A Matter of women’s health
We sat down with eve&i co-founder Tamara Stix-Steinwald for a deep dive into women’s health and a very personal story that brought her there.
Question: Hi Tamara. We are very happy to have someone so close to us and someone, who is so inspiring to many, as our first guest for #Matters. How about though we start with a somewhat classic introduction for our readers? Who are you? What do you do? And most importantly: What matters to you?
Tamara: Hi, its a pleasure to be kicking of your interview series, can't wait to read about all the other Matters.
I am Tamara, 36 years old, I was always interested in innovation and women’s health always mattered deeply to me. Luckily I am finally also tackling this important topic in my professional life - building a menopause startup - but how I got there is a very personal story.
Q: Now you made us curious… How did you find your Matter?
Tamara: Since I was a teen, I had to deal with terrible period cramps and bladder pain that nobody would take seriously. Doctors just put me on the contraceptive pill and gave me pain killers - „its normal“ they said. But is it really normal to stop playing sports and going to social events as a young woman?! I don’t believe so!
Only after many – and unfortunately also traumatic – doctor visits I figured out that I suffer from a painful bladder disease, but still no one could really help me, nor explain my monthly period pain that was definitely not normal. The disease was too small for pharma to invest money as it only affects mostly women - this made me outrageous and sad at the same time.
So, I started taking my health into my own hands, and pretty much tried everything from new – or sometimes odd – therapies, supplements, medications, but also researching and reading a lot about female health. I was always on the hunt for the newest med „tech shit“, even if it would cost a lot of money, like for example last year I wore a sensor on my ear for vagus nerve stimulation. Even though tackling a chronic disease is not fun, it is very exciting to explore new technologies and medical innovations.
Q: That’s very unfortunate, yet also very inspiring, but you seem like you’re a half glass full kinda person. How did you manage to make your Matter your work or make your work matter?
Tamara: After some years in innovation consulting, I joined mySugr as a Product Owner, a diabetes care app, as I really wanted to put the many hours of my „work life“ into something more sustainable than just one-off projects.
For my work I would need to understand the needs of people with medical problems and create solutions that would „make their diabetes suck less“. That felt great. As someone with a chronic disease I just knew how awesome it is if there is a technology that would support your chronic condition. I’ve never felt as motivated at work before, so I knew that health care is the place where I want to put my time, energy and effort in.
However, it was rather a lucky coincidence that I ended up working on female health & menopause.
Q: Coincidence or maybe serendipity?
Tamara: True. After mySugr I started working as an entrepreneur in residence at RoX health, an innovation company of Roche. Initially, our team tested an idea around brain health to lower the risk of Alzheimer. We figured that most people were not aware or interested in that topic. Just one group of women, aged 40-60, was highly invested as they suffered from neurological problems such as brain fog, missing words, concentration, which even led that some of them were thinking that they had Alzheimer's disease.
When investigating further we figured that they actually „just suffered“ from menopausal symptoms, which none of them was aware of. I am saying „just“, because menopause is a natural process and therefore the majority of doctors says „just deal with it and shut up“ - just as I’d experience with my period and bladder issues.
But this is not right! We CANNOT just deal with it - as it provides a serious burden for women on a personal, physiological, psychological and economic level if not taken seriously. It doesnt only impact your current situation but can also have longterm impacts, that could be prevented if we would not just “take it for granted” that women suffer in silence.
“Who decided that women are worth less than the other half of the planet - just because we have a more complex body? This angers me, but also motivates me and thrives me forward. ”
– Tamara Stix-Steinwald
Q: Wow that is an astonishing discovery - we have to admit, we also knew very little about this phase in a woman’s life. How did you follow up on that?
Tamara: We were taking a closer look at that issue and said to ourselves: „Do we really just accept the fact that by 2025 1 Billion women will be in menopause and 2/3 of them will suffer from symptoms where men would normally be treated? Insomnia, concentration, heat waves, bone pain just to name a few.“ If you consider that 1/3 of menopausal women suffer so bad that they consider to stop working, we might start to realize that this is a way bigger issue, with a huge economic impact. But still up to now this topic is hardly researched nor understood (gender data health gap). Who decided that women are worth less than the other half of the planet - just because we have a more complex body? This angers me, but also motivates me and thrives me forward.
We then opened pandoras box by doing hundreds of interviews with women. Their experiences in health care, as well as in their communities, showed that women are systematically understudied, and therefore mistreated or not treated at all, bringing even more burden to their often challenging life's. For example we learned that most women didn’t know, if they suffer from a disease or, if they are in menopause. Most of them didn’t know hormonal changes could start in the beginning of their 40ies already.
Something had to be done. So, we founded “eve&i” and developed the “MenoKompass”, a digital tool, that helps women to understand if they are in menopause, what’s normal and what they can do about it. This free tool was a huge success and quickly let to a big community of women. Within this setup we were able to prototype and further test various business ideas, exploring the chances but also challenges in health care.
Q: That is a very inspiring journey to Matter. As a take-away for our readers: What tip would you give people, who want to work on stuff that matters?
Tamara: When you want to create meaningful solutions, you need to truly understand what your users problems are and what matters to them. So, for me it always starts with quantitative and qualitative research, followed by a user-centered product development approach aka testing hypothesis - fail fast, learn quickly.
Q: And as a last question: If you could change one thing when it comes to your Matter, what would it be?
Tamara: My journey has not only taught me a lot about health innovation, but also on female health and how understudied we are, leading to fundamental structured disadvantages for people with female physiology.
So not only, giving everyone the same access to health care and but also closing the gaps of medical research in order to provide fair & serious treatment - no matter what sex or ethnicity you have - would be the one thing that I'd change.
Tamara’s Matters: #womenshealth #genderequality #menopause