It’s one of the world’s most common — and most overlooked — health conditions.
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) affects 1 in 8 women worldwide, yet only 30% ever receive a diagnosis. That means an estimated 350 million women are living with PCOS without knowing it.
The consequences of this underdiagnosis are profound. Untreated PCOS can increase the risk of infertility, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, endometrial cancer, depression, and anxiety. These are not rare complications — they affect quality of life, life expectancy, and healthcare costs on a massive scale.
Closing the Diagnosis Gap is a Global Opportunity
The world is waking up to the urgent need for innovation in women’s healthcare. In a powerful new article from NfX — authored by Omri Drory, Ph.D. and Anastasia Budinskaya — the firm commits to investing in founders tackling the massive women’s health market. Their message is clear: this is one of the biggest untapped opportunities in healthcare innovation.
The WHAM Report shows the staggering economic and social costs of the gender health gap — and the outsized benefits of closing it. With new funding streams emerging, the opportunity to make an impact has never been greater.
Our Challenge: Raise PCOS Diagnosis Rates Above 30%
At Amitypath, we believe innovation thrives when curious, helpful, multidisciplinary people work together. That’s why we’ve launched a Women’s Health open innovation challenge to dramatically increase global PCOS diagnosis rates — and in doing so, prevent millions of women from living with untreated conditions.
The Amitypath Women’s Health Interest Group is hosted by PCOS researcher Dr Pegah Farzam. We welcome everyone who can contribute — from clinicians, technologists, and public health leaders to educators, data scientists, patient advocates, and community organisers. If you can unlock PCOS diagnosis, or find cures, treatments or mitigations, investors like NfX are ready to hear from you.
We want to accelerate the activities of anyone working to improve women’s health, and on other public health challenges like our Stopping the Bleed challenge.
How You Can Help
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Join the challenge — Become an Amitypather and contribute your insights, skills, and connections.
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Nominate your most curious, helpful, multidisciplinary friends — We need people who see problems from different angles and can help uncover new solutions.
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Shape the market — Every Amitypather increases the size of the addressable market for investors like NfX, helping accelerate the flow of capital into women’s health innovation.
Together, we can help millions of women receive the diagnoses — and care — they deserve.
*This is a pro-bono challenge hosted by Amitypath. We run a mix of pro-bono and sponsored challenges, and invite people to become Amitypathers to take part so that we can celebrate the connectors as well as the solvers. See all our challenges here.