of two women living in France during WW2 and the ways they resisted Nazi occupation. It’s fiction, but I imagine that the tales aren’t too far from the truth for many who lived during that time. Next up is This Motherless Land by Nikki May and I can’t wait for Onyx Storm to drop in a few weeks!
Flabbergasted: Digital health tools grow in scope and function to 337,000, according to IQVIA report. In some ways 337,000 seems like a lot, but in other ways, I feel like it might not include everything available on the market. Irregardless, the report does a great job at categorizing digital health products, and I particularly enjoyed Exhibit 19: Prescription digital therapeutic market authorizations since May 2021. As someone who’s always digging for evidence-based health tech, having this glanceable image complete with coding for which federal entity has reviewed it, I have to give a standing ovation to the team who put this together.
What I’ve Been Writing
What do the Future Tech Hotshots tell us about healthcare innovation?, Digital Health Insights
I read 33 books in 2024, Well Made Health blog
Fun Finds
I read a NYTimes Wirecutter article on the most durable women’s tights, and these Shapermint ones outperformed the others on the market. I love a tights and sweater dress moment in the winter so I’ll be hitting add to cart soon (they are currently running a 30% off promotion.) I was gifted an Owala water bottle for Christmas and I see why they are hyped up. It’s currently sitting next to me on my desk and will be my primary source for reaching my 2025 hydration goals. Ewwww it is norovirus season. I’m bookmarking this article with tactical tips for curbing the spread of infection once someone goes down in your house.
Note: As a solopreneur I use affiliate links for some of the products I believe in as a means of diversifying my income. When you buy something I have linked to, I may receive a small commission from that company at no cost to you.
