How AI Can Help Bring Health Care Equity to Women

When it comes to receiving health care, women face far more barriers than men—often paying more out of pocket for health care in the United States and facing dismissal or misdiagnoses when it comes to their medical issues.

Dorothy Kilroy, Kate Ryder, and Kulleni Gebreyes gathered at the TIME Women’s Leadership Forum in New York City on Sept. 10 to discuss the challenges and opportunities present in women’s health care in a panel moderated by TIME senior health correspondent Alice Park.

Kulleni Gebreyes, managing principal of life sciences and health care at Deloitte, a sponsor of the Women's Leadership Forum, spoke about the “pink tax” women face when it comes to health care. They often pay more out-of-pocket costs and delay receiving care due to issues like lack of childcare. “It really creates not just an unequal system, but an inequitable system,” she said. “The system doesn’t recognize [that] physiologically, biologically, and socially there are differences between the sexes, and the genders.”

Part of the solution to make health care more equitable, says Kate Ryder, CEO and founder of Maven Clinic, is providing more resources for women and their families. Marginalized communities are more likely to distrust the health care system, Ryder said, and in the U.S., where nearly one in two births are financed by Medicaid due to poverty levels, making progress means rebuilding that trust. “Sometimes it really is just giving them a provider that’s accessible, that they can trust to help them.”

It’s also important to gather more data on women’s health—an area that has long been underserved. “It wasn’t until the early ’90s, that there was a mandate to include women in clinical trials,” said Gebreyes.

AI, if leveraged correctly, could provide an opportunity to remedy this—and provide women with more agency. “It isn’t easy for many people to get to a doctor’s office, or it isn’t easy for them to interpret that data,” says Dorothy Kilroy, chief commercial officer of ōURA, which is also a sponsor of the Women’s Leadership Forum. “[AI] is giving us access to all these really exciting tools that could eventually allow people not just to get more data, but to actually understand it and interpret it.”

The TIME100 Women's Leadership Forum was presented by Barbie, Deloitte, and ōURA.

Write to Simmone Shah at [email protected].