Good morning, Broadsheet readers! E. Jean Carroll's lawsuit against Donald Trump is underway, a woman is emerging as a leader in the no- and low-alcohol industry, and we hear from the women of Fortune Brainstorm Health 2023. Happy Friday!
- Brainstorm Health 2023. Fortune gathered the health care community in Los Angeles for its Brainstorm Health conference this week. Yesterday, we featured CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch’s on-stage call for better care for women at risk of postpartum depression, but throughout the two-day summit, expert panelists urged their peers—entrepreneurs, investors, practitioners, and CEOs—to prioritize women’s health.
“I’m incredibly bullish about women’s health. Women’s health is not just about women, it’s human health,” said Alyssa Jaffee, partner at 7wireVentures, an early-stage health care venture fund. “Women are over 50% of our population, yet we make 80% of health care buying decisions. It’s not just reproductive rights, it’s not just maternal health care.”
Chelsea Clinton, a health advocate and vice chair of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, said she’s steering her money toward addressing high maternal death rates. She’s invested in midwife-care startup Oula, participating in the company’s seed round in 2020 and Series A earlier this year.
Executives also spoke about the promise of new technologies to improve health outcomes—not just for women but for all patients.
“I keep hearing, 'tech-enabled, data-enabled, A.I.-enabled,' and because of those advances in health care, you've been able to have so much information put into the hands of the consumer,” said New York Stock Exchange president Lynn Martin. “I think that the health care industry is only just now starting to see what the effects of putting data in consumers' hands is, (and it’s) going to transform the industry.”
Health insurance provider Elevance Health uses A.I. both in clinical settings and for administration tasks, and CEO Gail Boudreaux cautioned that there are risks to the technology that her team is trying to address.
“I think implicit bias is a really big issue. And quite frankly, it's there. It exists because these models are learning from data and people today,” she said. “We have a group both inside and outside individuals who look at that because we know how important it is. And so we continually look at these models, we continually refresh our data.”
Whether in A.I. or investing, Sarah Pinto Peyronel, partner and head of growth at Emerson Collective, said that “the intersection of mission and people” is what makes her optimistic for the future of health care. “I think health care attracts amazing people. (It’s the) caliber of the people I see building mission-driven companies.”
Kinsey Crowley (she/her)
kinsey.crowley@fortune.com
@kinseycrowley
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