Codesign x Inclusivity - A Framework and Toolkit for Co-designing Gender-Inclusive Health Innovation

Limited gender research in public health has had significant health implications for decades [8]. This gap is highlighted by

the underrepresentation of women in clinical trials, leading to disparities in diagnosis, treatment or clinical research [9]. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in women's health rights, agency, and hormonal and sexual health education

from citizens, activists, media, and industry. This has led to a significant wave of innovation in women's healthcare, known

as 'Femtech' [10], ranging from diverse digital to low-tech solutions. Even so, the current state of innovation development, implementation, and the lack of cross-collaboration between developers, designers, doctors and researchers presents

challenges in inclusivity, ethics, and systems thinking [11] [12]. Whilst co-design methodology has been successfully applied

in healthcare to improve patient experiences [13], there is still a need for further research on the specific methods used and their evaluation [14], as well as a theoretical framework for supporting multidisciplinary teams building health-tech inclusively. For example, even though AI tech has a promising position regarding women's healthcare advancement, it can

pose challenges around biased data collection and data analysis, which must be addressed earlier on [15]. Through the implementation of an effective human-centred design (HCD) and co-design methodology, health professionals,

researchers, patients and developers are all included in the development and validation of such innovations. Design thinking methodologies bring the capabilities of seeing the full picture and understanding a holistic system. Through HCD it is

possible to understand patient needs and problems at multiple levels, which then allows for different systems to interact effectively [16].