Health tech startup Ovum has raised $4 million in seed funding as it looks to expand its AI-powered women’s health platform. It is also looking to continue building what it describes as the first longitudinal dataset designed specifically around women’s health.
The round was led by Admiralty Capital Group and included participation from Antler, Giant Leap, Brisbane Angels and more. LaunchVic also increased its investment through the Alice Anderson Fund ahead of being folded into Innovation Victoria later this year.
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The latest funding injection follows a $1.7 million pre-seed round in 2025 and has seen the company triple its valuation.
The funding will support team growth and the continued expansion of Ovum’s women’s health dataset, which the company says is central to its mission of addressing the gender health gap.
The startup was founded by Dr Ariella Heffernan-Marks in 2022 off the back of her own experiences navigating chronic migraines and feeling dismissed by healthcare professionals. Ovum aims to help women better understand their health, identify patterns over time, and advocate for themselves in clinical settings.
“I’ve sat on both sides of the desk, as a patient and as a doctor, and that’s why this mission matters so much to me,” Heffernan-Marks told SmartCompany.
“For too long, women have had to navigate healthcare systems that were not designed around their lived experiences or backed by sufficient female health data.”
Ovum is building a broader women’s health dataset
When SmartCompany first spoke to Heffernan-Marks for Neural Notes in 2024, Ovum’s ambition was to build a longitudinal women’s health dataset capable of helping address bias in healthcare and artificial intelligence systems.
Two years later, the company says it has captured more than 60,000 health insights from users and facilitated more than 113,000 AI health conversations.
While many women’s health apps focus primarily on fertility or reproductive health, Heffernan-Marks said Ovum’s users now span a much broader demographic.
“We can see from our data that women 15-84 are on the app and for a range of reasons, from managing ADHD, fibromyalgia, and migraines to PCOS, Endo, and menopause,” she said.
“We have noted more than 20 main conditions that women use Ovum for, whilst also helping them manage health behaviours and goals around weight, diet and exercise.”
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Investors are backing not only the platform itself but also the dataset being created through it.
“Our valuation reflects both what we’ve already built and the scale of the opportunity ahead,” Heffernan-Marks said.
“What gives investors confidence is the combination of strong organic growth, validation of our commercial models, high user engagement, and a market that is increasingly demanding better health outcomes.”
Heffernan-Marks said the company believes it is building a significant first-mover advantage through the way it captures health information.
This is because Ovum combines both qualitative and quantitative health information, creating a richer picture of a person’s health journey over time than traditional health-tracking tools.
“We store more than just biometrics; we actually have the whole clinical context,” she said.
“How good is a sleep score if you don’t understand the context of that woman’s life from her medications, stressors, medical history?
“The more data a user contributes over time, the more personalised and valuable the platform becomes, creating strong product stickiness and a continuously improving data asset. We can already see this in how users engage with Ovum over time.”
Privacy and commercialisation as the platform grows
The startup’s focus on collecting health data raises obvious questions around privacy and how that information may eventually be commercialised.
“Our mission and position on privacy hasn’t changed,” Heffernan-Marks said.
“We will never sell user data, and never use it in ways our users haven’t agreed to.”
According to the company, a large percentage of users have opted in to contribute anonymised information for research purposes.
“Our users give us explicit permission to process health data, and we’re proud that 83% of the women who use Ovum have opted in to share anonymised data that will contribute to research that improves understanding, treatment and care for women everywhere,” Heffernan-Marks said.
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While Ovum currently generates revenue through subscriptions and enterprise partnerships, Heffernan-Marks said future opportunities could include providing tailored anonymised datasets for clinical researchers.
“In the future, as Ovum broadens and diversifies its dataset, we will need to invest in tailoring the data for clinical researchers depending on their specific needs,” she said.
“All data would remain anonymised and consensual with users providing explicit approval during their onboarding.”
The company has also launched clinical trials with St George Hospital and the Royal Hospital for Women, which it says are the first in Australia to assess AI as a preventative health tool designed specifically for women.
While formal outcomes data is still being gathered, Heffernan-Marks said early feedback suggests users are becoming more proactive in managing their health.
“Users highlighted medication tracking, symptom documentation and pattern recognition as some of the most valuable features,” she said.
“Several participants described Ovum as a tool that helped them identify symptom trends and prepare for appointments with health professionals.”
Ovum has also signed partnerships with Medibank, Fernwood Fitness, Sweat, and Menopause Friendly Australia. It’s also running a pilot with Australian Red Cross Lifeblood.
The company said the new funding will help accelerate its growth as it looks to expand both its platform and the women’s health dataset underpinning it.
“This raise allows us to scale that mission responsibly by getting Ovum into the hands of more women and continuing to build a trusted platform grounded in clinical integrity, privacy and consent,” Heffernan-Marks said.
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