California femtech leader integrates Houston-founded conversational AI tool

girl gang

Houston-founded Ema, an AI resource for maternal health support, has been loaded onto the Willow Innovations Inc. app, a platform for breastfeeding mothers. Photo courtesy of Willow

Willow users, meet Ema — you're new best AI-enabled friend.

Houston-founded Ema (née SocialMama), an AI resource for maternal health support, has been loaded onto the Willow Innovations Inc. app, a platform for breastfeeding mothers.

"We are thrilled to integrate our conversational AI platform into the Willow App and leverage the power of advanced technology to meet women where they are with the information they need," Amanda Ducach, founder of Ema, says in a news release. "Ema and Willow have a shared mission to make lasting improvements in women's health and we built a one-of-a-kind solution that addresses the unique challenges mothers face regularly.

"Our partnership represents a critical advancement for today's mothers and demonstrates how responsible AI can improve the maternal care experience," she continues.

Now, users on the app can utilize Ema's HIPPA-secure tool that pulls from a comprehensive, proprietary database of expert-backed information. The conversational AI chatbot responds prioritizing speed, accuracy, and empathy and compassion for users. Ema reports that their users "will feel like they are talking with their favorite postpartum (labor and delivery) nurse."

"New moms don't have enough support — for their feeding and parenting journey, or in their postpartum care. We're thrilled to partner with Ema to offer moms personalized information along this journey," adds Sarah O'Leary, CEO of Willow. "AI tools, when implemented thoughtfully, can help close gaps in delivering personalized guidance at an efficient scale and I'm excited about the impact Ema can have on the well-being of mothers in our Willow community."

Founded in 2018 as a way to connect new moms, Ema evolved with a major rebrand and pivot to AI-backed tools last year.

Willow was launched in 2014 and released the first wearable, in-bra breast pump in 2017.

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After growing in Chicago and raising funding, Partum Health selected Houston to expand its femtech platform. Photo via Getty Image

Growing femtech company chooses Houston for first out-of-state expansion

moving in

A startup dedicated to comprehensive pregnancy, birth and postpartum care has expanded from its Chicago birthplace to Houston.

Last summer, Partum Health raised $3.1 million in seed funding, which makes it possible for the company to begin a nationwide expansion. That begins in Space City.

“We looked at states where there is work to do on outcomes for maternal health. Texas rose to the top and Houston, in many ways is fairly close to Chicago, our home city. The really thriving healthcare ecosystem attracted us as well,” CEO and Co-Founder Meghan Doyle tells InnovationMap.

As a mom of a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old herself, Doyle says that she experienced the gap firsthand in what’s available to women beyond what her obstetrician or midwife does.

“You had to work really hard to cobble together the care you needed. It was a matter of putting together my personal experiences of realizing it’s not just me, it’s systematic,” says Doyle. “I couldn’t get that problem out of my head.”

Neither could her co-founder and head of operations, Matt Rogers, a father of twins whose family had to navigate the NICU and life-threatening complications. They started working together on the business in earnest during the COVID shutdown and debuted Partum Health at the beginning of 2021.

Partum has begun partnering with obstetricians and midwives to help select complementary care that includes lactation support, pelvic floor physical therapy, mental health services, nutrition counseling and doula care. What’s unique about the plan is that, from aiding in behavioral health problems to addressing nutritional issues, the user’s team is distributed around the Houston area and are fully virtual. Physical therapy and other services that must be done in-person may take place either in-home or at third-party locations.

“We’re still in the process of credentialing with insurance companies,” says Doyle.

In Illinois, Partum is already working with BlueCross BlueShield, United Healthcare, Aetna and Cigna for clinical care, so Doyle says she is confident that those companies will soon follow suit in Texas.

While hiring a team in Houston that includes a client care lead, Doyle says that Partum is simultaneously providing services and getting to know the market better. They’re also building more bundled models of care to better assist users in their new landscape.

Doyle and Partum Healthcare participated in the Ignite Healthcare Network’s 2023 program, which concluded last week with a pitch competition. Ignite helps female healthcare founders to connect with mentors and other industry experts that will help them navigate the health tech ecosystem. Doyle was one of nine finalists, but did not place in the top three. But she says the program has helped prepare her for success nonetheless.

“In our world, you’re always pitching,” she admits.

The next steps for Partum include a 2024 rife with expansion. Because building relationships with insurance happens on a state-by-state basis, the company will be able to help women around Texas soon after the company is comfortably established in Houston. The Dallas-Fort Worth area will likely be first, followed by Austin and San Antonio.

“We know there’s a huge gap in access to care that may mean evolving a little bit and reaching out across the state,” Doyle says.

Last month, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission reported that 90 percent of the state’s pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. With access to care like what Partum provides, those complications could become a thing of the past.

A Houston founder is introducing you to ema — a GPT-based chat platform and your new best friend in women's health. Photo via Canva

Exclusive: Houston startup rebrands to provide AI chat tool focused on women’s health

meet ema

Amanda Ducach set out to create a platform where mothers could connect with each other socially, but when she launched SocialMama just ahead of a global pandemic, she soon learned there was a bigger market need for access to information surrounding women's health — from fertility to menopause.

After pivoting her femtech platform to include women's health experts, she realized her technology wasn't able to completely support growing user base. The platform, which was called SocialMama, saw users engaging with experts in similar ways — and as Ducach looked into growing the platforms users, she realized that 24/7 access to experts was going to be hard to scale.

"We noticed that most of these conversations were repetitive," Ducach tells InnovationMap. "You had women asking an expert about tracking ovulation a hundred times a day. Having an OBGYN answer that question a hundred times a day was crazy and just not scalable."

Ducach says that about 16 months ago, her team took a step back to recreate the platform incorporating GPT technology. GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer, and is a family of artificial intelligence language models most recently made popular but ChatGPT developed by OpenAI.

Now, after building out the platform, Ducach's company has rebranded to ema. The AI-based chat tool — named from the three letters in the middle of "female" — is meant to feel like texting "your childhood best friend who became an OBGYN physician," Ducach says. Not only can the chat provide crucial medical information, but it has a memory and can pick up conversations where they left off to be a constant resource to users.

The new platform, deemed ema, operates as an AI-based chat for women to engage with. Screenshot courtesy of ema

"Ema can answer everything from, 'how do I improve my baby's latch,' to 'how to I get a diabetic-friendly brownie recipe,' to 'give me an affirmation that's spoken like Snoop Dog because I'm feeling sad today,'" Ducach says.

Ducach first described the evolution of the company to AI-based communication last summer on the Houston Innovators Podcast. Now, the platform is gearing up for its launch next month and plans to raise seed funding this year to double her current team of 10 people to support the company's growth. Ducach, who was accepted into the Techstars Austin program in 2021, also says she's looking for more beta users in the meantime, and those interested should reach out to her or her team.

Ultimately, Ducach says the mission of ema is to democratize access to women's health care so that women feel supported and just a few taps away from important information.

"Barriers to care for women who face socioeconomic disparities is where you see the need for change," Ducach says. "For us, it's reducing those barriers of care. Ema is always in your pocket. You have access to her 24/7. The way that ema is really structured and her purpose is to catch red flags so that we can then help the female user get to positive health outcomes."

Amanda Ducach founded the company in 2019. Photo via Twitter

Houston-based Work & Mother is growing. Photo courtesy of Work & Mother

Houston-based femtech company announces first locations outside of Texas

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Houston-based Work & Mother, which outfits commercial buildings with lactation accommodations for working parents, announced this month that it has entered into an agreement to open two new lactation suites outside the state of Texas.

The company will open suites in two commercial office buildings in Boston, Massachusetts, and Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. The new suites are expected to be completed this summer.

Work & Mother currently has suites in Allen Center, The Jones on Main and Four Oaks Place in Houston, as well as East Lake at Tillery in Austin and Lincoln Centre in Dallas.

The Work & Mother suites allow parents to book time to pump in a private room in the comfortable, well-designed suites through the Work & Mother app. Each private room is equipped with a hospital-grade pump, milk storage bags, sanitizing wipes, and other supplies while the full Work & Mother Suite lounge area includes cleaning stations and refrigerated milk storage.

The suites also serve commercial properties and employers by providing them with the resources to adhere to federal labor laws—as well as reduce HR risks, and retain female employees—by having a dedicated space with lactation amenities for employees.

When founder and CEO Abby Donnell spoke with InnovationMap in 2021, she said that Work & Mother was planning for national expansion.

"We look forward to supporting more new mothers' return to work and providing the real estate services that office tenants and landlords need in a post-pandemic world to promote wellness, flexibility, and inclusion in the workplace," she said.

In addition to the new location in Boston and Arlington, the company is planning locations in San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and New York, according to Work & Mother's website.

The company is also adding new services for working and lactating parents through a recent partnership with Nest Collaborative, a national virtual lactation consultation platform, announced last month.

The partnership will provide Work & Mother app users with access to Nest Collaborative's board-certified lactation consultants through telehealth appointments, available seven days a week.

The services through Nest Collaborative are part of Work & Mother's resource center called The HUB, which also provides career and personal coaching, mental health resources, and downloadable guides.

"We are confident that our partnership with Nest Collaborative will have a measurable impact on the breastfeeding success rates of parents who work outside the home," Donnell said in a statement. "I'm looking forward to broadening our ability to support working parents at any time, anywhere."

Kyra Doolan joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the huge opportunities for innovation within femtech. Photo via LinkedIn

Houston investor shares why she's focused on funding the future of femtech

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 98

Successful investors find gaps in the marketplace and direct funds into startups and technologies resolving those gaps. For Kyra Doolan, managing director at Houston-based Texas HALO Fund, femtech represents a huge opportunity for innovation.

"A lot of the issues that face women, are things that are not talked about," she says on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast, referencing things like miscarriage, injury during childbirth, etc. "For a lot time, women just sat back if they had these issues, and they kept it to themselves, so those problems weren't being addressed."

While Texas HALO Fund has invested in femtech since its first fund in 2012, Doolan shares on the show how she personally saw an investment opportunity with kegg, a fertility tracking device. Doolan says she and other women aren't taught how to manage their own fertility journey, but it doesn't have to be that way.

"I was at a stage in my life where my eyes were open to the gaps that are out there and the conversations that weren't being had," she says. "In looking into Kegg, it showed me what the market was and how many gapes there were in the market just around fertility."

Texas HALO Fund has a few femtech companies in its portfolio now, and the most recent addition is Houston-based Work & Mother, a company that builds out fully-equipped nursing accommodations in office buildings.

Despite it's growing femtech portfolio, the fund is industry agnostic, though, Doolan says, about a third of the companies Texas HALO Fund invests in reside in the health tech space. What makes HALO different is its focus on early-stage startups.

"We like to get in early," Doolan says. "We're, what you would historically consider 'pre-VC,' but now that's getting a little bit blurred. ... We're some of the earlier capital that's invested, and we continue to make investment as the companies continue to subsequent rounds."

Doolan shares more on her passion for femtech, as well as her advice for founders looking for funding and potential female investors looking to get into investing on the episode. Listen to the full interview below — or wherever you stream your podcasts — and subscribe for weekly episodes.


One way to move the needle on developing femtech, according to this expert, is to make sure women have a seat at the table at venture firms funding the innovations. Photo via Getty Images

The growing femtech industry needs more attention — and funds, says this Houston expert

guest column

Femtech is a term that is generally given to medical products, software, and technologies that aim to enhance the health and wellbeing of women. But when people think of femtech, things like period tracker apps and pregnancy tests are usually the first things to come to mind. While those developments are important and used regularly, there are other diseases and chronic issues affecting women that need to be talked about as well.

The concept of femtech shouldn't replace "women's health" which considers broader issues, such as endometriosis and PCOS, as well as other conditions — such as heart disease — common to both men and women but clinically different in the latter. Femtech investors, manufacturers, and health advocates should focus on creating solutions for all issues and diseases that affect women, not just the most obvious.

However, more education and awareness is necessary to bring these issues to the forefront, as many people are not aware about how certain chronic issues and diseases affect women differently than they may affect men. For example, heart disease is the leading cause of death in women and men, but if you close your eyes and envision someone having a heart attack — do you see a man? Or a woman? Probably a man. And you're not alone. Because so much of our healthcare research has focused primarily on men, we are programmed to think of certain conditions affecting men predominantly when they are truly major health issues for both.

Similarly, when it comes to memory loss, women have a 1 in 5 chance of developing Alzheimer's disease compared to men being 1 in 11. Additionally, out of the more than 5 million people living with Alzheimer's in the U.S., 3.2 million are women. While there aren't as many Femtech-related products or solutions focused on these issues, there should be, especially in a rapidly growing industry.

According to the U.S. Clinical Laboratory Test Market, the femtech industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 13 percent. Frost and Sullivan predicts the global Femtech market revenue will reach $1.1 billion by 2024, and BIS Research forecasts that by 2030 the sector will hit $3.04 billion. But even with great momentum, there is a knowledge gap that needs to be bridged. Overall, the industry has been underfunded and many opportunities have been overlooked, not necessarily because of gender. But, because investors in the industry are predominantly men, there is a lack of education and understanding of why these products are needed.

A solution would be for more women to become investors. Women have the personal experience and a better understanding of how these products will benefit them, which allows them to better understand the story told, increasing the chance the product will be funded and brought to market. To fund life-changing inventions for women, we need to have women involved, which means we need women to step into the investment community. Until more women get a seat at the investment table, women in femtech who are looking for investors need to be prepared to share real life stories and provide as much information as possible to have a better chance of securing funding.

The femtech industry is growing, and we will continue to see innovative devices and apps brought to market. With more education, a better understanding of other issues that affect women, and more female investors, the industry has the potential to take its growth to a new level.

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Isabella Schmitt currently serves as the director of regulatory affairs at Proxima Clinical Research Inc.
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5 Houston scientists named winners of prestigious Hill Prizes 2026

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Five Houston scientists were recognized for their "high-risk, high-reward ideas and innovations" by Lyda Hill Philanthropies and the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology (TAMEST).

The 2026 Hill Prizes provide seed funding to top Texas researchers. This year's prizes were given out in seven categories, including biological sciences, engineering, medicine, physical sciences, public health and technology, and the new artificial intelligence award.

Each recipient’s institution or organization will receive $500,000 in direct funding from Dallas-based Lyda Hill Philanthropies. The organization has also committed to giving at least $1 million in discretionary research funding on an ad hoc basis for highly-ranked applicants who were not selected as recipients.

“It is with great pride that I congratulate this year’s Hill Prizes recipients. Their pioneering spirit and unwavering dedication to innovation are addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time – from climate resilience and energy sustainability to medical breakthroughs and the future of artificial intelligence,” Lyda Hill, founder of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, said in a news release.

The 2026 Houston-area recipients include:

Biological Sciences: Susan M. Rosenberg, Baylor College of Medicine

Rosenberg and her team are developing ways to fight antibiotic resistance. The team will use the funding to screen a 14,000-compound drug library to identify additional candidates, study their mechanisms and test their ability to boost antibiotic effectiveness in animal models. The goal is to move toward clinical trials, beginning with veterans suffering from recurrent infections.

Medicine: Dr. Raghu Kalluri, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Kalluri is developing eye drops to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss globally. Kalluri will use the funding to accelerate studies and support testing for additional ocular conditions. He was also named to the National Academy of Inventors’ newest class of fellows last month.

Engineering: Naomi J. Halas, Rice University

Co-recipeints: Peter J. A. Nordlander and Hossein Robatjazi, Rice University

Halas and her team are working to advance light-driven technologies for sustainable ammonia synthesis. The team says it will use the funding to improve light-driven catalysts for converting nitrogen into ammonia, refine prototype reactors for practical deployment and partner with industry collaborators to advance larger-scale applications. Halas and Nordlander are co-founders of Syzygy Plasmonics, and Robatjazi serves as vice president of research for the company.

The other Texas-based recipients include:

  • Artificial Intelligence: Kristen Grauman, The University of Texas at Austin
  • Physical Sciences: Karen L. Wooley, Texas A&M University; Co-Recipient: Matthew Stone, Teysha Technologies
  • Public Health: Dr. Elizabeth C. Matsui, The University of Texas at Austin and Baylor College of Medicine
  • Technology: Kurt W. Swogger, Molecular Rebar Design LLC; Co-recipients: Clive Bosnyak, Molecular Rebar Design, and August Krupp, MR Rubber Business and Molecular Rebar Design LLC

Recipients will be recognized Feb. 2 during the TAMEST 2026 Annual Conference in San Antonio. They were determined by a committee of TAMEST members and endorsed by a committee of Texas Nobel and Breakthrough Prize Laureates and approved by the TAMEST Board of Directors.

“On behalf of TAMEST, we are honored to celebrate the 2026 Hill Prizes recipients. These outstanding innovators exemplify the excellence and ambition of Texas science and research,” Ganesh Thakur, TAMEST president and a distinguished professor at the University of Houston, added in the release. “Thanks to the visionary support of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, the Hill Prizes not only recognize transformative work but provide the resources to move bold ideas from the lab to life-changing solutions. We are proud to support their journeys and spotlight Texas as a global hub for scientific leadership.”

Investment bank opens new Houston office focused on energy sector

Investment bank Cohen & Co. Capital Markets has opened a Houston office to serve as the hub of its energy advisory business and has tapped investment banking veteran Rahul Jasuja as the office’s leader.

Jasuja joined Cohen & Co. Capital Markets, a subsidiary of financial services company Cohen & Co., as managing director, and head of energy and energy transition investment banking. Cohen’s capital markets arm closed $44 billion worth of deals last year.

Jasuja previously worked at energy-focused Houston investment bank Mast Capital Advisors, where he was managing director of investment banking. Before Mast Capital, Jasuja was director of energy investment banking in the Houston office of Wells Fargo Securities.

“Meeting rising [energy] demand will require disciplined capital allocation across traditional energy, sustainable fuels, and firm, dispatchable solutions such as nuclear and geothermal,” Jasuja said in a news release. “Houston remains the center of gravity where capital, operating expertise, and execution come together to make that transition investable.”

The Houston office will focus on four energy verticals:

  • Energy systems such as nuclear and geothermal
  • Energy supply chains
  • Energy-transition fuel and technology
  • Traditional energy
“We are making a committed investment in Houston because we believe the infrastructure powering AI, defense, and energy transition — from nuclear to rare-earth technology — represents the next secular cycle of value creation,” Jerry Serowik, head of Cohen & Co. Capital Markets, added in the release.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCaptialHTX.com.

MD Anderson makes AI partnership to advance precision oncology

AI Oncology

Few experts will disagree that data-driven medicine is one of the most certain ways forward for our health. However, actually adopting it comes at a steep curve. But what if using the technology were democratized?

This is the question that SOPHiA GENETICS has been seeking to answer since 2011 with its universal AI platform, SOPHiA DDM. The cloud-native system analyzes and interprets complex health care data across technologies and institutions, allowing hospitals and clinicians to gain clinically actionable insights faster and at scale.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has just announced its official collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS to accelerate breakthroughs in precision oncology. Together, they are developing a novel sequencing oncology test, as well as creating several programs targeted at the research and development of additional technology.

That technology will allow the hospital to develop new ways to chart the growth and changes of tumors in real time, pick the best clinical trials and medications for patients and make genomic testing more reliable. Shashikant Kulkarni, deputy division head for Molecular Pathology, and Dr. J. Bryan, assistant professor, will lead the collaboration on MD Anderson’s end.

“Cancer research has evolved rapidly, and we have more health data available than ever before. Our collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS reflects how our lab is evolving and integrating advanced analytics and AI to better interpret complex molecular information,” Dr. Donna Hansel, division head of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at MD Anderson, said in a press release. “This collaboration will expand our ability to translate high-dimensional data into insights that can meaningfully advance research and precision oncology.”

SOPHiA GENETICS is based in Switzerland and France, and has its U.S. offices in Boston.

“This collaboration with MD Anderson amplifies our shared ambition to push the boundaries of what is possible in cancer research,” Dr. Philippe Menu, chief product officer and chief medical officer at SOPHiA GENETICS, added in the release. “With SOPHiA DDM as a unifying analytical layer, we are enabling new discoveries, accelerating breakthroughs in precision oncology and, most importantly, enabling patients around the globe to benefit from these innovations by bringing leading technologies to all geographies quickly and at scale.”

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