Hamilton accelerator fuels surge in Canada’s femtech sector

For years, women’s health innovators in Canada have been hampered by a lack of funding and institutional support — even as their ideas promised transformative change.

That landscape is shifting thanks to a Hamilton-based business accelerator.

Run out of Innovation Park on Longwood Road, Femtech Canada has quickly become the third-largest women’s health innovation network in the world — an overlooked sector it says has potential to contribute $27 billion to the national GDP by 2040.

The network was founded in 2021 by Rachel Bartholomew, the creator of pelvic therapy startup Hyivy Health, who saw a gap in resources for health companies tailored to women, girls, non-binary people, trans people and others assigned female at birth.

But what began as a grassroots effort to connect “femtech”