ViVE 2025: A spotlight on women’s health tech

Health technology conferences always have to strike a balance between focusing on technology that is supporting the underpinnings of healthcare delivery and operations, and talking about the populations that the tech is meant to serve. These populations could be care providers, like doctors or nurses, or segmented by socioeconomic status, sex and gender, or affected by diagnoses or diseases. ViVE, which occurred in Nashville Feb 21- 24, 2025 trended their content (and certainly the vendor floors) towards using technology to promote operational efficiency. But there were some bright spots related to women’s health and female founders – one of the few clinical areas to be highlighted. 

As far as main stage content goes, ViVE planned The Connected Future of Maternity Care led by Dr. Veronica Gillispie-Bell from Ochsner Health on Monday and Ok Healthcare, Now Let’s Get in Formation to Ensure Access to Reproductive Health, a panel discussion with Dr. Neel Shah of Maven Clinic, Dr. Jessica Shepherd of Hims & Hers, and Amy Casseri of HCA Healthcare on Tuesday.

One of the best comments I heard was from Dr. Shepherd, “We still can’t deliver babies through a screen,” which highlighted that in-person care delivery is still essential for many reproductive healthcare needs (think IUD insertions, ultrasounds, surgical interventions, and deliveries.) The opportunity lies in some of the lessons learned, as pointed out by Dr. Shah, from the Covid-19 pandemic. The standard of care for prenatal visits is 14 in-person visits, but by having our collective hands forced towards exploring other options when seeing patients in the clinic was too risky, providers learned that remote care is not only feasible but sometimes preferred. An additional important point made by Dr. Shah was that while a woman may realize she’s pregnant between 4 and 6 weeks, her first in-person visit with a clinician could be up to a month later. Telehealth and mobile health platforms can connect women to trusted and evidence-based information to set future parents up for a healthy pregnancy. The group all rallied around the point that telehealth services are an important lever to pull in addressing the rural maternity access crisis in the United States. 

A particular moment of delight was being pulled in at the last minute to co-interview Jaclyn Sanchez, Vice President of Business Operations for PPSWCF alongside Frank Cuttita for Health Stealth Radio. In her role, Jaclyn is responsible for health information security related to all of the care delivered by Planned Parenthood in Central Florida. She thoughtfully shared, “Planned Parenthood is taking women’s health data protection extremely seriously in light of the current federal administration.” In addition to our conversation around cybersecurity, we discussed the need for more and better women’s health data to inform the even-present discussion of using AI models for care. In light of the Trump administration removing large swaths of public health and research data related to women and LGBTQ research, Jaclyn emphasized the need for companies building AI models for women’s health to be extremely cautious, thoughtful and thorough so as not to perpetuate bias. 

I found additional pockets of energy at affiliate events, such as the Women’s Health Innovation evening hosted by Snatch Health and Rock Health. The power-panel featured Megan Zweig of Rock Health, Dr. Jessica Shepherd of Hims & Hers, Lisa Bari, CEO of Civitas Networks for Health, Clare Kennedy Purvis, founder of WELL, Athena Shea, Director at B Capital Group, and Jessica Bell van der Wal, CEO of Frame. As an ice breaker, the panelists were asked to share a song lyric that they connected with their feelings about women’s health. Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves by the Eurthymics was mentioned and it captured the overall theme of the conversation. Women are biohacking and building companies to solve the problems that they and other women have struggled with and are being supported by female venture capitalists. 

Speaking of venture capitalists…Springboard Enterprises hosted Health Innovation Meets Her Leadership: 2025 Trends Women Founders Need to Know, a breakfast panel on Tuesday AM. The room was packed with around 100 participants to learn about the Springboard Enterprises startup accelerator programs and hear from Amy Davis from Eli Lilly, Kristen Valdes, Founder of b.well (Springboard alumni), Pete Micca from Deloitte and Tara Bishop, Founder of Black Opal Ventures. I asked Maggie Diehl, CEO of Pario Health, who was sitting next to me at the event, what she got out of ViVE as a female founder. Maggie (and other founders at the table) spoke to their appreciation of being able to meet with multiple investors all at the same place – which is frankly an under-marketed benefit of the event, even if the ViVE tagline is “Where digital health executives go to do business.” The act of fundraising can be an expensive business with founders flying around the country to pitch investment funds. Being able to stack meetings with investors over two to three days and connect with Springboard Enterprises reduces costs and opens opportunities for female founders. 

ViVE may not be a women’s health conference, but the women who came showed up for each other. Here’s hoping there is even more women’s health content in 2026.  

Katie D. McMillan, MPH is the CEO of Well Made Health, LLC, a business strategy consulting firm for health technology companies. She is also a curious researcher and writer focusing on digital health evidence, healthcare innovation, and women’s health. Katie can be reached at [email protected] or LinkedIn.