On Normalising Gender-Specific Medicine - Women’s Health Series with Thao Nguyen

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] CLAIRE

Hello and welcome back to Narratives of Purpose. You are now tuned into a new episode showcasing unique stories of changemakers who are contributing to make a difference in society. For those of you who are listening to Narratives of Purpose for the first time, my name is Claire Murigande. I am your host on this podcast, which is all about amplifying social impact.

If you want to be inspired to take action, then look no further. You are in the right place. Get comfortable and listen to my conversations.

[00:00:32] THAO

My question is, how can I make this normal? How can I make my neighbour know that her gender impacts their health and that she should ask her doctor? How can I make 9 out of 10 people in the supermarket know that their gender impacts their health?

[00:00:47] CLAIRE

In today's episode, I speak with Tao Nguyen. Tao is the founder and CEO of Equal Care, based in Zurich. Equal Care is committed to advancing the healthcare system by making gender specific medicine the norm. In fact, Tao dreams of a world where we all work together so that each person gets the healthcare that is right for them.

Which not only makes patients healthier, but also helps their families, their work, and our society as a whole. Remember to rate and review our show wherever you listen to your podcasts. We are really grateful for everyone who has taken the time to share their thoughts. Thank you for the feedback. And we also want to hear from you.

So please tell us what you think of these conversations. Alright, now let's jump into the conversation with Tao. Enjoy.

[00:01:42] CLAIRE

Today, joining me in my virtual studio is Tao Nguyen. And Tao is the founder and CEO of Equal Care. I have to say, I'm quite excited for this conversation because the main mission of her company, which is based in Switzerland, so it's called Equal Care, and what they want to do is to make gender-specific medicine the norm in order to enhance the outcomes for millions of patients.

So obviously that's quite a bold mission for your company, Tao. Welcome on the podcast. How are you?

[00:02:17] THAO

Hi, Claire. I'm fine. I'm also very excited. And even when I hear you paraphrasing our mission, it gives me emotion. It is bold.

[00:02:30] CLAIRE

So what type of emotion are you talking about when you say it gives you emotion?

[00:02:34] THAO

So enhancing outcome just for one person has so much impact because the person has a whole life, a whole quality of life, a family, children, parents. siblings, a partner. So just saving one life is so much impact. But when, when I stayed millions and hear millions, then I can actually think, okay, I can move something in the world.

It's not super measurable, but I know and the people who will have a better outcome know and their families around them will know.

[00:03:10] CLAIRE

What I want to know and the reason why I want to jump into this is that so far this year I've been running conversations and all these episodes around women's health.

Because I mean, it is a fact today that the healthcare system has been failing women so far in terms of research, the fact that some of the conditions are overlooked, but also even funding for founders who are really supporting women's health. So where do you stand in this context? How are you looking at the situation? From which angle?

[00:03:41] THAO

So I will put a flock in the floor right now because it's a super complicated topic and the Is gender impacts your health independently, if you are a man or woman, your gender impacts your health. That is our pillar to hold on while we load around this whole gender medicine topic. And when I say I want gender specific medicine to be the norm in healthcare, I always say we want to split the atom here because today the healthcare system looks at humans and treats humans, which is.

Good. I'm very thankful for where we are in medicine. I admire every doctor, every nurse. It's being out there helping people every day. I really don't want to criticize you. I just want to look into the future and make a better system for the patients and the caregivers. That's also another flock I'm putting here.

I, I really don't want anybody working in this system take this as a criticism. I have viewed admiration for their everyday work. When I say I want gender specific medicine as a norm, that means we stop treating humans. We treat men and women according to their physiology and their social behaviour. And there we are at sex and gender, the biological sex, which means a man has an X and a Y chromosome, which leads to certain hormones, certain body and certain digestion, certain cells.

And on the other side, you have sex as a woman. You have two X chromosomes, which leads to certain physiology, certain cells, certain hormone levels during your life. So, and then we have gender, which is your social gender. So who are we when we go out into the world, interact with the world, how we are seen by society?

How do we act through to nurture? of our society and our families. And that also impacts your health.

[00:05:42] CLAIRE

How did you start this? And the question is like, what drove you to say, okay, maybe there's an opportunity here. And I see how I can contribute to improve the system because as you rightfully said, we're already treating humans.

We have great treatments out there, et cetera. But what prompted you to say, okay, this is a situation and I think I can move the needle.

[00:06:05] THAO

So when I started, I didn't know if I can move the needle, to be honest. I'm a very optimistic, almost naive person. I fix the problem when it occurs, but I saw the problem.

So I left my 13 year old, yearlong career in tech consulting because Of course, I help my clients to bring MedTech to the market that help people, but I wanted to be more free to define my impact and I quit my job without knowing what I would do when the moment I said I quit my job. Every morning when I woke up, I asked myself, if I go and be an entrepreneur now, how can I make impact?

And I asked myself this almost three months, every day, several times, how can I make impact? I, I think. It really, if you look for answers, you have to ask the right question first. So I pretty much asked the universe and everybody around me, what way do I can make impact? And I added over coffees, over drinks.

I think everybody got tired of me. And then of course you read and maybe your social media feed also helped because I kept reading problems in medicine. And then pretty much clearly it filled, okay, gender specific medicine, there is not much there, there's FemTech, there's, okay, I want to do something for gender specific medicine.

So, and that process, where can I make impact and getting to there? It's okay, I will focus now on gender specific medicine. Took me three months of inside meditation. reading, reading, reading, consuming a lot of podcasts, consuming a lot of literature on innovation in healthcare. And yet there, I saw that this is an underserved space and that I can do something that somebody else hasn't done yet.

[00:08:04] CLAIRE

It took you only three months. I mean, three months sounds like a short time. So how did that process feel like?

[00:08:11] THAO

It felt like somebody gave me a 500-franc voucher and said, go to the department store and pick whatever you like best. I felt empowered by the universe. And of course, my husband, because if you leave your fixed job, a partner is very helpful that still feeds the family.

But. I pretty much felt like my husband gave me a 500-franc voucher and said, go to the department store and find the best thing for yourself.

[00:08:39] CLAIRE

That's fascinating because it really sounds like you kind of entered a space with an open mind and open heart, but you were just like, okay, now I want to make an impact.

I'm just open. Whatever it is that comes to me, I will do it.

[00:08:55] THAO

Well, there were many things coming to me. I would say whatever comes to me and. I'll do it and feels right means in mind, in my body and my soul, maybe three months seems the short period of time, but in these three months, I think on a daily basis, I thought about it 80 percent of my waking time.

And I would say 50 percent of my conversations I have with people, I said, people around me get tired. So three months seems a short time, but I've been actively seeking during this period and it felt long to me.

[00:09:37] CLAIRE

And so, coming back now to Equal Care. So once that you knew what you wanted to do, how did you decide what it was going to look like?

And by that, I mean, how did you decide what difference you're going to make?

[00:09:50] THAO

So we certify single products and what we want with this, our label is to answer the question to a man and a woman, does that work for me? And how does that treatment intervention work for me? Because today as a patient, as a normal human being, I look at this pill box and it looks the same from the gender specific point of view.

as a pillbox next to it. Of course, my doctor says A or B and maybe A has disadvantages. And if I would ask my doctor, does that work for me as a woman, that is not a conversation that doesn't happen today. And how did I come to decide that giving out a certification or a label is what I want to do and how I want to move the needle with gender specific medicine was, I pretty much did the same process.

So I meditated once I said, okay. It's end of March, gender medicine it is. For the next week, I was thinking, okay, which question do I have to ask myself next? The moment I knew what question to ask, I knew it was it. And the question for the next three months to ask myself was, how can I bring gender specific medicine to the masses?

This is what I ask myself every day. I didn't want to fix a data gap. I didn't want to fix like a certain neuronal Alzheimer. I didn't want to have better outcomes for heart attack. These are all topics that are topics that need to be fixed by gender specific medicine. My question is, how can I make this normal?

How can I make my neighbour know that her gender impacts her health and that she should ask her doctor, how can I make nine out of 10 people in the supermarket know that their gender impacts their health? So for three months, I asked myself, how can I bring this to the masses? And I studied business administration and economics.

And when I realized this, there is no market for gender specific medicine. Nobody understands it because it's a complicated topic. So if an everyday person doesn't understand and doesn't know that gender impacts their health, so they will not ask for a healthcare system that actually considers their health.

So I asked myself for many, many days again, and in many, many, many more conversations because now they were much more concrete. How can I bring this to the Marxist? And one day, I had a lunch with a friend outside on Frauenmünsterplatz in Zurich, and the sun was shining. It was 1st of June, my father's birthday.

And she just said, it's very noble of you, this gender specific medicine thing. And we come from consulting, we earned well. And she's like, “Thao, remember, you have two daughters. Nobody wants to pay for this. Who should pay for this?” And I felt this. shame and fear that my children will not have a future and we will only eat pasta with tomato sauce.

I had all the movie running in the back of my mind. And then she's, “who should pay for this?” And I'm like, well, Pharma and MedTech, because they have money that was like really from my inner self coming this editor. And then she's like, “yeah, but what should they pay for?” And I'm like, very, very scared and this very, very scared and fearful stage, maybe marketing, if we could help them explain that it's inside because clinical studies are supposed to be gender fair.

“Yeah, but how should somebody understand?” And I was holding a banana in my hand, and it had a fair-trade sticker on it, and we could stick a label on it, like fair trade. Right. And we'll, we'll, we'll just say. Oh my God, we can stick a label on it like fair trade and there was born out of nowhere. It just strung me, but I think I needed these three months of asking and thinking and rethinking.

And then it was just the last drip, this push and the fear and shame that I'm not a good mother and wanting to prove my friend wrong, that this is the right way to do. And I can provide for my family and do impact at the same time.

[00:14:13] CLAIRE

But now more concretely speaking, right? You've said that it's a label or a certification for products.

So let's say a company has different medications. So you will basically label each of those. Is that correct?

[00:14:26] THAO

Exactly. We do the label based. on the clinical data and you gather the clinical data for each medication and for each indication of the medication. So to really know, does it work for me or not, we have to go on the level of the single product.

[00:14:45] CLAIRE

What are the criteria for this certification? And by that, I mean, what are you looking at in order to say, okay, this product can be labelled as equal care. And through that question, I also want to understand, how do you work? Who are you partnering with to make sure that your certification per se is accepted?

[00:15:07] THAO

So let me talk firstly about the certification criteria. there are many types of intervention. We have medication, you can have digital treatments, and you have a lot of interventions that are AI supported. And for these three categories, we have different certification criteria. So medication and anything that is released to the market by a regulator is quite easy.

We look at their clinical data and ask, do you have gender segregated clinical data? So do you know what is the efficacy? Um, do you know what is the dosage and side effects separated for men and women? And then we look at what is the prevalence in the population, for example, chronic pain, 70 percent women, 30 percent men.

And then they should, in their clinical study, ideally have 70 percent women and 30 percent men. We know reality is different. It's really hard to recruit. women for clinical studies. So we allow a deviation from this cut. So if you should be 70 30, but you only got 50 percent women and 50 percent men, then we still accept.

We accept a deviation from the representation up to 80%. 25 percentage points. This is the point we are setting right now. Honestly, I'm still in discussion with Pharma and we still need to make. Our experience with more and more certifications right now, we have set this as a certification point and I hope it works.

And if it doesn't, then we will iterate, um, based on our experience, but it's a field that nobody has ever conquered.

[00:17:02] CLAIRE

So you're basically pioneering this, right? No other company is doing it, correct?

[00:17:07] THAO

There is no other company. I even got scientific proof this week from a PhD candidate. She's writing her thesis on the ecosystem of innovation for women's health.

And she told me actively the way I'm going to the market for gender specific health. There is no one else in Europe doing it. And I haven't heard of anybody. else in the whole world. Honestly, if some listeners out there know anybody who would be our competition, please let me know. I would be so happy. Because there is so much work in patient education, we wouldn't be alone anymore.

[00:17:51] CLAIRE

And the reason why I was asking that is that while you were describing how you established the criteria for the certification, you say that you're allowing this 25-percentage point deviation. And I was curious to know why 25 percent and not maybe 10 or 15 or 20.

[00:18:08] THAO

We picked some medications that actually have gender specific evidence, and did it invest a lot of money and even if we would have narrowed it more, even the companies that did a good effort, they wouldn't have got the certification. Maybe this might change in future, but also you have to find a pragmatic way between your mission and the ideal state and the reality.

And if we wouldn't find anybody, if we would say, okay, it's only 10 or it's only five, then we narrow also down and we discriminate all the good efforts that this companies do. And that's the last thing I would do. They, they did. gender specific studies. They spent this extra million or billions of dollars to have this evidence.

So they should be recognized for this as well. And you also said something before. I don't know if you have the answer.

[00:18:58] CLAIRE

You said that it's really hard to recruit women for trials. Do we know why?

[00:19:06] THAO

First of all, um, there's still a lot of stigma risk for women because of the contagion, scandal, and the severities.

I think there are a lot of women who are breastfeeding, pregnant, or plan to get pregnant, then you are not recommended to participate in the clinical trial. And participating in the clinical trial is a way of work. You get paid to be in a clinical trial. And in our society today, it's still more men actively seeking in the labour market labour.

So there's a bigger pool of men due to physiology. due to social standards, and that's why it's harder to recruit women in clinical trials. We could design trials differently because for me, for example, very personally, if you in the US go into a clinical trial as a woman, that you have to take birth control.

And that is something I would not do. That is something that 20 years ago, I decided that's not for me. It doesn't work. It causes depression when I, when I'm this week off and that's not worth it. So there are clinical trial designs that put more burden on women than men. And, um, yes, we could design, uh, design the trials for sure, easier for women and maybe we should recompensate women more.

[00:20:36] CLAIRE

But coming back to Equal Care, you were saying that as far as you know, and as far as I've researched no other companies doing what you do. So tell us about all the challenges you've been facing and how you've been able to also overcome some of them.

[00:20:52] THAO

I would say two challenges. One is there is so little awareness.

So my goal is nine out of 10 people in the supermarket know gender impacts their health. I would say, depending where you go, it's one to one and a half person on average that would say, yes, my health is impacted by my gender. So there's very little awareness. And as I said in the beginning, so there is no market.

I cannot say, Oh, this is on high demand. And that's why it makes sense to make my company. It's not like with a new smartphone with whichever There are billions of smartphone users out there, and we could refer to some data of this market has this size and, um, the demands are that, and I'm going directly into this niche.

There's just this vacuum of the pure space, I would say, which I'm not the only innovator in the world who has that problem, but it's sometimes kind of hard because there's so little awareness. There are these few, I would say few compared to the population, few experts, but then you have to find them. And these few people, because there are so few, are so flooded with work and requests and that you even get through to them.

It just takes time and a lot of time. persistence, but I think it really paid off to be persistent with certain people. So one person, I wrote to her 10 times. I stalked her on three events. And by the time I really went to her and talked to her, she said, I know who you are. And I'm like, okay, it paid off to be a half stalker.

Any story of innovators and riding to the West with the cowboys, um, requires a lot of persistence and strength and endurance. Just sometimes when I'm very frustrated, I look at my husband, I said, I wish I would be selling handbags. Because I don't need to explain a handbag to anybody. It's a handbag. It has cool feature.

We have these three colours. Yeah, with Equal Care and the concept of gender medicine, it, it's novel that every day you explain that concept to somebody. But also on the other hand, And I've been complaining about the small ecosystem and the few people that we have within doing this gender specific medicine.

The moment you get through to the people, the moment they have a moment to talk to you, I've been received with a lot of open arms, with a lot of agreement on what we do, and a lot of support as well.

[00:23:49] CLAIRE

How has that helped you move forward with your company? So how far have you gone as to starting certifying products, for example?

[00:23:58] THAO

We've certified up until now. For products, we start now have our first paying customers and the certifications will go live end of October. And right now I'm in the process of finding more partners. But as I said, there are very few, it's a little bit like looking for mushrooms and there is a lot of willingness within the pharma companies, within the start-ups, but.

You need to find the products that have a gender specific approach or gender specific data. And that's really hard to see from the outside. So you always need the personal contact first, explain your value proposition. And then they say, oh yeah, actually we did that in our product. Sometimes you think, oh, that lead is not worth it.

I don't think that they do have a gender specific approach. And then I'm super surprised in the personal conversation. Actually, we do. And I. I've been doing this for years. So it needs a lot of scanning, a lot of personal relationship to expand right now, because we're also very small and not so known yet, but it's growing every day.

I can literally right now feel it's growing every day and getting more recognition. And you asked before, what do I do to make this more recognized? Our certification criteria have been until now reviewed by 20 experts in the field of sex and gender specific medicine, and we're actively looking for a scientific partner right now.

And I hope in the near future, I can come with positive feedback that I now know after the year of reviewing these, they make sense in the sense of sex and gender specific medicine. And me as a label, I'm seeking for a label of somebody else to approve that this makes sense. And this is how we should tell the world that interventions have a gender specific approach.

[00:26:00] CLAIRE

Now I want to come to the more tech part, and I want to understand how your background in tech consulting has helped you develop equal care. And explain to me how you're combining your background, but also the evolving health tech sector in equal care.

[00:26:17] THAO

I think the most important thing I want to tell the world is tech is not scary because somebody very close to me told me this when I was 20.

And that's why I even considered a career in tech consulting and tech is not scary. It's very logical, like a math problem. It has boxes, it has lines, and there are tables. So if we are scared of technology, it cannot help us. That is the first thing. And I want to take this fear away. Oh, everything is digital.

Oh, AI is so scary, and AI is so bad. It takes bad decisions, and we cannot understand it. We can understand AI, not to the fullest level, and that's the IP of the company, um, developing it, but we can ask questions, dumb questions on, can you explain to me how this works? Where does your data come from? Why did you program it like this?

These are not dumb questions. And the more we asked. As a public, as a society. These questions to AI developers, the more they will feel the social pressure to do a good job, and therefore, if it's health, AI contribute to better outcome for everybody. So I want everybody to ask these dumb questions about AI.

[00:27:50] CLAIRE

And to your point, these are not dumb questions. These are actually the basic but important questions.

[00:27:56] THAO

Exactly. Basic questions that you should not fear to ask because you might look uneducated. No, it's your right to understand if this thing takes a decision on your health, it's your right to understand how was it made? Why did you make it? And in which way did you make it?

And if society understands that, that we have to ask these questions about AI, Yeah, it just makes more pressure, and we should not only rely on the regulator because the regulator can just do so far. We as a whole have to ask these questions. This is the same as when Apple had the scandal with the production in China, that the whole public stood up and said, “Hey, that's not okay”.

And then they changed it. For me, this is the same. We have to do this as a society together to normalize these questions about AI.

[00:28:51] CLAIRE

Absolutely. As you say, let's not forget that we actually have the power as individuals. Hopefully people are aware of that and that they have the power to do it. At least we're reminding them right here that, you know, it's always good to ask questions.

[00:29:04] THAO

And if you are. If not, Equal Care asks these questions on behalf for you.

[00:29:09] CLAIRE

Probably a couple of years ago, I also saw a post which was a very good reminder now that we're talking about healthcare and how to advocate for yourself, but really in the positive sense by questioning, you know, if you're sitting in front of your healthcare provider and they say, maybe you need to take this treatment or you have to go through this surgical intervention, you know, always ask the question.

Obviously, they have the knowledge in the sense that. they're a bit deeper into the data or even the clinical background in terms of what you're going through in terms of your condition. But at the same time, they don't know how you feel and what you've been through because they, they're not in your body, so to speak.

So it's basically up to you to ask, like, what are the risks? What are the benefits? And what are the alternatives? These are like coming back to what you were saying before, basic, but important questions for you as a person who's going to receive that treatment, who's going to undergo that surgery. So we do have that power by asking questions.

[00:30:08] THAO

Exactly. And it happens to me as well. I go through the doctor's office door, and everything is so intimidating. And then they tell you, we do this, and they ask you all these questions. And you're not used to that. The doctor's office situation is luckily not an everyday situation for people, but if nobody teaches us how to talk to a doctor, we just sit there.

And then we are super overwhelmed with all the information we are receiving. Yeah, it's a reminder to everybody, ask questions, and of course, doctors do not have a lot of time, but it's your body, it's your health, and it's your right. And if the doctor says, sorry, I do not have time, then ask for material to read up on it.

Ask questions.

[00:31:01] CLAIRE

Before I let you go, I still want to give you the opportunity to share anything that we might not have addressed in the conversation. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners today?

[00:31:12] THAO

So if I could take one more minute. I would say gender specific medicine doesn't arrive at the doctor's office yet for two reasons.

One is a lack of data. And the second reason is the data that we have today and the evidence that we have today is not findable by doctors. And we cannot shift the whole world, but we as Equal Care really look into getting the data that we have today to the doctor's office. And next to the certification, we have realized doctors have to do way too much research when they want to treat a patient according to their gender.

So six weeks ago, we decided next to our certification, we will make a database for gender segregated evidence where doctors can just go and look it up. And not just doctors, but also patients. And more importantly, coming back to tech, available for search engines and AI.

So next to gender impacts your health, we need more gender segregated evidence in the world, and this is what we are working very hard as our impact project right now, even harder than setting our certification, honestly, to bring gender segregated evidence. To the world so doctors and AI can use it. And if anybody out there wants to collaborate with us, bring more evidence to the database, um, helping us implement or having any opinion on this, please contact me on any channel.

I would be very, very happy. We are in the conceptual phase right now. So all the voices are welcome. That is what I would ask to the world.

[00:33:11] CLAIRE

Thao, thank you so much. It's been amazing talking to you. I think we could still talk for hours, but like for many of my guests, I will definitely stay in touch and see how Equal Care evolves.

And perhaps you come for a part two in a year. to see how far you've come.

[00:33:28] THAO

Thank you for the conversation. I would be happy to join a part two.

[00:33:32] CLAIRE

You're welcome.

Thank you so much for tuning in today. I appreciate you taking the time. That was episode 72, a conversation with Thao Nguyen on making gender specific medicine the norm. If you wish to learn more about Equal Care, head over to their website at equal-care.org. As always, you'll find the link in the show notes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it in your network. And if you are curious to learn more about women's health from fascinating conversations on our podcast, be sure to listen to our special series released earlier this year in March, which spans five episodes in episodes 66 to 70. You can also listen to episode 38 talking about women's heart health plus episode 42 focusing on midlife health.

Join me again in two weeks as I continue to showcase female innovators moving the needle in the women's health space. Until the next episode, take care of yourselves, stay well and stay inspired.

This podcast was produced by Tom at Rustic Studios.