'AI is indispensable for improving women's health'

In a woman's body, hormones play a much bigger role than in a man's body. This is nothing new. What is new is that the differences are increasingly being mapped in order to promote women's health. AI is indispensable here.

Greet Vink of Erasmus MC, together with Hanneke Takkenberg and Jeanine Roeters van Lennep, founded the Netherlands Womens Health Research and Innovation Center. It was opened on the day before International Women's Day 2025. The center aims to foster collaboration between scientists, citizens, policymakers and medical practitioners to identify differences between men and women to promote women's health and well-being.

Vink: "At Erasmus MC alone, there are around 120 clinicians and scientists who in some way deal with women-specific conditions or conditions that both men and women get, but where the impact on women is different. Those collaborators produce a lot of data. With our center, we want to collect that in the right way so we can build algorithms that specifically target women's bodies."

"We call our center the Dutch center, but for now we work only from Erasmus MC. Together with colleges, general practitioners and regional hospitals, we are building our ecosystem. It would be great if all academic hospitals open such a center and build their own ecosystem in the region. Then we can start collecting a huge amount of data to make great strides."

Women's health and AI

Vink is also involved in the AI Coalition for the Netherlands (AIC4NL). Together with Nicky Hekster, she focuses there on women's health and AI. At Zorg & ict, they will take the stage together for a session on this topic. Hekster: "There is still a lot to be done, but I do see that quite a few steps have been made in recent years. Take breast cancer, for example. Thanks to data and AI, treatments can be deployed in an increasingly targeted way. But we still have a long way to go."

Toolbox for doctors

Vink: "It's great that a lot is already happening there. But there are many more diseases that have a different course in women. Take cardiovascular diseases, but also many types of cancer. If more data specific to women are collected in the right way about the course of these diseases, for example, diagnostics can be accelerated and women can be treated better."

Hekster: "You could have a kind of toolbox of algorithms as a doctor. Suppose a woman comes in to the general practitioner or medical specialist with a problem. If you analyze that problem and you have the patient data properly sorted by certain conditions available, you can get to the bottom of the complaint relatively quickly and deploy the right care. Sometimes women come in to the gynecologist because the general practitioner thinks it's a gynecological problem, when in fact it's a cardiology problem. The silos are still such that that woman is then too often stuck in the gynecological corner. Thanks to AI, such a woman then gets to where she belongs with her complaint faster."

Nicky Hekster: 'It's time for a toolbox'"

Female-specific complaints

There is also much room for improvement with AI in the care of women-specific complaints. Vink cites the World Health Forum publication that came out in 2025. "In it, ten conditions are discussed that women have during their life course that have a mega impact on our gross national product. "

Menopause

Take menopause. Women are working longer and longer, which is especially important with the staff shortage in healthcare. But how do you keep them from dropping out during menopause?

AI can play an important role in this, according to Vink. "I am thinking of a tool in which women keep track of certain measurements and enter their symptoms. They can then take action at an early stage and start taking hormone supplements, for example."

Premenstrual syndrome

"And take the link between premenstrual syndrome and migraines. There has been far too little research on that. If you can use data to predict the course of an ailment, you might be able to prevent women from dropping out."

"And I could go on and on. For example, I think it's really out of date that young girls miss a few days of school every month because they have such severe menstrual complaints. Something must be found for that. And all those women who keep having symptoms for a long time after giving birth. That too is out of date. That really shouldn't be necessary If we know in time exactly what is going on, we can improve the quality of life of these women with medication or technical solutions."

Good datasets can really start to make a difference. So work to be done for the Netherlands Womens Health Research and Innovation Center and AIC4NL.

And actually for all scientific researchers. Vink: "Those studies focus far too often only on men. That is simply easier. If you leave out all the complicated female hormones, you get results much faster. But a result that only applies to half of the patients. And that's really not acceptable anymore."

Greet Vink and Nicky Hekster will take a closer look at FemHealth and AI during Care & ict on behalf of the AI Coalition. Their session will take place on Wednesday, April 9, from 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Come listen too and register for free admission.