For decades, women have been underrepresented in cardiovascular research. That has shaped what we know about heart disease, how risk is assessed, and how symptoms are recognized.
Artificial intelligence gives healthcare an opportunity to do better. But that depends on how the technology is built, what data it learns from, and whose experiences are represented.
That question was at the center of a conversation at Hello Heart’s 2026 Women’s Heart Health Summit in Boca Raton. Michal Gutman, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Hello Heart, joined physician and technology leader Dr. Ivor Horn and Lucy Orr-Ewing, Director of Strategy and Policy at the Coalition for Health AI, for a panel moderated by Sara Cantor of Greater Good Design Studio.
Together, they explored what responsible AI could mean for the future of women’s heart health.
AI can help connect the signals
Heart health is especially well suited for AI because cardiovascular risk develops over time.
Blood pressure changes. Medication habits change. Symptoms appear. Lifestyle and other health factors shift. Yet traditional health care often evaluates those signals individually and at specific moments in time.
AI can help connect them.
As Michal explained during the panel, “We can build the models that can digest those signals all the time behind the scenes and find patterns that humans might miss.”
That matters for women in particular. Michal noted that cardiovascular symptoms in women can be subtle and may be dismissed or disconnected from one another in the traditional healthcare system.
Instead of relying only on a snapshot from an annual visit or a long-term risk score, AI can help show how someone’s heart health may be changing over time.
Better AI starts with better data about women
AI can only learn from the data it’s given. That creates a real challenge in cardiovascular care, where women have historically been underrepresented in research, clinical trials, and the datasets used to understand heart disease.
Building better AI for women’s heart health means making women’s unique cardiovascular risks part of the model from the beginning. Pregnancy complications, menopause, and other female-specific health factors can all shape cardiovascular risk, yet they haven’t always been incorporated into traditional approaches to heart health.
It also matters who is building the technology.
As Dr. Horn said during the panel, “There are more women building and creating solutions now, and that is going to be the difference in the gap. Because the difference is who are the people at the beginning and throughout the development process.”
At Hello Heart, Michal added, that means designing technology with women’s heart health in mind, including features that help women understand how life stages like pregnancy and menopause may affect their cardiovascular risk.
Dr. Horn believes having more women involved will change the models themselves: “We’re asking different questions, and we’re looking at different solutions.”
That may be one of AI’s biggest opportunities in women’s heart health. We have the chance to build new models with women represented from the start, rather than trying to correct for their absence later.
What happens if we get this right?
The most exciting possibility is that AI could make heart health more proactive, personal, and accessible for women.
Lucy described a future where people have more control over how they use health technology and how they access care. “I just really hope that all of us advocating for the responsible use of AI means that we can kind of shift this technology closer to what we need it to do.”
For women, that could mean technology built around their actual health experiences, with better recognition of the risks and patterns that have too often been overlooked.
It's an especially inspiring concept for Michal and her AI team as they continue to build together. She described “an invisible cardiovascular intelligence layer” working in the background to assess signals, identify patterns, and create personalized interventions before a preventable crisis, like a heart attack or stroke, can even occur.
And when Sara asked what happens if we get AI right, Michal kept the answer simple: “We will be able to prevent those preventable crises regardless of the gender, regardless of the person that is in front of you.”
That’s the opportunity in front of us: AI that understands women better, gives them more useful information earlier, and helps build a future where fewer warning signs are missed. And it's starting to look more like reality and less like science fiction every day.
Watch the full conversation from Hello Heart’s 2026 Women’s Heart Health Summit below.
