From Innovation to Summit: February Highlights
February has been intense - and productive.
We hosted Open Innovation 2026 as a Challenge Partner, prepared for our upcoming Nordic Women’s Health Investor Summit taking place on March 4th, and continued doing what this Hub was built to do: connecting capital and innovation in women’s health in ways that are practical, ambitious, and long overdue.
In this edition, we introduce two new recurring features: Startup of the Month and Investor of the Month. Together, they offer a closer look at where innovation is happening - and how capital is responding.
Nordic Women’s Health Investor Summit
On March 4th, we are hosting the Nordic Women’s Health Investor Summit in Copenhagen in partnership with Angella Invest and Dansk Erhverv - and all onsite spots are fully booked.
We are proud to see our work translate from awareness into presence.
What to expect
The Summit will bring together investors, founders, researchers, and industry leaders around one central question: How do we close the investment gap in women’s health - not in theory, but in practice?
On stage, we will explore:
Where capital is moving - and where it is still missing
What actually makes women’s health investable
How to bridge life science, entrepreneurship, and capital
And how to move from conversation to collaboration
We will also showcase 15 selected women’s health startups working across diagnostics, therapeutics, digital health, and prevention, connecting them directly with investors through curated networking and targeted matchmaking.
The Summit is structured to facilitate direct dialogue between founders and investors - and to move promising companies closer to capital.
Could not secure a seat?
👉 You can still join the Summit online by registering through this link.
If you are a Nordic Women’s Health Hub member, you will receive exclusive access to the recording after the event. Just make sure to register through the same link.
Not a member yet? You can become one here.
We look forward to welcoming you - whether in the room or online.
Startup of the Month: GynQura
Endometriosis affects 1 in 10 women, yet it has long been dismissed as “just painful periods.” The consequence has been years - often decades - of delayed diagnosis, symptom management without disease modification, and limited therapeutic innovation.
GynQura is working to change that.
By developing disease-modifying therapeutics based on patient-derived organoids, the team targets the underlying biology of endometriosis rather than simply suppressing symptoms. It represents a shift from management to modification.
Scientific tools are finally catching up with the biology of the disease.
👉 Read the full interview here.
Investor of the Month: Ulla Sommerfelt
After exiting her company, Ulla Sommerfelt chose to focus her time, capital, and energy on women’s health.
“I was 50% provoked and 50% inspired,” she says.
In our interview, she challenges the outdated framing of women’s health as a niche, describes it as a maturing market, and addresses a persistent myth: that male investors do not engage in this space.
She shares what makes a startup investable, why founders must think globally from day one, and why she believes that 95% of the opportunity in women’s health is still ahead.
A perspective grounded in experience - and capital.
👉 Read the full interview here.
Open Innovation 2026 - Rethinking thyroid care for women
In February, Nordic Women’s Health Hub joined Open Innovation 2026 in Copenhagen as a Challenge Partner together with Stofskifteforeningen. Interdisciplinary teams from DTU, CBS, and the University of Copenhagen spent 48 hours working on one central question:
How might we rethink thyroid care for women?
Thyroid disorders affect more than 200,000 people in Denmark, and 83% of those affected are women. Despite this, many still experience delayed diagnosis, inconsistent symptom management, and fragmented care pathways. The issue is not marginal. It is structural.
Over the course of the programme, five interdisciplinary teams examined the problem from medical, technological, and patient-centred perspectives. What stood out was not just creativity, but seriousness. Rather than proposing isolated tools, the teams addressed systemic gaps - from diagnostic blind spots to communication barriers and long-term dosage management.
At the Finale, each team presented solutions grounded in both feasibility and lived experience. Proposals ranged from dosage optimisation models and lifestyle integration to digital monitoring and communication frameworks designed to reflect how thyroid patients actually navigate care.
This year’s winning team, Thyra, distinguished themselves by combining patient insight with practical implementation thinking. They designed a device that could be attached to an iPhone, using light to scan a blood sample to monitor thyroid levels, with the aim of making it both user-friendly and accurate. Their solution tackled one of the most complex aspects of thyroid care - ongoing dosage adjustment - with a model that balanced realism and scalability.
For Nordic Women’s Health Hub, Open Innovation is a way to ensure that women’s health challenges are placed in serious innovation arenas and treated with the same analytical rigour as any other health domain.
Progress in women’s health requires deliberate cross-disciplinary collaboration. Open Innovation showed what happens when research, entrepreneurship, and patient perspectives meet - and we will continue building those intersections.
Thank you to everyone involved!
Mentions & media highlights
Earlier this month, Nordic Women’s Health Hub was featured in Euractiv in connection with the establishment of Denmark’s National Centre for Women’s Health. In the article, our CEO, Sara Al-Dafaee, highlights that while momentum around women’s health is growing, progress remains fragmented. The fundamental challenge, she notes, is not only a lack of data - but a lack of coordination across research, healthcare and innovation.
The opportunity now lies in connecting knowledge across sectors and building an ecosystem that turns attention into impact. This is precisely where the Hub operates - bridging stakeholders across research, innovation and capital to accelerate systemic change in women’s health.
👉 Read the full article here.
