The Data Problem Holding Back AI In Women's Health

How the CEOs of Oura and Midi Health are attacking it. Plus: Miro and Gamma founders on how agents are turning us all into execs, like it or not.

Upstarts with Oura’s Tom Hale and Midi Health’s Joanna Strober at HumanX. Credit: ALX Media

The Upshot

Trusting AI model output as the gospel truth is already a bad idea. It’s an even worse idea in women’s health, where Midi Health co-founder and CEO Joanna Strober is quick to point out that clinical research routinely excluded women as recently as 1992.

That’s a big problem when AI models are training off of, or drawing inferences from, research data before that cut-off to inform current-day insights.

“A lot of the research you see out there is just incorrect when it comes to women’s health,” Strober says. “A woman is not a small male. Unfortunately in most data models, they are.”

It’s one of a few reasons that Midi Health and Oura Health are both training their own AI models, alongside decreased funding at NIH for research more broadly. “It’s a systemic problem,” says Oura CEO Tom Hale.

Upstarts interviewed both health tech leaders on the main stage at HumanX last week. We also led a discussion on how AI is changing collaboration at software unicorns Gamma and Miro. Gamma co-founder Jon Noronha and Miro founder and CEO Andrey Khusid both had interesting points on how agents are transforming their businesses.

(Our other HumanX interview, on how DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang set up its robotics division, is available for all subscribers here.)

For our paid subscribers, we’re breaking down the key takeaways from all four startup leaders below, covering AI’s impact in patient care, wearables, management and presentations.

“Everybody is becoming an executive,” says Khusid. “Most of us never wanted that life.”

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