Gender specific medicine with EQUAL CARE

Background and Journey

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey before starting Equal Care?

Thao Nguyen: Sure! Hi, I’m Thao. I’m 38 years old, a mother of two daughters, and I was born to Vietnamese parents in Braunschweig, Germany. I grew up there and completed my schooling before studying business and economics, focusing on business technology and international policies.

After my studies, I went straight into tech consulting, but I always aimed to focus on life sciences and healthcare—ensuring that my work positively impacted patients' lives. I did that for 12 and a half years, consulting medtech product managers on software solutions that fit market regulations and diagnostics.

Then, I decided I wanted a job with a more direct, hands-on impact. So, I quit my consulting job without knowing what I would do next. However, just 30 minutes after making that decision, I realized I wanted to start my own company. I wanted more flexibility for my family, greater long-term financial stability, and, most importantly, a stronger impact on the world than I could achieve in a corporate role. That’s why I founded EQUAL CARE.

Gender-Specific Medicine

Let’s dive into gender-specific approaches. How does recognizing gender-based psychological and behavioral differences improve patient care? Do you have specific examples?

Thao Nguyen: That’s a big question. If we look at large-scale data, such as the World Economic Forum report, considering sex and gender in medical practices could improve the health of 3.4 billion women and 600 million men. That’s an enormous impact. 

What would you say are the biggest misconceptions about gender-specific medicine?

Thao Nguyen: Oh, wow—where do I even begin? One of the biggest misconceptions is that women's health is just gynecology and "bikini medicine." But that’s only about 20% of the picture.

Many conditions disproportionately affect women, yet they remain underdiagnosed, misdiagnosed, or undertreated because, historically, medical research has used men as the standard. Examples range from heart attack to dementia to liver transplantation. Until recently, we didn’t have the capacity to collect or analyze gender-specific data effectively. Luckily, in 2025, we now have the tools to process and segregate this data into meaningful subgroups.

The Future of Gender-Specific Medicine

Can you briefly explain the basic concepts of gender-specific medicine? How did this approach develop, and what gaps did you see before deciding to focus on it?

Thao Nguyen: Sure. Sex- and gender-specific medicine means considering biological sex and gender identity in every aspect of healthcare.

For medications, this means analyzing how women and men metabolize drugs differently and how active ingredients react at the cellular level. In diagnostics, we need to re-evaluate threshold values—what a certain lab result means for a man versus a woman. Some values may be the same, but many are not. When it comes to prevention, men and women differ vastly in behaviour and compliance. Raising awareness about this is crucial.

There is already a wealth of knowledge available, but it’s not being widely applied because people aren’t used to thinking this way. Additionally, there are significant research and data gaps, which means we still don’t know everything. Awareness is growing, but we’re still in the early stages.

When it comes to digital interventions, men and women interact with technology differently. Their preferences and behaviors vary, so medical apps must be designed and tested with these differences in mind.

Then there’s AI. When we create, train, and validate algorithms, we need to ensure our datasets are representative of both men and women. If the data is biased, the algorithms will be too, leading to inaccurate diagnoses and treatments. This is a critical issue that must be addressed.

The Future of EQUAL CARE and Healthcare

Looking ahead, what do you see for EQUAL CARE? How do you think gender-specific medicine will shape the healthcare industry?

Thao Nguyen: I wouldn’t just say it will "shape" healthcare—I believe it will reinvent it. Right now, medicine treats people as a homogeneous group. Instead, we need to acknowledge that men and women have distinct health needs.

I don’t want to overhaul the system overnight—that would cause it to collapse. But we need to gradually integrate sex- and gender-specific approaches to improve patient outcomes across the board. And I know we’re not doing this alone. It’s a massive effort that requires collaboration from researchers, healthcare professionals, and policymakers alike.

That makes a lot of sense. Finally, what’s the one key takeaway you want people to remember?

Thao Nguyen: Your gender impacts your health. Tell everyone.