What does it take to build something so good it becomes the standard others follow?
Not just another healthcare innovation, but a solution that improves lives at scale and reshapes how care is delivered. That question sits at the center of my conversation with Carmen van Vilsteren.
Carmen has already helped build technologies that became global standards in healthcare. Now she has a new ambition: to help create seven new gold standards in health by backing and coaching the next generation of women innovators.
What makes this vision compelling is not the number seven. It is what those standards are meant to serve: improving quality of life for people worldwide.
In this conversation, we explore what makes a healthcare innovation earn trust, why women’s health may be one of the biggest overlooked opportunities in innovation, and why building globally can start by validating close to home.
Hit play below to listen to the episode. Or scroll down for key takeaways, magical moments, and practical tips from the episode.
- 3 Lessons From This Conversation
- Highlights and timestamps
- 3 Magic Moments In The Episode
- Practical Takeaways for Founders
- The Quote from the Episode
- Patterns I’m Seeing Across Conversations
- Coming Up On Women Disrupting Tech
- Coming Up On Women Disrupting Tech
- What I Want to Leave You With
- About Carmen van Vilsteren
- Listen to Episode 151 on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube
- Events that Women Disrupting Tech Must-Attend
3 Lessons From This Conversation
I met Carmen van Vilsteren at the Fe+Male Tech Heroes Awards where she collected her first-ever award. In her acceptance speech, she spoke about her ambition to help create seven new gold standards in healthcare. When she did, it sounded like a response to problems she believes can and should be solved. In our conversation three lessons stood out about what it takes to turn that ambition into reality.
1. A Gold Standard Is Built Through Validation, Trust, and Adoption
A first lesson is that breakthrough technologies do not become standards because they are novel. They become standards because they solve a real unmet need, are rigorously validated, and earn enough trust to become the default in practice. Carmen makes clear that in healthcare, invention is only the start. Adoption is where a gold standard is won.
That matters because it shifts innovation from building products to building lasting impact.
2. Women’s Health Is One of the Biggest Overlooked Opportunities in Innovation
A second lesson is that some of the biggest opportunities in healthcare may sit where the market has underinvested the longest.
Carmen frames women’s health not as a niche, but as a market failure. Underinvestment in research and innovation has created major unmet needs, but also enormous room for value creation. Some of the next gold standards may emerge precisely by solving problems too long ignored.
That matters because it reframes women’s health not as a side category, but as a frontier for innovation.
3. Closing the Funding Gap Takes Capital, Coaching, and Allies
A third lesson is that closing the funding gap takes more than moving more money.
Sure, capital matters. And coaching and mentoring help founders set and reach the inflection points that unlock larger rounds. But allies matter too, especially when many investment decisions are still made by a narrow group of decision-makers.
What’s compelling is the puzzle underneath this: how can we move the existing system to building a different future? That may be one of the most important questions in this space.
Together, these lessons suggest that building new gold standards is not only about breakthrough technology. It is about solving neglected problems, funding founders differently, and broadening who gets to shape innovation.
Feel free to share the episode with someone who needs to hear this.
Or scroll down for magic moments.
Highlights and timestamps
| Time | Highlight |
|---|---|
| 00:00 | Introduction |
| 02:25 | Introduction and Background in Tech and Healthcare |
| 06:22 | Why Healthcare Became Carmen’s Passion |
| 09:49 | Development of Imaging Systems for Cardiovascular Applications |
| 11:32 | What Goes into Developing a Global Standard |
| 17:08 | Carmen’s Ambition to Fund Seven Global Healthcare Standards |
| 19:26 | Innovations in Preclinical and Clinical Imaging |
| 21:33 | The Role of Acceptance and Credibility in Healthcare |
| 25:32 | The Seven Golden Standards in Healthcare |
| 35:15 | Changing the Healthcare Ecosystem and Gender Balance |
| 43:04 | Women’s Health as a Societal Imperative |
| 46:46 | Engaging Men in Women’s Health Advocacy |
| 51:49 | Impact of Women’s Health on Society and Personal Life |
| 56:25 | Angel Investing and Supporting Female Founders |
| 1:01:00 | Paying Forward and Building a Support Ecosystem |
| 1:13:12 | Netherlands as a Global Center for Women’s Health |
| 1:19:33 | Vision for the Future of Healthcare and Innovation |
| 1:23:57 | Advice for Female Founders and Investors |
| 1:25:13 | Connecting with Carmen on LinkedIn |
3 Magic Moments In The Episode
When I prepare for an episode, I try to find out as much as I can about my guests. That does not mean that there are no surprising moments in a conversation. Like when Carmen shared how her fight with breast cancer fueled her motivation to contribute to better healthcare and a better quality of life. But her motivation was also built before and after that, as the moments below show.
1. How Launching Her First Gold Standard Ignited Her Ambition to Build Seven
The first project Carmen worked on at Philips Medical was helping to bring imaging technology to the market that is still the gold standard in cardiovascular health today. She almost jokingly says that it’s “an impact you can never reach with a vacuum cleaner”.
Later, when I ask her about her motivation to help create seven standards, she shares an anecdote about updating her CV. Looking at what she had done already, she started to connect the imaging technology she helped to launch to her ambition to help create seven new gold standards in healthcare.
2. The Moment Innovation’s Blind Spots Became Visible
At the end of our conversation, Carmen reflected on how even medical innovation can carry hidden assumptions, including around sex differences in design.
She mentions that when she was involved in building imaging technology, they did account for differences in height between men and women, but not for the size of vessels. Only to discover later that women’s vessels are smaller. It takes humility to admit you once missed something fundamental.
And it is a reminder that innovation also starts with learning to see what has been overlooked.
3. Discovering Women’s Health Was a Missing Piece of Impact
We also talk about Carmen’s first scientific publication in The Lancet and how it opened up another layer of impact she wanted to contribute to.
What makes this powerful is that she did not frame it as a late-career accolade, but almost as a discovery, a realization that there was still a missing piece in how she wanted to contribute.
What connects these moments is that purpose can keep evolving, even deep into a career. They all show ambition growing through awareness.
What was your favorite moment from the episode? Let me know in the comments!
Practical Takeaways for Founders
Throughout this conversation, Carmen goes beyond vision. She translates healthcare innovation into how founders can build credibility, navigate adoption, and use scarce resources strategically.
1. Validate Adoption, Not Just Technology
Proving that a technology works is not the same as proving it will be adopted. And particularly in healthcare, innovation only creates impact when it fits clinical practice and earns trust from the people who use it. That means founders need to validate not just the product, but also the workflow, incentives, and setting in which it will live.
Her practical lesson is simple: A product that gets adopted will beat a technically superior product every day.
2. Build Credibility Through Key Opinion Leaders
Building credibility matters for any startup. In healthcare, there is another layer to it: ambassadors, or Key Opinion Leaders.
Carmen shares a practical framework for engaging Key Opinion Leaders at different levels: trusted local partners, established international figures, and rising experts eager to help generate evidence. For founders in regulated sectors, like healthcare, that kind of credibility can accelerate trust and adoption.
It is a reminder that credibility is often built through relationships before it is proven at scale.
3. Use Early Capital to Reach Inflection Points
Carmen mentions something powerful: Angel investments are not just runway to cover costs. They’re investments that should help you get to the next inflection point and unlock larger rounds. This can be achieved through evidence, traction, or milestones that reduce perceived risk.
That shifts fundraising from chasing money to sequencing proof, which may be one of the most strategic ways to use scarce capital.
These takeaways matter because building a strong company is rarely one breakthrough moment. More often, it is the accumulation of decisions that increase trust, credibility, and momentum.
Know a founder building in healthcare? Share this episode with them.
The Quote from the Episode
“I want to contribute to getting seven new gold standards in healthcare worldwide.” — Carmen van Vilsteren
This quote makes Carmen’s ambition concrete, but it also reframes impact. Not as building one breakthrough, but as helping create multiple standards that others will use.
That changes how the whole conversation lands. The focus moves from individual success to multiplying impact through others.
And that may be what makes this ambition powerful. It is not only about what one person builds, but about what they help make possible.
Patterns I’m Seeing Across Conversations
All conversations I have deepen ideas I have heard before. This episode does that in three ways, especially in how Carmen’s thinking connected back to earlier conversations across Women Disrupting Tech.
1. Better Health Outcomes Start With Seeing Who Has Been Left Out
One thread that came back strongly is that better innovation often starts with recognizing who existing systems were not designed for.
That took me back to my conversation with Hanneke Takkenberg, where we talked about how medicine has long been optimized around male bodies, and what that means for outcomes, data, and care.
Carmen extends that idea by framing women’s health not only as a care gap, but as a market failure and innovation opportunity.
Across both conversations, the pattern is similar: some of the biggest opportunities emerge where systems have overlooked people.
2. Europe Can Build by Leaning Into Its Own Strengths
Another thread runs between Carmen and Ida Tin. Ida argues Europe has an opening to become a center for women’s health innovation. Carmen makes that tangible through a founder lens, arguing the Dutch market can be a bridge to validate and de-risk innovation before scaling globally.
That challenges the idea that ambition always means looking elsewhere first. Sometimes building globally starts by validating close to home.
3. Local Validation Keeps Showing Up as a Competitive Advantage
This observation really changed my thinking. I always thought that with modern technology, the location where you validate your product has become less important than opportunities to scale.
Carmen brings a different perspective: Validate close to home. Solve for adoption early. Use local complexity to de-risk global growth.
It may be one of the best pieces of advice for founders in the episode, as it underscores that the best founders often do not treat validation as a stage to rush through. They treat it as part of strategy.
What patterns are you seeing across these conversations? I’d love to hear.
Coming Up On Women Disrupting Tech
Coming Up On Women Disrupting Tech
What if the thing that looks like a disadvantage on paper turns out to be your biggest advantage in practice?
In the next episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I sit down with Izzy Sayers, who leads the Emerging Giants team at KPMG Netherlands. We talk about what it really takes to support founders as they scale. Not from the perspective of someone building the product, but from someone who sees the patterns across dozens of companies. From outsourcing decisions to networking dynamics and imposter syndrome, this conversation shows a different side of how companies actually grow.
In this short clip, Izzy explains how her history degree became a “secret weapon.” Not because it made her a technical expert, but because it taught her how to ask better questions, connect different perspectives, and turn that into meaningful action. It’s a small moment, but it reframes what expertise really looks like in tech.
When you want to understand how this way of thinking applies to scaling a company, networking, and building the right support around you, use the subscribe button below to catch the full episode in your inbox on 14 May at 8:00 CET.
What I Want to Leave You With
Carmen’s ambition to help create seven new gold standards is bigger than a vision for better medical technology.
It is a call to question which problems we have accepted for too long as normal.
If outdated standards can be replaced, then underinvestment in women’s health is not a fixed reality either. It is something that can be redesigned.
That may be the deeper promise in this episode.
Not only can better technologies improve the quality of life worldwide, but better standards can reshape what healthcare serves and who it serves.
And perhaps that is why investing in women’s health is not a niche cause or only a market opportunity. It is an economic and societal imperative.
Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
About Carmen van Vilsteren
Carmen van Vilsteren has spent her career turning unmet needs into innovations that improve patients’ lives. From helping bring cardiovascular imaging technologies to market that became global standards, to advancing new frontiers in women’s health, her work sits at the intersection of technology, healthcare, and systems change.
Her background spans industry, academia, government, entrepreneurship, and investing. She has led innovation in multinational healthcare, served as CEO of a university spinout, helped shape the Dutch life sciences ecosystem through Health~Holland, and today backs female-led startups as an angel investor, coach and as limited partner and member of the advisory board of the Borski Fund.
Carmen is also co-author of a recent The Lancet publication titled ‘Why investing in women’s health is a societal imperative’.
You can connect with Carmen on LinkedIn.
Listen to Episode 151 on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube
Building The Next Seven Gold Standards in Women’s Health with Carmen van Vilsteren | Ep. 151 – Women Disrupting Tech
Events that Women Disrupting Tech Must-Attend
Some great events take place this spring. Below are three that you definitely want to check out. For a full overview of all events, including links to buy tickets, please check the events page.
DevWorld 2026
On 7 and 8 May, it’s time for DevWorld again. It’s the event where modern Engineering Teams become faster, smarter, and future-proof in the age of AI. DevWorld has graciously given me the opportunity to offer a limited number of free full-access conference passes to female leaders in tech (founders, engineers, AI experts) for free.
You can check out the program here. And if you want to go and meet Gina Schinkel ✨, who will be the main stage MC, slide into my DMs to get the code for your free ticket.
BTW, in case free community tickets run out, DevWorld is offering 30% off for Women Disrupting Tech subscribers with the code: community30.
Featured Event – Trek XIII – 23-30 May 2026
Trek is the program for founders and funders to learn from—and connect with—Silicon Valley, the epicenter of innovation and technological disruption.
Participating offers a unique insider perspective, lots of fun, and access to the investors behind Dutch successes like Mollie, FLYR, Weaviate, and HackerOne. Previous participants have raised funding in both the U.S. and the Netherlands, found inspiration, and made new friends.
Trek is an activity by DutchTechX, which spun out from DutchTechSF—the Dutch-American entrepreneurial community. Funded by Dutch-American founders, the initiative fosters collaboration between the U.S.
The next edition will take place from May 23–30, 2026. About five spots are still available. DM the organizer, Oliver Binkhorst, or click here for more information. FAQs are available here.
I’ve done a previous version of this program, and I can absolutely recommend that female founders who are thinking about taking their business to the US follow this program to understand the ecosystem and connect to investors and founders in the Valley.
Featured Event: Understanding Women’s Health – 24 June 2026
Learn how hormone cycles or perimenopause impact your life, and discover more about conditions like PCOS or Endometriosis at the quarterly Understanding Women’s Health Events hosted by Kasia Pokrop.
Women’s health is a topic near and dear to my heart. Which is why I’m happy to support and attend the events that 3mbrace Health organizes at Equals every quarter.
Men are expressly invited to join. In fact, send me an email if you want to be a women’s health pioneer. More info and tickets can be found here.
Diverse Leaders in Tech Events
If you like being in the know about what is happening in the DEI space, Diverse Leaders in Tech is the place to be.
Every last Thursday of the month, they have monthly in-person meetups for tech people, HR leaders and supporters of diversity to exchange insights, tackle challenges, and take action. It’s a vibrant, safe space where diversity is celebrated.
You can find their events on the website. Joining your first event is free.
Women Disrupting Tech | The Podcast 
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