(Montreal) Who cares about developing inventions to improve women’s health? More women themselves than men. This is one of the conclusions of the work of a group of researchers after examining the registers of biomedical patents granted in the United States over nearly 35 years. Except that their data also showed that women are much less likely than their male colleagues to hold patents.
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Stephanie Marin
The Canadian Press
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And as they innovate more to solve health problems of men, that of women is neglected.
Only 25% of holders and co-holders of patents registered in the United States for drugs or surgical instruments are women, it is recalled in the study recently published in the journal Science.
But when teams of women develop inventions, they are 35% more likely to benefit women’s health than those created by teams of men, explained in an interview one of the study’s authors, the professor in organizational behavior of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, John-Paul Ferguson.
Women’s patents more often address gender-specific conditions such as breast cancer, postpartum preeclampsia (hypertension accompanied by poor organ function), as well as diseases that affect women much more often such as lupus.
But also, the inventors are more likely to identify how treatments for problems affecting both sexes – such as heart attacks and diabetes – can be tailored to meet the needs of women. They are also more likely to test whether their inventions, such as a drug, produce different effects depending on the patient’s sex.
This makes Professor Ferguson say that all of society benefits from more women bringing their inventions to market.
Knowing that women’s health is neglected in research is not new, however, he says.
If there are well-known barriers limiting the presence of women in the fields of science and technology, the consequences go far beyond this observation.
One of them was thus highlighted by his research project conducted with his colleagues Rembrand Koning, from Harvard University, and Sampsa Samila, from the Universidad de Navarra in Spain: they wanted to quantify objectively the consequences of the biomedical innovation gap by reviewing all patents granted between 1976 and 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In order to determine which inventions help solve health problems for men, women, or both sexes at the same time, researchers have used artificial intelligence to analyze more than 400,000 patents.
Their conclusion? Biomedical inventions over the 35-year period under study have focused much more on the health needs of men than of women.
“This lack of attention has harmed women,” said the researcher, who considers “shocking” how certain conditions, however widespread such as endometriosis, have been ignored by research.
But all is not gloomy, he hastens to add: he notes that the number of biomedical patents registered in the name of women has increased from 6.3% to 16.2% over the past three decades. .
“There is real progress in the proportion of biomedical inventions that goes to women and also in the proportion of inventions that target women’s health. “
If a change in men’s attitudes towards research axes “may partly explain” this increase in inventions relating to women’s health, a greater part is attributable to “the greater presence of women in the field”, he emphasizes.
Men also invent for women’s health, notes Ferguson, but less often.
He argues that in the innovation sector, “a more diverse representation is important to achieve a more diverse set of inventions.”
Unfortunately, he says, “societal discrimination” has blocked many good ideas.
Her colleague Rembrand Koning even said that their calculations suggest that if male and female inventors had been so represented during the period under study, “some 6,500 inventions on women’s health would have emerged.”
The aim of this work is to find solutions. Raising awareness among male inventors to look at women’s health is crucial, but, according to Professor Ferguson, this other avenue will have more impact: real diversity in the inventor pool.
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