What Digital Health Keeps Getting Wrong About Women | Blush & Bloom Podcast Ep. 19

Asele Team
Oct 16
5 min read

Digital health has exploded in recent years, with apps promising to help women track cycles, manage fertility, or navigate postpartum recovery. Yet, despite the rise of femtech, many women still feel unheard, unseen, or even alienated by the very tools designed for them.

In this episode of Blush & Bloom, host Gigi Kenneth talks with Dr. Michelle Frank, a women’s health advocate and digital health expert who has spent over a decade in the space. A self-described unconventional doctor, Dr. Michelle blends clinical experience with innovation — helping build digital platforms that give women a voice in their own care.

Together, they explore what digital health keeps getting wrong about women and how empathy, trust, and storytelling can rebuild the connection between medicine, technology, and lived experience.

👩🏽‍⚕️ From Clinic Walls to Digital Spaces

Dr. Michelle’s path into digital health wasn’t planned. After medical school, she joined a startup that connected new parents with doctors for questions about newborn care.

“It was supposed to be temporary,” she says, “but I fell in love with it. Talking to parents every day, answering questions — I realized how many people just needed someone to listen.”

That early experience revealed a deep gap between what doctors thought patients needed and what women were actually searching for: empathy, reassurance, and understanding.

Over the years, Dr. Michelle worked with several community-driven platforms, including SHEROES, a social platform for women in India, and My Health Chat, a global Twitter-based initiative where women (and men) shared experiences and questions about their health during the pandemic.

Through these spaces, she discovered the real power of digital health: connection.

“When you create a safe, non-judgmental space online,” she says, “women finally talk about things they’ve been quiet about for years.”

💬 The Biggest Mistake: Building for Women Without Listening to Them

One of the most striking points in the conversation is how many health apps are built on assumptions. Founders often start from personal experience — which is valuable — but forget that not all women experience health the same way.

Dr. Michelle explains that the problem begins when innovation moves faster than listening.

“You can’t build something for women if you’re not talking to them,” she says. “Every woman’s health journey is shaped by culture, access, and trust. If you ignore that, your product may look good but it won’t feel right.”

In many cases, apps promise personalization but deliver generic advice, leaving users feeling unseen. The lack of empathy isn’t just bad UX — it’s bad care.

💗 Empathy Is Not a Feature — It’s the Foundation

For Dr. Michelle, empathy is the starting point of every great health solution.

She recalls how small interactions — like replying to a worried mother or following up on a patient’s progress — changed people’s trust in digital platforms.

“Empathy doesn’t mean flowery words,” she explains. “It’s about showing that you care enough to listen, to respond, to remember.”

When women feel dismissed — whether by an app, a doctor, or an algorithm — they withdraw. Over time, that withdrawal becomes distrust in the healthcare system itself.

Gigi adds that this echoes across continents. In Africa, many women are still told that painful periods, mood swings, or exhaustion are “normal.” The result? Women delay seeking help, normalize suffering, and internalize silence.

Both agree: digital health can’t fix what it doesn’t validate.

🧠 Stigma, Culture, and the Invisible Barriers

While stigma looks different across regions, its impact is universal. In India, Dr. Michelle says, cultural taboos still prevent many women from speaking about menstruation, fertility, or postpartum depression.

In Africa, similar barriers exist — often reinforced by religion, family expectations, or lack of privacy.

Digital spaces can offer a lifeline here. Anonymity and community create room for honesty. Platforms like SHEROES or My Health

Chat allow women to express what they cannot say aloud at home.

But with that freedom comes responsibility. Tech founders must create safe, moderated, and respectful environments — not just data-collection systems with chat functions.

🤖 The AI Hype — and Its Hidden Risks

As the conversation turns to artificial intelligence, Dr. Michelle offers both optimism and caution.

AI, she says, can make health apps smarter — adapting languages, analyzing symptoms, and offering faster responses. But it can also make care colder if ethical questions aren’t considered.

“We already know what AI can do,” she says. “The real question is — what should it do? Are we protecting privacy? Are we crossing emotional lines?”

She points to stories of users confiding in chatbots as if they were human therapists, sometimes with tragic results. AI may process emotion, but it doesn’t feel it — and when people forget that, harm follows.

🧘🏾‍♀️ Hybrid Communities: Where Digital Meets Real Life

Dr. Michelle believes the future of women’s health communities is hybrid.

While online groups empower women to share stories and seek support, physical spaces help those connections deepen.

“Even if it’s a small yoga meet-up or a local book club, those moments of in-person connection matter,” she says. “They make the digital community real.”

Her experience at SHEROES, where local meetups followed online discussions, showed how blending digital access with physical trust can transform women’s confidence.

💪🏽 Listening to Your Body Is Revolutionary

One of the episode’s strongest takeaways is Dr. Michelle’s advice to women: trust your body.

“If something feels wrong, it probably is,” she says. “A woman’s intuition is powerful — 90% of the time, she’s right.”

Women are often told to wait it out: a delayed period, a sharp pain, fatigue. But early attention can prevent bigger problems later.

Tracking symptoms — whether through an app, journal, or notes — helps women go to doctors with data and confidence.

And if a doctor dismisses your pain? “Find another one,” Dr. Michelle insists. “You deserve care that listens.”

🌍 What Founders Can Learn

For founders building in women’s health, this episode is both inspiration and instruction.

Talk to women early and often. Build from their realities, not assumptions.
Design for empathy. Automation should enhance care, not replace it.
Build for context. A woman in Delhi and a woman in Lagos may share a diagnosis but live completely different experiences.
Be ethical with AI. Ask not just what’s possible, but what’s responsible.
Encourage community. Let your users connect, share, and feel seen.

💬 Final Thoughts

“What Digital Health Keeps Getting Wrong About Women” isn’t a critique of technology — it’s a call to rebuild it with heart.

When digital health starts with empathy, design becomes care.

When women feel safe to speak, data becomes healing. And when innovators listen before coding, we move closer to healthcare that truly reflects women’s lives.