We’ve accepted that the future economy needs more computing capacity. We’re still negotiating whether it needs more capacity to keep women healthy. Investors already build ahead of demand in technology, energy, transportation, and communications. Women’s health should be evaluated the same way.
At the start of 2026, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) announced anticipated capital spending of $175 billion to $185 billion, following approximately $91.4 billion in 2025. That’s company-wide spending, including technical infrastructure supporting AI.
It’s a bet that future demand will justify building now. That willingness is the point.
Women’s health has the same claim on capital. Breast screening, diagnostic services, cardiovascular care and chronic disease management require facilities, equipment, trained professionals and coordinated pathways.
So why does this infrastructure attract less investment attention?
Investors need to examine women’s health through the same five tests they already apply to other infrastructure.
Five Tests for an Infrastructure Investment
1. Does other economic activity depend on it?
Women’s health passes this one clearly. Women’s ability to participate in the economy depends on timely, effective healthcare.
I know what a gap in that pathway costs because I’ve been in it. In early 2025, the radiologist flagged something on my routine mammogram. Because of the backlog, my follow-up imaging was three weeks out. I’ve worked in breast imaging for more than a decade, and I lead a company that specializes in dense breast imaging. I was fine, and I still spent those three weeks semi-non-productive, racked with worry.
Now multiply that by every woman waiting on a callback.
2. Is demand durable?
Women’s health needs don’t end with a budget cycle. Breast screening, cardiovascular care and chronic disease management represent recurring needs across a woman’s lifetime.
Revenue is less predictable. Access, reimbursement, affordability, and payer arrangements determine whether an identified need becomes a completed, paid appointment.
The opportunity is substantial. The business model still needs to demonstrate how that demand translates into revenue.
3. Do the benefits extend across the economy?
The McKinsey Health Institute and World Economic Forum estimate that closing the women’s health gap could add at least $1 trillion to the global economy annually by 2040.
That’s economic value, not a promised fund return. It still shows the scale of what’s on the table.
4. Does failing to build create costs elsewhere?
The consequences of inadequate healthcare capacity are already visible.
Waiting lists consume time, employers lose working hours, families absorb care responsibilities, and health systems pay for late diagnosis.
More than 10 years ago, on my first visit to a clinic in Arusha, Tanzania, I saw 40 pregnant women waiting on benches at 9 a.m. Most had been there since the day before. There weren’t enough maternal screening clinics in the outlying areas, so they’d walked, taken buses, or ridden boda-bodas to be seen once during their pregnancy.
High-income systems have their own version. The Royal College of Radiologists’ 2025 census reports a 32% shortfall of clinical radiology consultants in the UK.
Equipment needs trained people to read the images and route to treatment. Leaving a bottleneck unfunded doesn’t remove its cost.
5. Who pays, and how does the investment generate a return?
This is where the comparison gets harder.
A data center operator can sell capacity through contracts. A screening investment may create value for a healthcare provider, insurer, employer and household, while only some of that value reaches the direct investor.
That’s a financing design problem, and other markets have worked on it. India’s Narayana Health built a cardiac network that blends market-rate patients, government insurance, philanthropy, and high clinical volume in one system. Jacaranda Health in Kenya started on philanthropic capital, then moved to revenue from government contracts, licensing, and hospital partnerships
The investment case needs a defined buyer, a credible payment mechanism, and an operating model that can sustain revenue.
What Building Capacity Actually Takes
Years ago, while I was working for Hologic in Costa Rica, I learned that the only mammography machine in the eastern region had been broken for years. Women there had stopped getting screened. Back in the U.S., I’d personally rolled working machines into dumpsters to make room for new inventory.
Getting one of those machines installed took the manufacturer, the health ministry, the U.S. Embassy, a local breast cancer foundation, and the regional hospital. After five years of use, the mortality rate in that region dropped to approximately 10 times lower than it had been.
Through HERhealthEQ, we’ve since deployed equipment across 12 countries and reached more than 135,000 women. Every placement includes training, service, and maintenance contracts, because a machine nobody can fix is how the Costa Rica problem started.
Any capacity investment should be underwritten on reimbursement, payer commitments, staffing, maintenance, and time to sustainable cash flow. Measure completed diagnostic follow-up alongside appointment volume. AI could support parts of the workflow where evidence demonstrates its value.
The Investment Committee Needs to Ask a Different Question
I’ve been on both sides of the table. My former employer, Hologic, is the most active women’s health company in the exit data, and two of the top seven exits were deals I worked on directly. Familiar revenue models, benchmarks and comparable transactions make some categories easier to underwrite. Women’s health often involves fragmented payment systems, thinner datasets, and business models that investment committees have less experience evaluating.
That unfamiliarity creates friction. Committee expertise matters because the questions people know how to ask shape the opportunities they recognize. Those are reasons to improve underwriting. They shouldn’t become permanent reasons to dismiss a category.
Operators have work to do too. They need to show who pays, how services are delivered and whether the model can withstand financial and operational scrutiny. Economic importance can’t substitute for execution.