The MIT DHIVE Women’s Health Track is a new and exciting internship opportunity exploring a variety of needs for Women’s Health including closing the gap in research for Women’s Health. Participants will gain insights from knowledgeable subject matter experts on key needs and challenges, engage in brainstorming and ideation activities, and learn from seasoned entrepreneurs how to transform ideas into viable solutions. This DHIVE 2024 program track is now complete. Complete this form to be informed of the next DHIVE program HERE.

Women’s health currently represents only 10% of the NIH budget, 4% of the global biotechnology market, and 2% of venture capital funding in health technology. These nascent efforts are only beginning to close the existing knowledge gap. The following tracks represent just a few potential avenues for exploration toward the goal of improving women’s health outcomes:

• Mitigate Adverse Drug Reactions for Women

• One third of prescription medications have never been tested in the women that represent 51% of the population. Perhaps not surprisingly, female sex has been described as the biggest risk factor for adverse drug reactions across all classes of medication. Sex differences in pharmacokinetic measures are known to reliably predict adverse drug reactions in women, and this information could be invaluable to prescribers, if only it were accessible. The development of AI-based tools to analyze and interface with electronic medical software could create the first evidence-based prescribing database for women.

•  Improve Health Tech for Women

• In 2019, 70% of medical device injuries or deaths harmed women, largely because they were not validated in women. Increasingly, wearable biometric systems and AI tools are being used in healthcare settings to aid in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. However, these new technologies often fail to consider sex, gender, race, or ethnicity in their design, which has led to inaccurate data collection and put women at greater risk. Biomedical technology that is built and validated with sex in mind could begin to reverse this trend.

• Remove Basic Barriers to Data Collection for Women

• One of the biggest barriers to women’s health advancement is the lack of basic tools for data collection. For example, a standardized method to collect women’s health history for biomedical research or tools that can accurately measure hormones in brain and body would allow scientists to begin to answer very basic questions about how sex/gender impact physiology. 

Who Should Apply?

• Individuals interested in healthcare entrepreneurship who want to explore potential topics/problems individually or by joining an existing team.

• Individuals who have a novel idea on how to address a particular need or challenge related to any of the potential areas 

• Individuals who have expertise in proven technologies and are interested in applying their knowledge to address these unmet needs

• Current or recent MIT Sandbox team members interested in exploring the application of their concept to address a particular need or challenge related to above