Janene Fuerch, M.D. and Amanda French created the first smart, connected pill case for birth control pill management and founded the femtech company EMME. In 2021, EMME earned recognition as TIME’s Best Inventions and Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. Earlier this year, EMME merged with SimpleHealth, another women-led company focused on reproductive care. Amanda now serves as SimpleHealth’s Chief Innovation Officer, and Janene continues her work as a clinical assistant professor of neonatology at Stanford University Medical Center, Assistant Director of the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship and sits on the advisory committee DxD HealthTech – where she helps inspire and empower a new generation of healthtech innovators.
Amanda, how did you get interested in biomedical engineering?
AF: I’ve always loved math and science, and growing up I aimed to find a career path where I could combine those passions with my desire to help others and do good in the world. During high school when I started visiting colleges and learning about different engineering fields, I was introduced to biomedical engineering and realized this field was the perfect space for me to combine my creative side with my passion for math and science to deliver a positive impact in the healthcare space.
How did you two meet and ultimately come up with the idea for EMME?
JF: Amanda and I were both in the 10-month Stanford Biodesign Fellowship and we met when we were assigned to the same four-person team. We realized we were all really interested in this need around being able to get pregnant when you want to and not when you don’t. Ultimately our team pursued another project for the duration of the fellowship, so Amanda and I worked on this as a passion project on the side. This was right after the 2016 presidential election and as a physician, I was deeply concerned about restrictions and limitations on reproductive health rights. Birth control is usually a woman’s first independent healthcare decision as a teen or in their early twenties. But the birth control pill is only 91% effective in the real world, which leads to ~1 million women getting pregnant in the U.S. each year. But the reasons why they became pregnant were so simple – women are stressed, they’re busy, they forget to take their pill. So we diligently followed the Biodesign process to develop this discreet, beautiful device to connect with your phone that reminds you to take your pill and tracks progress over time.
Can you share a little about what each of you brings to the table and why having different backgrounds is useful for healthtech innovation?
AF: Our backgrounds are definitely different, which reflects a core principle in the Biodesign process – that bringing together people from different backgrounds and perspectives drives better products and stronger innovation. Janene brings a strong clinical perspective rooted in patient care, research and outcomes, while I brought the perspective of a medical device engineer who had developed products from concept through commercialization. Both perspectives were key to our success!
Needless to say, EMME could only have been developed by women. Can you share a little bit about why diverse perspectives are so important in healthtech?
AF: As we know most of women’s health policies and innovations have been historically developed by men. During my time at Stanford, I was surprised at the lack of innovation that I saw in women’s health compared to the other categories where I had industry experience (cardiology and ENT). I heard from countless women about their stressful experiences with birth control pills. After learning that nearly one million women have an unplanned pregnancy in the United States each year due to missed pills, I knew this was a pressing healthcare need that technology could solve. Throughout my career as a mechanical engineer, I was almost always the only woman in the room. I think it’s essential to empower diverse perspectives in tech, and studies have established time and time again that diverse teams drive better results.
JF: Women make 80% of healthcare decisions in this country, and yet most medical devices are made by and for men. Shockingly women of childbearing age weren’t even mandated in clinical trials until the 1990s. Reproductive health and preventing or planning families is really a weight that falls almost entirely on women. Without diverse voices and without having everybody included to speak to their own needs, we cannot fully address health in our society.
We also need funders who have diverse perspectives, experiences and backgrounds. We met with people who didn’t realize that birth control pills are taken daily to be effective – and yet not every woman we met was supportive, either. Diversity of lived experiences matters, too.
How would you like to see other successful leaders in the space help make it more diverse and inclusive?
AF: Making space is key to ensuring we have diverse and inclusive spaces. Our organizations will be innovative, healthier, and sustainable with broader experiences and leadership from those who are often marginalized in the corporate world. I would like to see other leaders make space by stepping aside, promoting others, and listening instead of speaking. Systems and structures will only change if we are willing to question ourselves and trust the voices of others.
What role has mentorship played in your career success?
AF: Mentorship has been extremely important in my career and Emme’s success. I have been lucky in developing mentor relationships with very strong and inspiring women in the femtech field. It can be a lonely place as the CEO of a start-up in a field generally dominated by men. I have found it incredibly useful to have women as mentors that have walked a similar path and are a few years ahead of me. Surrounding yourself with mentors who excel in areas where you might not is incredibly important to rounding out your success.
Looking back on the process from startup to merger, what were the biggest learning curves?
JF: We were both first time entrepreneurs, and this was in 2017 when femtech wasn’t as term, and a lot of the funders told us this was a niche that wouldn’t really grow. We were told people would never pay for this product on their own – only if insurance covered it. So to prove customers were interested, we had to run ads campaigns on social media, which drew so much attention in the first couple weeks, that we had to shut them down because we didn’t actually have the product yet. But we learned a lot about marketing in the process of demonstrating that there is an audience for the product.
I’m proud that we stayed laser focused, and didn’t take the bait to go off and try to build a tool for every pill and for every person.
What advice do you have for women who may be interested in the healthtech industry?
JF: Follow your passion, and make sure you back that up with data. Make sure you’ve convinced yourself – before you convince others – that this problem is worth spending the next 5 to 10 years of your life on. Make sure you literally fall in love with the need and the people you’re trying to serve. Make sure you can eat, sleep, live and breathe it. You’re going to need to be the evangelist who wakes up every day to go and fight for it, because you’re going to get a lot of “noes” along the way.
You’ve recently completed a successful merger of EMME with SimpleHealth. What’s on the horizon for you as Chief Innovation Officer and what’s next for EMME?
AF: This opportunity to join forces with SimpleHealth is incredibly exciting. As two women-led companies, we are excited to combine our strengths in reproductive and behavioral health to provide patients with innovative tools to address unmet needs across contraception, fertility, perimenopause, and beyond. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Carrie SiuButt and the SimpleHealth team. Carrie is a dynamic leader and her vision for empowering SimpleHealth patients to control their health outcomes is totally aligned with my vision in addressing the gap in women’s healthcare specifically and specifically reproductive health. I am excited to be on this journey.
What are some of the healthtech opportunities/innovations on the horizon that you’re excited about?
JF: I’m excited about a lot of things. I love femtech, and I want to push people to think in more innovative ways that will actually change the game. I think a huge amount of innovation in this space will materialize in the next 5 to 10 years.
As an academic neonatologist, neonates are the next vulnerable population I’m focusing on. Through the Pediatric Device Consortium, Dr. James Wall and I help mentor 30 companies a year and provide over $500,000 in funding annually. Plus, we have our own projects. I’m currently working on a device related to necrotizing colitis in premature newborns.
I encourage others not to forget the other vulnerable populations that aren’t being advocated for. Keep pushing. Keep trying to improve the status quo.