FEMTECH: Women's research at Virginia Tech

Women's health care has long been understudied, although women account for half of the world's population.

Historically, women’s reproductive system research has had less attention and funding. This has contributed to inadequate devices, dated procedures, and period products.

Many women suffer from unknown chronic conditions related to their reproductive system, due to our current gap in knowledge. FEMTECH, Forging Expertise in Modern Technology and Engineering, aims to close the gap in women’s healthcare while simultaneously supporting women engineers.  FEMTECH is a new research institute at Virginia Tech started by Dr. Rafaella De Vita.

Since the women’s movement in the 1970s, women’s healthcare has become an important priority. Only in 1993 was it made law that women were explicitly required to be included in clinical trials. In fact, if women and minorities were to be excluded from the trial to receive funding, a valid reason had to be provided. Before this, women were excluded from HIV trials and were often “protected” from facing the harm that might ensue during the clinical trial process.

Ultimately, it was decided that women should be able to choose whether they’d like to participate in beneficial research. In this short period of time, only recently has the female reproductive system had breakthroughs. In 2026, the nerve endings of the clitoris were completely mapped, thirty years after the penis. Other breakthroughs have been improvements in UTI care, improving the current standard medicine’s efficacy by 14%. This new drug is called Contepo.  

On social media, women have found community and have begun sharing their experiences when receiving Pap smears. A major topic was the pain caused by the speculum and how the metal it is usually made of can be cold and uncomfortable. Social media has allowed women to discuss things they may feel need to be updated, and considering women’s health has only been a topic for the past thirty years.

With the powerful tools in mechanical engineering, the instrumentation and medical devices in gynecology have been revamped and continue to be. The original speculum is made out of metal, and the process of opening up the vaginal canal is not smooth or analogous to the movement of the vaginal canal. A new device called the Nella Speculum aims to combat the issues with the current speculum, in which it only opens the vaginal canal laterally when in reality, it should open the vaginal canal evenly. Another powerful tool being used is the MRI to measure the pelvic floor muscles, accompanied by a pressure sensor (to quantify contraction) that can map the whole reproductive system as it is interconnected. MRI use has become more popular in recent years and can be used to evaluate whether a patient has fibroids, cysts, or lesions in their reproductive system.

De Vita studies the vaginal canal. The vaginal canal is constructed with ligaments, fascia, and suspending structures. This structure stretches and expands as the vaginal canal is a muscle. These tissues experience forces, deformation, and mechanical loading, so they can be studied through mechanical systems. In De Vita’s lab, there are a variety of different machines that perform pinpointed stress on anything from a cell to a ligament, to even mouse pups. These experiments model the vagina and could be used to predict and calculate points of stress during different diseases such as endometriosis, genito-pelvic pain, Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS), and high-risk pregnancies. Understanding how the vaginal canal functions in a mechanical system allows for innovation in period products to gynecological devices. De Vita studies the vaginal canal during puberty, perimenopause, and aging, as the vaginal canal goes through a series of physiological changes and important differences. 

De Vita envisions a center here at Virginia Tech for female reproductive research. Her hope is to create classes in biomedical engineering that are geared towards teaching students about specific anatomy and physiology, cell function, and female reproductive system function all pertaining to the female reproductive system. She hopes that her classes provide students with a direct path into the field of women’s health and female reproductive system research. Her hopes for the project currently are to recruit students of all disciplines, whether they have an innovative idea or just want to learn. She hopes to have multiple students contributing through design teams and research.

FEMTECH has been backed by the College of Engineering, and FEMTECH has received a large grant of millions of dollars within the last month. A study published in the Women’s Journal of Health stated that about 75% of funding is allocated toward male-dominated diseases; this number has remained static over a three-year period. Through FEMTECH, De Vita hopes Virginia Tech will become a leader in propelling female reproductive health forward.