Building FemTech for Adolescent Girls | Blush & Bloom Podcast | Ep. 33

Most women's health apps are designed for adults, for reproductive age, fertility, or menopause. But the first period, the first questions about a changing body, and the first experiences of being dismissed all happen much earlier. That gap, the years before adulthood when girls are quietly left to figure things out on their own, is where a new wave of FemTech is starting to build.

In this episode of Blush & Bloom, host Gigi Kenneth talks with Eniko Simon, founder and Chief Product Officer of IslaFem, an AI-powered digital platform for adolescent girls. A healthcare strategist with more than 15 years in healthcare management across the UK and UAE, Eniko is building tools that give girls knowledge and confidence about their own health at an early age, so they can advocate for themselves long before they are told they have to.

Together, they explore why young girls are overlooked in women's health, how co-designing with teens and parents and clinicians makes products safer, and what responsible AI actually looks like when the users are children.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why adolescent girls are one of the most underserved groups in women's health
• How Eniko's 20-year journey to a chronic fatigue diagnosis shaped how she builds
• Co-designing IslaFem with "Isla heroes," teenage girls aged 12 to 17
• How to ask open questions and avoid building bias into a product
• Designing a safe AI companion for teens, with guardrails against AI psychosis
• Teaching patient advocacy from a young age
• Lessons from the MIT Chief Product Officer program

Why are adolescent girls overlooked in women's health?

Most digital health tools are built for adult women, wellness apps for older generations, FemTech for reproductive and menopausal age. Adolescent girls fall through the gap, even though early experiences shape everything that follows. Eniko points to research that the majority of adult women with mental health issues first experienced challenges in adolescence, often unnoticed and untreated.

"The first health experiences shapes everything."

IslaFem is built on a simple reframe: instead of only solving problems later in life, what if the next generation of women learned about their bodies and their mental well-being early enough to advocate for themselves?

🩺 A 20-Year Wait for an Answer

Eniko's push into FemTech came from lived experience. It took nearly two decades for a doctor to recognise that she had chronic fatigue, a condition that cannot be confirmed with a single blood test and depends on a clinician actually listening and asking the right questions.

"I saw and experienced myself that I've been ignored. I was not heard and my experience is completely undermined and misunderstood."

That frustration, repeated across her own care and the care of countless other women, convinced her the system would not close the gap on its own. Women's symptoms are often split across separate appointments and never joined together, which delays diagnosis. Technology, she argues, can help gather that scattered picture so consultants can make informed decisions.

What does co-designing with teenagers actually look like?

It means the girls help design the product, not just test it at the end. IslaFem works with a group of teenagers aged 12 to 17, called Isla heroes, alongside parents and clinicians. They are interviewed, they react to prototypes, and they tell the team plainly what is not working.

Eniko describes design thinking less as a process and more as a mindset that starts with listening.

"With IslaFem, we don't do anything without our girls and families and consultants because they are the ones who have the problem. So they need to co-design with us."

Interestingly, the idea for a girls' platform surfaced by accident. While researching a women's health strategy, Eniko interviewed women aged 30 to 50, and the mothers among them kept raising their biggest worries about their daughters, learning about health from search engines and social media instead of a trusted source.

🤖 How do you build safe AI for young users?

You build proactively, with guardrails, instead of pretending teens will not use AI at all. IslaFem includes an AI companion the girls call Isla, a knowledgeable chatbot that personalises its guidance while working to keep girls connected to real people, not just a device. Design choices are shaped with the teens themselves.

Eniko is candid about the risks, referencing recent public concern about AI psychosis.

"If the solution is not allowing Gen Zs to use AI or engage with AI, I disagree with their approach. I think the approach needs to be proactive and proactively creating platforms that they can, but safeguarding them."

The platform follows data-protection rules around consent for younger users and deliberately keeps parents involved. A recurring question in her design work: could this solution cause a new problem, and how do we avoid it?

🌱 Building for Gen Z and Gen Alpha

Building for younger users means experience matters as much as engineering. Eniko is clear that the user experience on the platform is nearly as important as the code, because Gen Z will simply leave anything that does not feel right. The team leans on gamification, journaling habits, and rewards to build the kind of daily stickiness that keeps girls coming back, all guided by ideas from the Isla heroes themselves.

The girls, she says, are knowledgeable and still hungry to learn, they just want to learn their own way.

💗 Patient Advocacy Starts Young

The larger vision is preventative. Eniko wants IslaFem to become the go-to global platform for adolescent girls to understand their bodies and protect their minds, and eventually a clinically backed tool that helps surface early signals so girls do not wait years for a diagnosis. Teaching advocacy at 12 or 15, she believes, changes what these girls can do for themselves at 30.

Her advice to founders building in the space is grounded in the same principle: start with empathy, listen deeply, and stay responsible.

FAQ

Who is Eniko Simon? Eniko Simon is a healthcare strategist with more than 15 years in healthcare management across the UK and UAE, and the founder and Chief Product Officer of IslaFem.

What is IslaFem? IslaFem is an AI-powered digital health platform for adolescent girls, designed to give them knowledge and tools to understand their bodies and mental well-being early and advocate for their own health.

Why focus on adolescent girls instead of adult women? Because early health experiences shape everything that follows, and adolescent girls are underserved by tools built for reproductive age and menopause. Learning early helps girls advocate for themselves as adults.

How does IslaFem keep its AI safe for teens? It builds guardrails rather than banning AI outright, keeps girls connected to real people, involves parents, follows data-protection rules on consent for younger users, and co-designs safeguards with the teens.

What is co-design? Co-design means building a product with the people who will use it. IslaFem develops its platform alongside teenage "Isla heroes," parents, and clinicians rather than designing for them from the outside.

💬 Final Thoughts

This conversation is a reminder that the earliest years of a girl's health journey are the ones we most often skip. When girls learn to understand their bodies, ask questions, and trust their instincts early, they carry that confidence into adulthood. Building for them is not a smaller version of women's health, it is the foundation of it.

👥 Connect with the Guest

Eniko Simon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eniko-simon-sheeran/

Gigi Kenneth (Host): https://www.linkedin.com/in/gigikenneth

💕 Explore More from Asele

Visit: https://www.asele.tech

Try the Asele app: https://asele.health

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