Smart bras and a light tracker: the wearable tech helping plug the medical gender bias gap

Over the past two decades, scientists have laid bare our need to know more about women's physiology. Can tech designed by and for women help?

If you're asked to imagine a person who has a heart attack, who do you see? Most of us think of an old man. It's what we tend to see in movies. And while 3.9 million men live with cardiovascular disease in the UK, according to the British Heart Foundation, 3.5 million women also have a heart condition. However, we know much less about how to spot cardiovascular health issues in women. This means women wait longer to seek medical help, and are only half as likely as men to receive recommended heart-attack treatments.

It was only in 1993 that women and people of colour were officially included in US clinical trials, yet much of our current medical knowledge has been shaped by earlier research. But over the past two decades, scientists have laid bare our need to know more about a wider range of bodies. As data is slowly catching up with reality, could technology help to plug the gap?