Giovanna Forte, CEO of Forte Medical, highlights the urgent need for innovative urine sampling solutions to improve women’s health outcomes and combat the UTI crisis, emphasising how FemTech can transform healthcare for women.
Urine is the key to unlocking a wealth of valuable information about women’s health: information that could be lifesaving, especially in prenatal settings where test results can impact both mother and baby. But routine urine sampling is messy and flawed, and women are disproportionately suffering the consequences. It’s time to fix that with FemTech.
Did you know that each person’s urine is completely unique? Along with water, urine is composed of a variable range of metabolites, proteins, hormones and inorganic salts; even a small sample can reveal important health insights. It follows that testing urine samples for the presence of bacteria (including E. coli), protein, glucose, cancer biomarkers and other important indicators is commonplace in healthcare yet there is no protocol for collection that meets all official guidelines for midstream. Pregnant women, for example, are typically asked to provide a urine sample at each antenatal appointment to check for gestational diabetes, urinary tract infection (UTI) and pre-eclampsia warning signs.
However, as any woman who has been asked to give a urine sample will know, trying to collect a midstream urine sample in a small pot is a big challenge! The process is fiddly and unhygienic and can be near impossible for those who are disabled, frail or pregnant. The urine that makes it into the sample pot is often contaminated with debris and bacteria from the hands, perineum and urethra into the urine sample, creating an unreliable diagnostic outcome. The patient may receive an inaccurate diagnosis or be asked for another sample to retest. This is not just inconvenient for her, but costly for an already overburdened NHS.
This is not just a waste of healthcare resources, it’s a significant threat to female and maternal health. When women are not promptly and correctly diagnosed, they – and in some cases, their unborn babies – are put at risk of serious health complications. In the case of UTI misdiagnosis and treatment delay, these complications can lead to kidney disease, life-threatening E. coli bloodstream infections and sepsis. The Sepsis Trust advises that 20% of sepsis cases arise from untreated or wrongly treated UTIs.
This matters hugely, not least because over 50% of women will experience at least one UTI in their lifetime. Between 2018 and 2023, over 800,000 people were admitted to NHS hospitals with UTIs, and these unplanned admissions cost the NHS nearly £400 million each year. In addition, late and misdiagnosed UTIs, and inappropriate antibiotic prescription, are a major contributor to the burden of antibiotic resistant infections globally. Unnecessary or badly targeted antibiotics are being prescribed to between 34%-60% of women presenting with UTI – between 5.1ml and 9ml women annually. Meanwhile, half of the bacteria that cause UTIs are resistant to at least one antibiotic, research suggests. Could this suggest that women are driven to the frontline of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)?
It’s very clear that in order to improve female health outcomes, bring an end to UTI misdiagnosis and turn the tide on AMR, women urgently need access to alternative urine sampling technologies.
This is a huge opportunity for FemTech innovators to make a difference, and one which the Forte Medical team has embraced. In line with our mission to make easy, clinically-reliable urine sample collection the norm for women, we have developed a precision technology that fits the female body and makes midstream urine sample collection cleaner and more accessible.
The Peezy Midstream is a clinically tested device for women’s UTI and prenatal health, relaunching in early 2025. Designed by a GP, this technology aligns with the new vision for preventative medicine, delivering right-first-time samples suitable for the digital diagnostic platforms diagnosing UTI at home, reducing retests and saving money for healthcare providers. We’re proud to have worked with maternity and primary healthcare providers to pilot our product and demonstrate its efficacy in reducing false positives and retests.
Urine sampling, whilst rarely in the spotlight, is fundamental to women’s health. By solving some of the basic flaws in this process, FemTech innovators have the power to drive meaningful change for millions of women who suffer the consequences of awkward and outdated sampling methods and face the risks of misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatments.
Of course, innovation alone is not enough to fix the complex, global-scale problems that threaten female health outcomes. We must also seek to work collaboratively with healthcare providers, governments, global health organisations and other changemakers to push for the broader adoption of proven solutions in healthcare systems globally, and to implement sampling practices that are more effective and safer. Being brave enough to disrupt established norms in healthcare systems, and advocating tirelessly for better care for women, FemTech innovators have a pivotal role to play in creating a healthier future for women.
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