Addressing the Unmet Needs of Women through Medical Technology
December 17, 2024
Colby Holtshouse, Organon’s Global MedTech lead, works with teams around the world to help develop innovative technology and devices to help ensure women have options to meet their individual health needs.
Despite significant advances in medicine, technologies, and digital innovations, the landscape of women’s health remains critically underfunded and under-researched.i This, in part, leaves many women suffering from preventable and addressable conditions like maternal health conditions such as postpartum hemorrhage (PPH).i,ii PPH is a potentially life-threatening obstetric emergency that can occur after childbirth and requires timely medical intervention.i,ii Despite being one of the most common complications of birth, there has been little progress in the space.ii
At Organon, Colby is focused on integrating and expanding access to medical technologies to help drive needed innovation in women’s health.
Let’s get to know her more.
Take a step back…talk about your journey to Organon
For nearly my entire career, I’ve been working in the medical technology field, and I have a breadth of experiences across established medical technology companies and small start-ups. I started in the cardiology space, working on what I’d call groundbreaking technologies in well-established markets. When I shifted my focus to women’s health, I quickly realized the gaps in care and unmet needs. In 2018, I joined Alydia Health, a medical device company focused on postpartum hemorrhage, where I served in multiple leadership roles, then joined Organon when it acquired Alydia Health in 2021.
When I first joined Alydia Health, I was the company’s first commercial employee, and working in this capacity provided me firsthand experience with early-stage product development and clinical research, as well as navigating FDA engagements and market development efforts with limited resources and funds. This, coupled with my learnings from established companies on how to bring products to market within a robust framework, set me up for my first role and focus at Organon – launching a maternal health device in the US market and building our US hospital sales channel while integrating into Organon.
Given your experiences, you must have a vision for the intersection of medical technologies and women’s health…
I do have a vision, and a company like Organon helps provide a platform to bring awareness, investment, and scientific and commercial expertise to the healthcare ecosystem supporting the health of women. But it will also take the broader industry and a motivated community to truly help change outcomes for women.
I personally feel that our collective efforts across the industry need to focus on two critical elements:
- Equality of Access: Too often, women suffer because they can’t access existing solutions for their conditions, leading to delayed diagnoses or undetected early-stage, preventable conditions. Our global systems must evolve to provide the care we can deliver. We know that women, who make up half the population, are pivotal to the well-being of families, communities, and societies at large. Economies with fewer resources see worse health outcomes for women.
- Investments / Funding: Investments across all facets of women’s health have historically been neglected due to structural barriers, misconceptions, and outdated views on clinical research and medicine. Given the number of conditions with unmet needs and resulting opportunity, I believe there is a strong business case. There are many interesting medical technologies targeting women’s unmet needs, and we need the resources to encourage and foster these new innovations.
How are you working to breathe life into this vision at Organon?
Our vision is to surround women with innovative solutions to address their unmet health needs, and there are no other companies with the combined capability, foundation, and drive to address women’s health needs at the scale we intend to.
I am excited to lead Organon’s global efforts in the MedTech space to help us build up our medical device capabilities and advance the commercial strategy, including:
- Continue to launch our maternal health device around the world
- Strategically invest in companies developing medical devices to meet the unique needs of women, like our investment in Claria Medical and its minimally invasive surgical device
- Continue to invest in and encourage the entrepreneurial ecosystem that is bringing new women’s health innovation to market
This is my life’s work, and at Organon, we are well positioned to help drive progress and change.
i. A roadmap to combat postpartum hemorrhage between 2023 and 2030. (2023, October 11). Who.int; World Health Organization. pph-roadmap.pdf (who.int)
ii. Lale Say, Doris Chou, Alison Gemmill, et al., Global causes of maternal death: a WHO systematic analysis, The Lancet Global Health, Volume 2, Issue 6, 2014, Pages e323-e333, ISSN 2214-109X, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(14)70227-X