60% AI Failure Rate In Women's Health—Standards Are Coming

LeadershipForbesWomen60% AI Failure Rate In Women's Health—Standards Are ComingByGeri Stengel,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Geri Stengel writes about the success factors of women entrepreneurs. Follow AuthorMay 13, 2026, 07:04am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Panel dicussion at the lauch of Women's Health AI Consortium Left to right: Ethan Cowan, AI engineer + technical startup advisor; Morgan Michalowski, chief science officer at Ema EQ; Audrey Tsang, former CEO & CPO, Clue; Inessa Lurye, VP of product at ŌURA; and Jennifer Yoo, healthcare regulatory & transactional partner at Latham & WatkinGeri Stengel, VentureneerA woman gives birth. For weeks, she sees her obstetrician regularly. She leaves the hospital. Follow-up visits shift to the pediatrician. Then comes one final OB appointment, six weeks postpartum—and after that, nothing. No clinical check-in for pelvic floor recovery, mood shifts that might signal postpartum depression, or questions too private to ask anyone. In that vacuum, she opens an app.The app is powered by a large language model (LLM) AI platform. The AI was trained on data that wasn't designed with her in mind, validated against benchmarks that weren't built for her biology, and governed by—nothing. On May 12, 2026, a coalition of companies including Willow Innovations and Ema EQ announced the Women's Health AI Consortium, the first industry body dedicated to changing that. It arrives at a moment when the gap between AI's reach and AI's accountability has never been wider.The Gap AI Is Being Asked To FillSarah O'Leary, CEO of Willow—the company that invented the wearable breast pump—describes the postpartum reality without euphemism. After birth, a woman "sees her OB once more, if that, about six weeks in, and she is truly left to navigate this ofte...