Tidepool, a leading nonprofit innovator in the diabetes technology space, has announced its inclusion as an inaugural member of the Milken Institute’s Women’s Health Network. The milestone marks a significant step forward in recognizing the critical intersection between women’s health and chronic disease management, particularly diabetes.
The Women’s Health Network, chaired by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and guided by a Steering Committee of global leaders, brings together 75 founding organizations committed to transforming research, innovation, and equity in women’s health. This collaborative network serves as a platform for accelerating scientific discovery, fostering public–private partnerships, and ensuring that women’s unique health experiences and needs are represented in research and innovation agendas.
For Tidepool, joining this prestigious coalition underscores its long-standing mission to advance data-driven, patient-centered solutions in diabetes care. The organization, known for its open-source platforms and community-centered approach, aims to bring the lived experiences of women with diabetes into sharper focus — a perspective often overlooked in traditional research and innovation frameworks.
“At Tidepool, we know that women living with diabetes experience unique challenges across the lifespan—from puberty through menopause—and their voices are too often missing from the innovation pipeline,” said Kelly Watson, Vice President of Product and User Experience at Tidepool. “We’re proud to stand alongside the Milken Institute and fellow members of the Women’s Health Network to ensure that diabetes health research, technology, and policy reflect the lived realities of women with chronic conditions. By working together, we can accelerate the innovations and collaborations that women’s health has long deserved.”
Watson’s remarks highlight a central issue in women’s health: despite representing half the population, women are consistently underrepresented in clinical trials and medical research. This underrepresentation is particularly stark in chronic conditions like diabetes, where hormonal fluctuations, reproductive health, and life stage transitions significantly influence disease management and outcomes.
Tidepool’s Scientific Commitment to Women’s Health
Tidepool’s inclusion in the Network also reflects its pioneering efforts to bridge these knowledge gaps through rigorous data science and clinical collaboration. One of the organization’s cornerstone initiatives, the Tidepool Period Project, exemplifies this approach. The project brings together an advisory council of leading endocrinologists, gynecologists, data scientists, and patient advocates to study how menstrual cycles affect glucose levels, insulin sensitivity, and diabetes management behaviors.
To date, Tidepool has assembled one of the world’s largest datasets linking menstrual health and diabetes, enabling researchers to uncover previously invisible patterns that influence clinical care. Beyond data collection, the project has worked to normalize discussions about reproductive health and break down stigmas that often prevent women from sharing their experiences with clinicians.
A Data-Driven Path Toward Precision Medicine
The organization’s dedication to generating inclusive and representative datasets has earned the attention of clinicians and researchers across the globe.
“As a clinician and researcher, I know how critical it is to generate evidence that reflects the lived experience of women and girls living with diabetes,” said Dr. Eda Cengiz, Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Pediatric Diabetes Program at the University of California, San Francisco, and a Tidepool Medical Advisor. “Tidepool’s leadership in building datasets that finally capture these nuances—and its commitment to putting that knowledge into the hands of people living with diabetes, providers, and innovators—is a critical step toward closing long-standing gaps in women’s health research.”
Dr. Cengiz’s statement reflects a growing movement toward precision medicine—a healthcare model that tailors prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies to individual differences in genetics, biology, lifestyle, and environment. Tidepool’s work directly supports this evolution by enabling researchers and clinicians to see how gender and hormonal factors shape metabolic health over time.
Driving Equity Through Collaboration and Technology
By joining the Milken Institute’s Women’s Health Network, Tidepool aims to further expand its impact beyond diabetes. The organization plans to leverage its expertise in digital health innovation, ethical data collection, and cross-sector collaboration to strengthen global efforts toward women’s health equity. Through shared research, open data, and co-created technology, Tidepool hopes to inspire a new wave of inclusive health solutions that address historically unmet needs.
This partnership also represents a broader cultural shift in how women’s health is prioritized in the biomedical ecosystem. For decades, health research and policy have disproportionately focused on male physiology, leading to diagnostic delays, treatment disparities, and systemic inequities in outcomes for women. The Milken Institute’s Network seeks to reverse this trend by convening leaders from academia, healthcare, technology, policy, and philanthropy to foster a more equitable research agenda.
Tidepool’s involvement positions it as a trailblazer in integrating chronic disease management within the broader conversation of women’s health. The organization’s model—rooted in open-source data sharing and patient empowerment—aligns seamlessly with the Network’s mission to drive transparency, accountability, and innovation across health systems.
A Shared Vision for the Future
As part of its ongoing efforts, Tidepool will contribute to working groups and collaborative initiatives within the Network, offering insights from its community-driven research model and emphasizing the importance of inclusive design in health technology. By building bridges between patients, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers, the organization aims to influence how women’s health data is collected, interpreted, and applied to improve real-world outcomes.
Ultimately, Tidepool’s membership in the Milken Institute’s Women’s Health Network is more than an acknowledgment of its past achievements—it is a call to action. The collaboration represents a shared vision for a healthcare future that listens to, learns from, and innovates with women at every stage of life.
Through this partnership, Tidepool is helping to ensure that the next generation of diabetes technology—and women’s health research as a whole—is smarter, more inclusive, and deeply attuned to the lived experiences of those it serves.
