ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Minerva Surgical is the rare medical device company operating in gynecology surgery to make it out of the IPO gate. The small company faced the challenge of selling into a market dominated by large corporations and hospital contracts, but a recent acquisition has positioned it to compete with the best of them.
Boatloads of money have been pouring into women’s health in the past year, but most of it has gone to the delivery side of medicine and companies developing digital health or hybrid telemedicine/brick-and-mortar service models focused on the medical needs of women. (See “Women’s Health Enjoys a Tsunami of Investment,” MedTech Strategist, September 23, 2021.) Little funding has gone into medical devices addressing the health issues of women, except for Aspira Women’s Health, which, with a focus on diagnostics and genetic tests for ovarian cancer, raised $45 million in an initial public offering in February. The market also favored reproductive health, the mission of Femasys Inc., the June IPO of which raised gross proceeds of $34.45 million. Femasys is developing office-based tests and technologies for permanent contraception and infertility.
