Women’s Health Needs Clinical Innovation That Starts With Real Life

For too long, women’s health has been shaped by solutions built far away from women’s lived experiences. Technology is created in labs, refined in controlled environments, and tested on assumptions. But real bodies do not operate in controlled environments. Real life is messy, unpredictable, and emotional. And women’s health innovation must begin there.

Real innovation does not start in the lab. It starts in the real world.

My understanding of women’s health did not come from textbooks. It was shaped by lived experience and years of observing how stress, instability, and the pressure of daily life can directly impact vaginal health and fertility. What I saw repeatedly was the same pattern: misdiagnosis, missing information, and women left without clarity about their own bodies.

This is why I believe the future of women’s health requires a shift. We must begin with listening, not assuming. With women’s reality, not guesswork. With truth, not taboos.

Why Innovation Must Start Outside the Lab

Women’s bodies respond to real life. Hormones shift under stress. Vaginal pH fluctuates not only across the cycle, but through everyday factors like medication, lifestyle, and sexual activity. Basal Body Temperature reveals patterns in fertility and inflammation. These biomarkers are essential signals, but women rarely have meaningful access to them.

Access often comes only when a problem escalates to the point that a doctor visit becomes unavoidable. And even then, women are frequently told everything is normal or that discomfort is expected. Innovation cannot ignore these realities. Technology that is created without understanding women’s lived experiences will always fall short. The process has to start with listening and learning.

The Moment the Mission Became Clear

During the pandemic, while working full-time in Budapest, I had the time and space to reflect on my own health journey and everything I had witnessed. I kept returning to the same thought: women deserve clarity. Real clarity. Not the vague answers many receive today.

With my background in scaling companies in both Europe and the United States, I knew the mechanics of building a strong operation. But this mission was different. It wasn’t a strategic business move. It felt like something I had to make because it didn't exist.

That is how YON E was born: from a realization that women need access to accurate, science-based information about their bodies, in a way that fits into everyday life, not only in clinical settings.

Building With Women Instead of Building Around Them

Before YON E was even officially registered, I focused on listening. I reached out to hospitals, gynecologists, engineers, researchers, and innovation teams. I conducted my own literature review, reviewing medical publications on pH, temperature, and the predictable yet often overlooked changes that occur throughout the cycle.

I contacted experts through LinkedIn, websites, and professional networks. I sent questionnaires. I built relationships long before creating the first engineering roadmap. And I learned something that shaped our entire approach.

Women are rarely included early enough in the innovation process. Many companies create technology first and only later ask women to adapt to it. We chose the opposite path. We co-created from day one.

This approach is one of YON E's strongest differentiators.

Bringing Scientific Accuracy Into Everyday Life

Our primary focus at YON E is clear, foundational biomarkers: vaginal pH and basal body temperature.

These biomarkers are robust because they reveal what is happening inside the body in real time.

• PH shows inflammation and infection patterns

• Temperature reflects hormonal shifts and fertility windows

• Both change across the cycle in meaningful, measurable ways

Despite this, women currently have almost no access to continuous measurement. The information is fragmented, delayed, and often inaccurate.

We want to change that by bringing scientific accuracy directly into a woman’s daily life. We want women to understand their vaginal health the same way they know steps on a smartwatch or heart rate during a workout, not as medical jargon, but as simple, clear, preventive insight.

This is how we move women’s health forward, not by expecting women to adapt to clinical tools, but by creating tools that adapt to women.

Breaking Taboos Is Part of Innovation

Working for years in male-dominated environments prepared me for the reality of building a health tech company. I was often the only woman in business meetings. I have negotiated deals with men who openly stated they did not want to work with a woman.

But I also learned that staying silent does not move anything forward. Taboos have held back women’s health for too long. Talking about vaginal health openly is not provocative; it is necessary. Transparency and directness are part of how I operate. For me, directness is respect.

If we want innovation, we have to talk about the topics that make people uncomfortable.

Innovation Also Means Rebuilding Trust

While developing our medical device, we realized that most consumer-facing medical companies delay community building and education until the final stages. We refused to take that approach.

We launched our e-commerce division early, not to distract from the medical work, but to build trust. It allows us to educate women, gather ongoing user feedback, and understand the needs and expectations of our audience long before the device enters the market.

This dual strategy strengthens our clinical development. It ensures that every product decision is grounded in lived reality rather than hypothetical assumptions.

Resilience Is Part of Building Women’s Health

Stepping into this space also means facing the financial imbalance that affects female founders. Only a small fraction of capital goes to women, and even less to deep tech solving intimate health challenges.

I learned early on that fundraising for a women’s health company requires persistence. We raised our first 200,000 euros through angel investors. The years that followed were among the hardest periods for fundraising across the market, but we kept going. Eventually, we built a strong advisory team and secured strategic investors with PMK Group Dr. Peter Kovacs who understands the mission and believe in what we are creating.

Every no became a redirection toward the right yes.

Where We Go Next

YON E is not only building a medical device. We are building a new standard for preventive women’s hormonal health. We are creating clarity where there has been confusion, silence, or shame. And we are doing it by starting with real life.

Women deserve:

• Daily access to accurate biomarkers

• Preventive care instead of reactive care

• Tools grounded in science and real use cases

• Transparency, safety, and respect

• Innovation that centers their lived experiences

The future of women’s health must be built with women, not around them.

Real life must guide clinical innovation. And at YON E, that is precisely where we begin.