“I’m not sure there is a market for it.” Dr Helen O'Neill is sharing the derisory feedback she received while pitching the concept of Hertility to a Venture Capitalist community which has long viewed product potential through a predominately male lens. 

When you consider that Apple, often considered to be one of the world’s innovative companies, launched its Heath tracker without including a period tracker, it is perhaps not hyperbole to argue that the world is in danger of being designed for only half of the people who inhabit it.

O’Neill shares that within this investor presentation, when the investors finally came to asking the founders of Hertility if they had any questions, the only one worth asking by the straight-talking O’Neill was: “Can we leave now?”

When it comes to medicalised misogyny and the glacial pace in which ‘FemTech’ has been embraced by male-dominated industries, O’Neill would be forgiven for wanting that meeting and any others like it to end. It is to her credit that her frustration acted as a fuel for the successful launch of Hertility; a brand which is successfully smashing the silence and misunderstanding surrounding women’s hormones and fertility. 

Hertility, which offers at-home fertility and hormone testing, alongside a wide range of ancillary services, was founded by Dr Helen O’Neill alongside her sister Deirdre O’Neill, who is the Chief Commercial and Legal officer and Dr Natalie Getreu, the Chief Operating Officer, who is an ovarian biologist with a focus on ovarian tissue freezing, which allows women facing cancer treatment to be able to preserve their fertility.

Shifting the lens

In the latest edition of BITE Talks, Dr O’Neill shared the vision and journey so far for Hertility; a brand founded on the premise that ‘Healthcare wasn’t designed for women so we made it our mission to change it’.

Dr Helen, like her co-founders, is an established expert in women’s health, as a lecturer in reproductive and molecular genetics and a leading expert in reproductive science. She has a Masters in Prenatal Genetics and Foetal Medicine and a PhD in Stem Cell Biology from UCL. 

It was her experience of lecturing about age related infertility which made her understand both the need for Hertility and the human cost of a media narrative in which women are routinely depicted as being able to choose when they have children. A narrative which suggests you might simply schedule a delivery at a time of your choosing as though it were an Amazon package.

She explains: “It was incredibly painful to lecture about age related infertility,” she explains. Sharing a memory of staring at a graph which depicts the number of eggs women have rapidly falling after the age of 30. She says: “I’m just ignoring my own biology, because I like to think that I am healthy, I like to think of myself as being the exception rather than the rule.”

What happens when we airbrush ovaries 

This exceptionalism has become a mainstay of the media narrative surrounding women’s fertility. A narrative which O’Neill believes falsely reassures women they can have their happy ending (if that incorporates childbirth) at a time of their choosing. That their hormones and reproductive system will automatically be in their control, rather than at the whims and downright cruelty of nature.  

“We are all quite optimistic about our health and fertility,” she explains. “All the more so because mainstream media teaches us that actually in ways that biology is different to what it actually is. We see images of older mums. We see images of Naomi Campbell having children without any reference to the fact they might have struggled.”

This narrative which is disconnected from women’s lived experiences is what Hertlity is focused on challenging. “It paints this idea of airbrushed ovaries more than anything, where we all assume at 30 you are too young to be thinking about having a baby,” she notes. 

She points to the fact that if you have a baby later in life the hospital may call you a ‘geriatric mother’ but the media narrative remains that women can have everything on your own terms; including childbirth. 

“We are a very privileged generation of women who have choice. We have so much choice we are choking on it,” she explains. Adding: “We have removed our reproductive choices as a result of that choice. There are so many women who are childless without choice.”

It is women opening up to share their personal experiences of infertility which form the foundations of Hertility’s approach. O’Neill has her own lens on this challenge. “I was so committed to my career and my research and yet felt like I would be sacrificing one or the other on a daily basis,” she shares honestly.

Medicalised misogyny 

Hertility’s power lies in two key areas. Firstly there is a clear market for it; namely that 50% of the world that the venture capitalist team somehow forgot existed. Secondly, there is a shocking lack of knowledge, a culture of silence and a lack of understanding surrounding women’s bodies and fertility as a whole. 

Consider for example the widely accepted notion that women should not share the fact they are pregnant until after the 12 week scan. An approach which lacks both humanity and a practical understanding of the wholesale changes to a woman’s body and experience during early pregnancy. An approach which also encourages women to silence and suffocate potentially traumatic experiences of miscarriage. 

O’Neill says: “We used so many cutting edge tools in the lab for discovery around genetics and rare diseases yet common conditions are considered elusive and we don't know about them.” Sharing that it feels like ‘an insult’ to simply tell a woman with fertility issues to go to the GP, she adds that it can be a ‘double insult’ to send someone to a fertility clinic. She explains: “You might not be there yet financially or psychologically to go to an infertility clinic.”

It is this space and unmet need that led the team to launch Hertility. “Where is the ability for someone who isn't looking to go to a fertility clinic, who isn't looking for a referral who just wants to know about her fertility,” she says. Adding: “We have a right to know about our health. We want to know about our fertility.”

Fertility for the Amazon generation 

Ensuring that women have the knowledge to make informed choices is at the heart of the Hertility brand. She explains: “My view for Hertility is a total reinvention of healthcare for women. Our current medical system is not built for women.”

This is why Hertility with its all-female team is focused on creating clinical trials for women, by women. A significant shift from a medical legacy which casts women as the exception to a male role.

O’Neill believes that leveraging technology is vital to closing the gender health gap. She points to the expectations of the ‘Amazon generation’ saying: “We expect to look something up, see how good it is; read reviews. We expect that from the most redundant of objects - yet we have no ability to do that around our own health.”

While we routinely rely on calculators to check our maths, use an app to track our bank balance; when it comes to fertility many women are in the dark. Then there is the pressure facing doctors in the wake of the pandemic. “You cannot fundamentally ask enough questions in the prescribed 9-minute consultation,” says O’Neill  “Doctors are amazing but they are human beings.”

Findings show that 31% of women will suffer from a reproductive health issue at some point but through at-home hormone testing and care, Hertility aims to reduce the time diagnosis that women have traditionally faced. Personalised at-home hormone testing, innovative diagnostics and access to private gynaecologists will give women clarity into their reproductive health from the comfort of their own home. It’s an approach which O’Neill believes will help doctors, as effectively Hertility is triaging patients before they are seen by doctors.

When society gaslights women

“You can say ‘Vulva’ all you want but when someone asks you very intimate questions it takes a very brave person to not demure when someone asks you about discharge, bleeding or pain,“ says O’Neill. She believes that Hertility’s online questionnaires lend themselves to a “much more honest insight into human behaviour.”

To support the brand’s launch, female-founded creative content agency Be The Fox, created a campaign which beautifully brings women’s frustrations to life. “The campaign illuminates the systemic infringement of women’s health and our individual needs,” adds O’Neill.

The advert takes aim at the pervasive narrative belittling women’s hormones. As O’Neill notes: “Nobody ever says - I'm going to get that promotion today when I’m ovulating. Instead, we diminish it to one week where you are bleeding and angry.”

Brand building through honesty

While there is no denying that there are many aspects of fertility which are out of women’s control, O’Neill points to the fact that the ability to reframe the media narrative is in our control. While the creative industries at large have a unique opportunity to fundamentally shift the dialogue.

“Journalists serve to educate as much as any educator will but on a far larger scale,” says O’Neill. This means the media has a huge responsibility to challenge the damaging and misleading stereotypes that surround fertility. For the generation of women who are facing unprecedented pressures in all aspects of their lives this change cannot come soon enough. 

To this end, O’Neill believes that now is the time to take aim at the suffocating myth that any one person can have it all. She believes that women are deeply stereotyped in media advertising and the taboos around simply existing as a woman continue to wound.  “We don't make it easy for ourselves. We put unrealistic expectations on ourselves to be that person who has it all,” she notes.

The weight of great expectations 

Recognising and challenging the weight of great expectations facing women is a passion point for O’Neill. It is clear that she is frustrated with the pervasive narrative of perfection at all costs, as she explains: “The most unrealistic expectation we have on ourselves is that our life has to be completely set, our career has to be in order, our finances have to be ready to bring in a child. When you think that throughout history children were born under the most horrific circumstances but that is how life exists.”

“We are our own worst enemy to talk ourselves out of family formation,” she adds. “In order to have a family, you have to be in a perfect relationship, when you ask the majority of women why they chose to freeze their eggs it is because they haven't found the perfect partner.”

"We have never had a time in history before where we have had so much expectation on us. To be the breadwinner, to be the bread baker, the baby maker, absolutely everything. So that has led to this over expectation on what a partner is going to bring for you and the fact that you must have a perfect partnership,” she says.

Placing women in the driving seat

The end result of these great expectations is an ecosystem in which the never ending demands of our always on society can equate to a life in which we prioritise the seemingly urgent in place of the important. Never is this more true than when it comes to fertility and reproductive health.

Currently, infertility affects 1 in 7 women and O’Neill is passionate about encouraging more women to find out about their hormones, fertility and reproductive health. 

“If there is one thing that controls you as a person, wouldn't you want to know what it is?” She asks. Adding that she wants to encourage people to take as much interest in their fertility as they do on Facebook. 

Yet notably, despite a media narrative in which data and humanity are all too often seen as mutually exclusive pursuits, the Hertility journey undermines the unique power of technology and data to confirm our intuition. 

O’Neill shares that when women tick a box in the survey sharing that they suspect a problem; they are invariably right. That underlying worry, or well-hidden pain you put off indefinitely, is not just a shadow that you simply cannot shake off, it is one that is often recognised by women before medical professionals. As O’Neill explains: “Don't ignore pain don't ignore that niggling feeling. If someone else told you something that was wrong you would get them to do something.”

The Hertility story is one that underlines that frustration can be a fuel for change on a global scale and it is clear that O’Neill’s driving force is to liberate women from the powerlessness which comes hand in hand with the veil of silence surrounding women’s fertility. As she explains: “You don't need to protect yourself or justify yourself, we need to protect ourselves.” Thanks to the passion and perseverance of O’Neill and the Hertility team, women can arm themselves with the tools and knowledge necessary to finally make progress on closing the gender health gap.