How AI Is Transforming Menopause Care in the UK and Beyond.
Menopause affects over 13 million women in the UK, yet diagnosis delays, unequal access to care and stigma still undermine women’s health and careers.
AI is rapidly reshaping the landscape; speeding diagnosis, personalising care and exposing inequities that traditional systems have overlooked. Crucially, to deliver real benefits for Black and women of colour, AI systems must be trained on diverse data and evaluated for bias at every step.
For decades, menopause research has lacked both scale and representation. Globally, nearly 85% of women experience menopause-related symptoms, yet conventional research has struggled to capture the biological and social complexity of the transition.
AI techniques are helping close this gap by analysing large multi‑modal datasets and uncovering patterns that improve risk prediction and symptom management.
In the UK, the historic under‑funding of women’s reproductive health amplifies the need for representative, equity‑first models. Experts stress that without bias mitigation and strong privacy protections, femtech can perpetuate disparities rather than reduce them.
The UK is now piloting several AI‑enabled initiatives across the NHS and academia. In Greater Manchester, researchers are combining women’s lived experience with AI analysis of UK Biobank and regional health records to identify inequalities by ethnicity, deprivation and geography, turning qualitative stories into quantitative evidence that local systems can act on.
Meanwhile, NHS‑sponsored decision‑support projects are standardising intake, symptom scoring and HRT decisions to shorten time‑to‑diagnosis and reduce repeat GP visits, addressing long‑standing pain points for women, particularly those from under‑served communities.
Hormona + Innovate UK: Objective At‑Home Testing to Cut Bias
The partnership between Hormona and Innovate UK represents a major shift in how perimenopause and menopause can be diagnosed more fairly across the NHS.
With £99,972 of Innovate UK funding, Hormona is developing an AI‑powered clinical decision support system that analyses at‑home hormone tests in just fifteen minutes using NICE‑aligned frameworks.
This approach combines objective biomarkers with AI‑generated clinical reports, replacing guesswork with clear, data‑driven evidence at the point of care.
By standardising diagnosis, the technology directly targets one of the most persistent inequities in menopause care. The subjective dismissal of symptoms, particularly among Black and women of colour who frequently report being unheard or misdiagnosed during midlife health consultations.
By enabling clinicians to see clear hormonal trends rather than relying solely on verbal descriptions, descriptions that can be influenced by cultural, linguistic or bias‑related factors, Hormona’s model reduces opportunities for prejudice or clinical minimisation and pushes the NHS toward more consistent, equitable care across diverse patient groups.
MenopauseXR (Teesside): AI + VR Training for Employers & Clinicians
The MenopauseXR project at Teesside University takes a radically different but equally transformative approach by using virtual reality and generative AI avatars to train employers and healthcare practitioners.
Inside a VR environment, these avatars are built from the lived experiences of real women, allowing users to encounter menopause narratives that reflect a wide range of cultural backgrounds, including the often‑overlooked experiences of Black and Asian women in the workplace and clinical settings.
This immersive method enables employers and clinicians to interact with scenarios that highlight the cultural, emotional and structural barriers women of colour face, such as the double jeopardy of ageism and racism, workplace discrimination and the normalisation of chronic symptoms.
The aim is not just increased awareness but genuine transformation. A shift in workplace culture, clinical empathy and organisational practice that enhances retention, psychological safety and wellbeing for women of colour navigating perimenopause and menopause.
What the Global Evidence Adds for Women of Colour
Globally, AI‑enabled health research strengthens the case for prioritising equity in menopause care.
International studies show that AI significantly improves the prediction and early detection of cardiometabolic risk, osteoporosis and breast cancer, an essential step forward because cardiovascular disease remains under‑diagnosed in women and presents differently across ethnic groups.
For Black and women of colour, who research shows disproportionately experience delayed diagnosis or misattributed symptoms, AI‑based risk modelling helps clinicians intervene earlier and more accurately by recognising patterns that human assessment often misses.
This creates new opportunities to reduce long‑standing health inequalities.
AI also enables real‑time symptom capture through wearables and natural language processing, allowing for continuous monitoring of hot flushes, sleep disruption, mood changes and stress levels.
These capabilities are especially powerful for women of colour whose symptoms may present differently or who may underreport discomfort due to cultural stigma or negative healthcare experiences.
By reducing recall bias and capturing physiological data in real time, wearables shift clinical encounters from subjective persuasion to objective evidence.
Clinical intelligence platforms such as Amissa further consolidate fragmented symptom histories, questionnaires and wearable data into a longitudinal clinical record.
Rather than clinicians trying to reconstruct a patchwork of isolated consultations, a process that disadvantages women juggling caregiving, shift work or irregular access to healthcare, AI systems present a clear timeline of symptom evolution.
This supports guideline‑aligned decisions and helps reduce healthcare waste, particularly for groups historically overlooked in midlife women’s health.
Consumer AI Tools: Accessible Support, If Privacy & Inclusion Are Strong
Consumer‑facing AI tools also play a critical role. Menotracker, built with a privacy‑first design, allows women to generate structured, clinician‑ready reports that can be used during medical appointments.
This reduces the risk of medical gaslighting, an issue disproportionately experienced by women of colour, because the data presented is objective and difficult to dismiss.
In parallel, platforms like thePause.ai offer personalised, always‑available AI coaching that helps women better manage symptoms between appointments.
Women using the platform report improvements in hot flushes, sleep, mood and energy levels. This type of culturally sensitive, continuous support is particularly valuable for women of colour who may face unique cultural pressures, limited support networks or barriers to regular clinical care.
However, these opportunities come with clear warnings. Menopause data is highly sensitive, the femtech sector must adopt strict standards for privacy, fairness and transparency. UK regulatory experts emphasise that without robust safeguards, such as bias audits, transparent data practices and diverse training datasets, AI systems could inadvertently reinforce the very inequities they aim to resolve.
Practical Ways AI Can Deliver for Black and Women Of Colour
Achieving equitable menopause care requires coordinated system‑wide action.
Commissioners and NHS leaders must ensure AI models are trained on representative datasets that reflect ethnicity, deprivation levels and language diversity and must commit to publishing performance metrics disaggregated by subgroup. They should also fund equity‑centred evaluations in all AI deployments, following examples set by evidence‑driven initiatives such as the Greater Manchester research led by Dr Charlotte Woolley.
Clinicians and Primary Care Networks can support equity by adopting AI tools that standardise symptom intake through validated menopause scales, structured logs and objective biomarkers, including tools like the NHS decision‑aid prototype and Hormona’s system. This reduces reliance on subjective interpretation, which can amplify bias. Integrating locally informed lived‑experience datasets also fosters trust and ensures that menopause care reflects cultural nuances within different communities.
Employers further have a crucial role to play. By deploying tools like MenopauseXR, they can embed culturally competent menopause policies, ranging from flexible working to uniform adjustments and symptom‑aware line management. This is essential for enabling Black and Asian women to remain healthy, confident and supported at work.
Femtech founders and product teams must design with equity front‑of‑mind. This includes co‑designing products with Black and Asian women, conducting regular algorithmic performance audits and meeting NHS and UK data‑protection standards to ensure safe and culturally competent care at scale.
Signals to Watch
Across the UK, the urgency for equitable AI solutions is clear. More than 13 million women are currently experiencing menopause and early menopause (before age forty) remains frequently misdiagnosed, highlighting the need for AI decision aids that reduce delays and unnecessary GP visits.
The UK femtech market is now valued at £22 billion, projected to reach £45 billion by 2027, creating strong momentum for scaling AI solutions that centre the needs of women of colour.
Government‑backed AI investment increasingly includes menopause‑focused innovation, providing an opportunity to embed equity‑by‑design at the policy level.
Meanwhile, global menopause research, including large multi‑ethnic cohorts such as SWAN, continues to demonstrate substantial ethnic variation in symptom progression and cardiometabolic risk. These findings reinforce the importance of building AI systems that do not assume a single “average” menopause but reflect the diversity of women’s lived experiences.
If this article resonated with you or someone you care about, please like, comment and share to help more women, especially Black and women of colour, access the information, support and visibility they deserve. Your engagement helps push menopause out of the shadows and into the mainstream where it belongs.
If you have used AI tools in your own menopause journey, We would love to hear your experience. Let’s keep the conversation going.
Important
Disclaimer
This article is for information and education purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose, treat or replace the advice of a qualified medical professional.
Every woman’s menopause journey is unique. If you are experiencing symptoms or have concerns about your health, please seek guidance from your GP, menopause specialist or another appropriately trained healthcare professional.
