Improving LGBTQ+ healthcare through tech and education

LGBTQ+ people have long faced discrimination and gaps in access to competent, welcoming healthcare. Emerging healthtech startups are addressing this.

The landscape of healthcare is rapidly changing, with new patient-centric companies emerging to provide more inclusive and identity-affirming care. This is especially critical for the LGBTQ+ community, who have historically faced discrimination, misinformation, and lack of understanding within traditional healthcare systems.

Folx Health CEO Liana M Douillet Guzmán explained: “Even in a best case scenario, we exist in an incumbent system that wasn’t built for us.”

Before finding an LGBTQ+ focused provider, 78 percent of Folx Health members did not have access to identity-affirming healthcare. Seventy-one percent avoided seeking healthcare for fear of discrimination, the CEO pointed out.

Technology is helping bridge these gaps in access. And, Liana noted that while tech alone is not the solution, it “is empowering companies like ours to take clinicians who have made this their lives’ work, and bring their expertise to people across the United States today”.

Training is crucial when it comes to LGBTQ+ healthcare

With 40 clinicians on staff, Folx is building modules to train the next generation of clinicians on trans, bisexual, pansexual healthcare and beyond.

Liana emphasised the need for systemic change across medical schools, insurers, employers, and other institutions when it comes to training that encompasses cultural change and more.

“It has to be an across the board thing. I think medical schools have to decide that this is important and bring experts like the ones we have at Folx to come in and train their clinicians.”

Advocating for equal, inclusive healthcare is something corporations also have an enormous role to play in.

“It is incumbent on them to make a very clear statement – that they believe that their LGBTQIA employees deserve the same level of healthcare as their cis straight employees. And then to put their money where their mouth is,” added Liana.

In this episode of The Next Stage podcast, Liana M Douillet Guzmán, CEO of Folx Health was in conversation with Yuliya Sotska, chief brand and communications officer for Viseven, on HealthConf at Collision 2023.

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Main image of Liana M Douillet Guzmán, CEO, Folx Health, speaking on HealthConf at Collision 2023: Harry Murphy/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)