Why women’s health needs a system redesign to close the diagnostics gap

Women are living longer than men, but not healthier lives. Across regions and income levels, the World Economic Forum’s Closing the Women’s Health Gap report found that women spend approximately 25% more of their lives in poor health.

This is the paradox at the heart of women’s health today: longevity has improved, but quality of life has not kept pace. This is not a biological inevitability. It is the result of how health systems are designed, what they measure, what they prioritize and, critically, what they fail to diagnose.

This gap is also reflected in how organizations are responding. Kearney’s [w]Health Index for Healthcare and Life Sciences shows that only about one-half of organizations have reached more mature stages of action in addressing the gender health gap. While awareness is increasing, systematic integration into strategy, data and care pathways remains limited, particularly in areas such as diagnostics and early detection.

Consider two mothers experiencing the same pregnancy complication. One was diagnosed earlier, enabling timely intervention, and her daughter is now 10 years old. The other was not diagnosed in time and her daughter lived for just six days. The difference was not the availability of treatment; it was the timing of diagnosis and the system’s ability to act on it.

Across women’s health, this pattern is not the exception. When diagnosis is delayed, care is delayed. And when care is delayed, outcomes worsen, often in preventable ways. This challenge extends far beyond maternal and reproductive health.

Cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death among women globally, illustrates a critical gap. Women are 50% more likely than men to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack, and misdiagnosis increases the risk of death by up to 70%.

Conditions such as endometriosis can take close to a decade to diagnose, leaving millions of women navigating years of unmanaged pain and uncertainty. These are not isolated failures; they are the predictable result of systems that do not reflect differences in sex, gender and how diseases present and progress.

Many health systems were designed to respond to acute illness and deliver treatment, not to prioritize prevention or enable early detection. The result is that health conditions are identified too late, when interventions are more complex, more costly and less effective. At the core of this challenge is a reinforcing cycle.

For decades, women were underrepresented in clinical research, creating persistent gaps in data on female biology. These gaps continue to shape how symptoms are recognized, how risk is assessed, and how clinical decisions are made, often relying on male-centric models of disease.

The consequence is not just incomplete knowledge, but systematic misinterpretation, where women’s symptoms are overlooked, misattributed, dismissed or diagnosed too late. This results in delayed or missed diagnoses. Because conditions remain underdiagnosed, their true burden is underestimated, reinforcing the perception that women’s health is a niche issue and limiting investment. Each step compounds the next.

This misalignment is reflected in how health systems and financing frameworks prioritize and allocate resources. Kearney analysis shows that approximately $34 billion in private capital was invested in women’s health between 2020 and 2025, with around two-thirds concentrated in women-specific conditions such as fertility, reproductive care and women’s cancers.

Comparatively less investment was directed towards conditions that disproportionately affect women, as well as diagnostics and early detection approaches that could help address the highest areas of disease burden. In parallel, policy and reimbursement systems have been slow to recognize the value of early detection, often prioritizing treatment over prevention. The result is a system that responds to disease rather than anticipating it.

This misalignment is also visible at the sector level. The [w]Health Index highlights that despite the important role diagnostics play in enabling early detection, many healthcare approaches still fail to adequately account for differences in how diseases present and progress in women. As a result, diagnostic tools, clinical protocols and care pathways are not always optimized for women’s experiences and symptoms.

As one participant in the ‘Mind the Diagnostics Gap: Strengthening Diagnostics Capacity for Women’s Health’ session at the Women Deliver 2026 conference in Melbourne noted: “We plant apple trees, but the apples are falling in someone else’s backyard.” The value generated through early detection is often attributed elsewhere, particularly to treatment, rather than recognized as a foundational component of care.

With diagnostics, data is generated, tests exist and technologies are advancing, but they are not consistently connected to the systems that deliver care. The result is a persistent disconnect between detection and action. There are, however, clear examples of what is possible when early detection is embedded within health systems.

Cervical cancer provides one of the clearest. When detected early, survival rates exceed 90%, compared to less than 20% at advanced stages. Countries such as Australia, Sweden and the United Kingdom are on track to eliminate cervical cancer through the alignment of vaccination, screening and timely treatment, demonstrating what can be achieved when early detection is integrated into policy, financing and delivery systems. The lesson extends far beyond a single disease.

The challenge now is to redesign systems around early detection and integrated care. This requires shifting how we define value, recognizing diagnostics not as a cost, but as foundational infrastructure that enables effective care.

It also requires embedding early detection into clinical guidelines, financing mechanisms and reimbursement pathways. And it requires strengthening data systems to reflect women’s health across the life course.

Closing the women’s health gap is not only a health imperative but also an economic one. Women spend a quarter of their lives in poor health, contributing to an estimated loss of 75 million years of life annually and up to $1 trillion in global economic output by 2040.

Ultimately, improving women’s health outcomes is not only about expanding access to services. It is about building systems that recognize women’s needs, respond in a timely manner, and enable informed decision-making. As Samukeliso Dube, Executive Director at Family Planning 2030 (FP2030), said, “The foundation of women’s health is choice.”

That choice depends on systems that diagnose earlier, connect care and act in time. Across women’s health, the difference between care and missed care is often determined at the point of diagnosis.