Sofiat Akinola: Bridging Innovation and Access in Women’s Health at FIGO 2025
Sofiat Akinola, Director at Roche Diagnostics, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“My main reflection from FIGO2025 is that advancements in women’s health are incomplete without ensuring equitable access to existing solutions.
While many will leave FIGO with different insights, this message stood out for me: We don’t lack innovation in women’s health. We lack translation into access, especially for diagnostics.
Over the course of the week, I followed sessions on PCOS, preeclampsia, menopause, cervical cancer, and oncofertility. And in each one, I kept asking:
- Where are the screening and diagnostic tools?
- Are we investing in early detection?
- Are policies catching up to what science already makes possible?
These questions shaped my booth talk, in which I discussed the role of advocacy and policy in enabling access to screening and diagnostics, not just to detect a health condition but to give women clarity, options, and the ability to act.
Here are a few of my takeaways:
- Menopause: A growing priority, but with stark racial and geographic disparities.
- PCOS: Still viewed too narrowly as a fertility issue, despite its broader health impacts.
- Preeclampsia: A condition we can predict and manage, if systems make space for screening.
- Cervical cancer: The roadmap is clear. The pace must accelerate.
- Oncofertility: We need system readiness for women diagnosed with cancer during reproductive years.”
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