Midi Health is a virtual care platform focused on female hormonal health. The holistic approach to care is designed by world-class experts in perimenopause, menopause, and more. Everything Midi does serves their mission—to help women feel strong and healthy through a critical chapter of their lives and careers. With 20% of the workforce in menopause at any given time, Midi is a mission critical tool for employers in their battle to recruit and retain women in the workforce. Especially women at the peak of their careers.
Midi: Created to Give Expert Care Midlife
Midi’s founders, Joanna Strober and Sharon Meer, believe that great care should be accessible and affordable to women everywhere and they’ve built the infrastructure required to deliver. Together with CMO Dr. Stephanie McClellan (formerly of Tia) and Jill Herzig (formerly of Glamour), the team brings a unique and fresh approach to a problem that has not been addressed. Currently 75% of women experience menopausal symptoms that are not resolved. On the provider side, 85% of OBGYN’s are untrained in menopause. Amazingly, they receive on average 2 hours of training in total.
Mid-Life Made Easy
Because life is hard enough, Midi is simple. Users visit their website to create an account, add insurance information, and choose a time for a virtual visit. At her virtual visit, she’ll have an in-depth conversation about her symptoms, health history, and lifestyle. If tests are needed, Midi sends her to a local lab that takes her insurance. She’s given a personalized care plan and is offered as many follow ups as needed to fine-tune her treatment and stay ahead of any new symptoms.
By taking a holistic approach to improve the symptoms of midlife hormone change, based on every woman’s health history, lifestyle, and genetics, Midi creates a whole-body customized care plan for middle-aged women including:
- prescription hormonal and non-hormonal medications (including HRT)
- lifestyle coaching and wellness therapies
- supplements and botanicals
- specialized care paths for cancer survivors and those at risk
Midi visits and prescriptions are covered by most PPO insurance plans and integrate with employers and the entire benefits ecosystem to offer a fully-reimbursed medical program, making it flexible, affordable, and responsive to each users’ unique needs.
Not a New Problem
Women’s health has always lacked attention. As recently as 1993, women were routinely excluded from early-stage clinical trials which resulted in a shortage of data on how drugs affect women. Between 1989 and 1992 it was the official NIH policy to include women in clinical research, yet there was little compliance or encouragement to review the data by gender. It ultimately took an Act of Congress in 1993 to ensure women were included in all clinical trials. Until then, nearly all studies were done on 175 lb men. The reason? Female hormones complicate studies. It was regretfully ignored that those very same hormones mean that a woman’s body absorbs drugs differently.
I also recently had the pleasure of meeting Michelle Williams, Dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She made a statement that was simple, yet profound. “Women’s health is not just about women’s health.” Women make up 70% of the healthcare workforce and are 70% of the unpaid caregivers and nearly 50% of the workforce. If women aren’t well, there’s a direct effect on our national healthcare system as well as our economy. Women’s health is good business.
On the policy side, Senator Tammy Duckworth and Congresswoman Haley Stevens have introduced similar resolutions in the Senate and the House that advocate for viewing women’s health as a critical issue for the economy and workforce of the U.S. They are calling for investing $300MM to support efforts to increase health research focused on women, particularly for diseases that differentially and disproportionately affect women, among other things.
In the meantime, there’s Midi.
Learn more about Midi Health and the other 1843 Capital portfolio companies.
