Half of the women over 40 will experience some form of Pelvic Organ Prolapse in their lives. Yet, it’s a topic that is never talked about. So, it’s no surprise that Saturn Pelvic Health co-founder Mirjam Weemhoff sees relief in the eyes of the women she speaks with as a urogynecologist.
The women who suffer from it currently have two choices: surgery or a pessary. Both solutions are suboptimal in their own way. Surgery comes with possible complications and rarely provides durable pelvic support. Pessaries, when they fit well, do a better job at supporting the pelvic floor, but they come with physical irritation and other side effects. Plus, they need to be cleaned by a healthcare professional.
In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, Mirjam and her co-founder Bart van Diepenbeek share their story of building Flexsupp, an adaptable pessary that provides the right support and allows women to use it when they need it and clean it in the privacy of their home.
You’ll learn:
- What the impact of Pelvic Organ Prolapse is on women’s quality of life, and why existing options fall short.
- Why the industry has no incentive to innovate, leaving women without a good solution and healthcare workers with large storage rooms of one-size-fits-all pessaries.
- How Flexsupp is a patented, medically developed device that is individually adaptable to match the complex, unique anatomy of the pelvic floor.
Plus, you’ll discover how taboo plays a role in solving the problem and in fundraising, including how Bart uses being a man to normalize the conversation.
Ultimately, you’ll hear a tale about how innovation is as much about building a new product as it is about giving back agency to millions of women.
Start listening by pressing play below.
Building an Adaptable Pessary To Restore Women's Autonomy with Mirjam Weemhoff & Bart van Diepenbeek | Ep 164 – Women Disrupting Tech
Or keep reading for practical takeaways, highlights, and trends from the episode.
Practical Takeaways for Founders
Innovation is rarely a straight line in any domain. Founders need to be able to deal with setbacks, roadblocks and pushback from directions where you’d least expect it. Here are three takeaways around these themes.
The Last Mile Challenge is real; a diverse team gets you through
It’s common for MedTech founders to underestimate how much it takes to turn a clinical idea into a manufactured product. As Mirjam admits, the last 10% took significantly longer than expected. Having a diverse team helped both in talking through setbacks and in celebrating the small wins. The extra time is something founders have to accept, but the Saturn story shows that they can choose to make the journey less hard on themselves.
The nearest market entry may not be where you think.
Many MedTech startups explore growth in the US. Saturn Pelvic Health chooses to take a different path for their go-to-market and grow in the EU before going to the US. When asked why, the answer is simple: the EU is where their existing clinical network is, so it’s easier to get good-quality feedback fast. They accept that it may take longer, but that good-quality feedback will benefit them in the end. The takeaway: choosing your entry market wisely will help you achieve the growth you aim for.
Normalize the conversation to break the taboo
Pelvic health is a topic that is surrounded by taboo. So we spend quite some time discussing how the Saturn team is working to break it. Mirjam mentions that they landed on hiring a male CEO because they understood that men can serve as a bridge in bringing a taboo topic to male investors. The team also supports artists who create projects that allow people to talk about their condition more openly. It underscores how building in FemTech is as much about innovation as it is about breaking the taboo.
What links these three moments is that founders get better outcomes by deliberately seeking out perspectives unlike their own, whether that’s team composition, market assumptions, or how they approach the taboo.
Know a founder building in FemTech who could benefit from these insights? Use the share buttons below.
Or scroll down for magic moments.
Highlights and timestamps
| Time | Highlight |
|---|---|
| 00:00 | Introduction |
| 04:30 | Introduction to Saturn Pelvic Health and the team |
| 04:54 | Mirjam Weemhoff shares her background and motivation |
| 06:30 | The clinical problem of pelvic organ prolapse |
| 07:39 | The founding story and team formation |
| 09:31 | Bart van Diepenbeek joins the team and his motivation |
| 12:33 | The importance of team diversity and gender balance |
| 14:11 | Prevalence and impact of pelvic prolapse |
| 16:22 | How prolapse affects organ function and daily life |
| 18:37 | Limitations of current pessaries and surgeries |
| 21:40 | Advantages of the new adaptable pessary design |
| 26:26 | The development process of FlexSupp and research insights |
| 39:48 | Research and MRI studies informing product design |
| 41:52 | Current stage and remaining risks in product development |
| 45:18 | Lessons learned and unexpected challenges |
| 48:56 | Market entry strategy and regulatory considerations |
| 53:57 | Convincing stakeholders and overcoming barriers |
| 58:34 | Addressing gender and cultural aspects in healthcare |
| 1:03:28 | Why start in Europe before expanding globally |
| 1:04:33 | Closing thoughts and contact information |
The Episode In an Infographic
3 Magic Moments In The Episode
What makes making this podcast magical is that every company and founder has their own unique origin story. That of Bart joining Saturn Pelvic Health is typically Dutch: it started with a conversation while watching a hockey game, followed by a kitchen table brainstorm and ‘a good night’s sleep’. Here are three more moments from the episode that are worth remembering.
Bart’s motivation to join
While the team may have been convinced that Bart was the right man for the job, Bart had to think it over. He was convinced about the sheer brilliance of the idea, the unmet need, and the ability to help millions of women. But what won him over in the end was being able to truly build this almost from scratch. It goes to show that a good founder story takes self-awareness, a good business case and a clear personal win to fly.
Building quality of life on 15 years of research
Another part of the origin story is the amount of research behind Flexsupp. It took 15 years of MRIs, scans, etc. to develop a good understanding of the pelvic area. All this is translated into an adaptable product design that provides women with real pelvic floor support. The benefits are bigger than ‘just’ a better product. The true magic is that all this research, over time, will translate into a much better quality of life for millions of women.
Serving millions of women, not just in the home markets
Many startups have a go-to-market plan for their first and second markets. The Saturn Pelvic Health team has a longer view. They understand that Pelvic Organ Prolapse is a condition that is not limited by geography. So they hope to serve the Asian and African markets, too. Especially Africa is a continent that is often overlooked as a market for MedTech startups. It’s also full of opportunities when you’re willing to look for partners that can get you there, like NGOs.
What connects these three moments is scale: a personal decision, fifteen years of research, and a market strategy that all ultimately point past the founders themselves toward the millions of women the product is meant to reach.
🗣 What was your magic moment from the episode? Was it Bart’s motivation, the research that Flexsupp is built on or the plans to help people in Africa too? Drop your magic moment below or slide into the DMs on LinkedIn or Instagram!
Or scroll down for my favorite quote from the episode.
The Quote from the Episode
We concluded that if we really wanted this better pessary to become available, that we would have to develop it ourselves.”
— Mirjam Weemhoff
When we talk about the current market players for pessaries, Mirjam mentions that when she showed them the need for a better solution, they were not interested in building one. With that, building it themselves became the only option left for a team already committed to getting this into patients' hands.
What was your quote from the episode? Was it this or perhaps Bart’s remark that a diverse team helps early-stage MedTech companies deal with the ups and downs of product development? Share your quote with a fellow founder. Or scroll down for three trends across recent episodes.
3 Trends I’m Seeing Across Conversations
This episode is about a topic that is hardly talked about and is underresearched when it comes to solutions. This is not new. The taboo on many topics around women’s health blocks many FemTech companies from getting adequate funding. Here are three trends that link into this.
The taboo is real, even when there’s money to be earned.
The fundraising problem that FemTech companies have is probably best described when Bart mentions having to remove “explicit” pictures from his deck, as this was deemed not suitable for the investor audience. This taboo has been mentioned before. In episode 108, Jo Sarah Garcia highlights that until recently, the female anatomy was largely absent in medical education. And in episode 155, Beata Wandachowicz-Krason mentions the relatability gap outright and highlights strategies to overcome it. It’s this gap in lived experience between men and women that leads investors to think of women’s health products as niche and creates the need to normalize the conversation around women’s health.
Personalization is coming, also to women’s health
The adaptable pessary is a clear example of a product where personalization plays a key role. We’ve seen this before. In episode 146, Faviola Dadis talks about how BrainBoostXR builds personalized rehabilitation for patients with brain injuries. And in episode 103, Anna Christie highlights how Flouria Health connects women to specialized support in fertility and health. And in episode 163, we heard from Robin Blackstone, MD how her Health 4.0 uses AI to provide personalized medical care at scale.
Diversity as the key to innovation
Flexsupp is in part the result of the diversity within the founding team. Mirjam and Bart highlight the 50/50 male-female team and the combination of scientific, technical, and business backgrounds as the reason they can overcome setbacks. This theme previously came up in episode 98 where Sara Okhuijsen and Nima Salami attribute their ability to build inclusive technology for personalized medicine to the inherent diversity within their own founding team. And in episode 125, Mews’ Magali Elhage and Matthijs Welle describe how diversity brings more psychological safety, personal growth and better business results.
🗣️ How do you look at these trends? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
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Coming Up On Women Disrupting Tech
One in eight menstruators in the Netherlands has to choose between food and tampons because they cannot afford both, according to Sophie Haccou, co-founder of CupHub. In episode 165 of Women Disrupting Tech, we hear from Sophie how period poverty forces that kind of trade-off, and how her company is building Casey, a portable rinsing device that makes menstrual cups practical to use outside the home.
Below is a short clip from the conversation where Sophie breaks down why the cheapest period product is not the same thing as a real choice. She explains why cups cost more upfront but save money over time, while people with less money at any given moment can only afford the option that keeps costing them month after month.
Listen to the full episode when it drops on 13 August at 8:00 CEST to hear how Sophie and her co-founder Aart built CupHub from a university design project into a company tackling period poverty at scale.
And if you’re not already subscribed, leave your email address below to find new episodes in your inbox every Thursday.
What I Want to Leave You With
The one thing that surprised me the most in the episode is that incumbents in the pessary industry seem to have no incentive to change their product. Bart offers a clear explanation why that is.
You could argue that they let MedTech startups do the dirty work, but the flip side is that it provides MedTech companies with a huge opportunity to build something without being hindered by corporate overhead and office politics.
Also worth remembering: it provides for a natural exit for founders as the same incumbents will be banging on the door once the product is approved and the business case is completely derisked. The extra money they need to pay is worth avoiding the headache of doing the work themselves.
What stays with me is that Saturn Pelvic Health exists because Mirjam and Bart chose to do the years of regulatory and research work that incumbents were unwilling to take on themselves. That choice is also what makes the company worth something: what keeps incumbents on the sidelines now is what will eventually make them willing to pay for it.
Listen to the full conversation with Mirjam Weemhoff and Bart van Diepenbeek on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. And if you are a female founder navigating a funding conversation, take a look at FundingCoach.ai.
About Mirjam Weemhoff
Dr. Mirjam Weemhoff is co-founder and Chief Quality Officer of Saturn Pelvic Health, and a practicing urogynecologist.
She treats women with pelvic organ prolapse every day at the Zuyderland Medical Centre, and has spent her career watching patients navigate the same two limited options: surgery or a pessary, neither of which reliably solves the problem.
A collaboration with now co-founders Kim Notten led to fifteen years of MRI-based research into why pessaries fail in the first place, work that reshaped some long-held assumptions about how a pessary is actually supported in the body, and directly informed the design of Flexsupp, the adaptable pessary Saturn is now bringing through clinical validation.
You can connect with Mirjam on LinkedIn.
About Bart van Diepenbeek
Bart van Diepenbeek, MSc., is co-founder and CEO of Saturn Pelvic Health.
Before joining Saturn Pelvic Health, Bart had a career in various large corporations (Philips, Rabobank) translating innovation into large-scale organizational change.
A conversation with co-founder Kim Notten, sparked at his son's field hockey game, led him to join Saturn as the team's business co-founder, bringing that corporate experience to help build the company around the clinical and technical groundwork Mirjam, Kim, and Lars had already spent years developing.
You can connect with Bart on LinkedIn.
About Saturn Pelvic Health
Saturn Pelvic Health is a Dutch FemTech company developing Flexsupp, a personalized pessary for women with pelvic organ prolapse (POP). The device is developed by urogynecologists and researchers at Radboud University Medical Center, in collaboration with Zuyderland Medical Centre.
Flexsupp is built to fit the unique length, width, and type of prolapse of each patient, informed by fifteen years of MRI research into why current pessaries fail.
The company is currently finalizing its design freeze and entering verification and validation, including the clinical trial needed to bring Flexsupp to market. In 2025, Saturn Pelvic Health was named Innovatiebelofte (Innovation Promise) in the Health & Nutrition category of the KVK Innovatie Top 100.
You can learn more about Saturn Pelvic Health on their website or follow them on LinkedIn.
Listen to Episode 164 on Spotify, Apple or YouTube
Featured Event: TEDx Coolhaven Women
The TEDx Coolhaven Women event takes place on 9 October from 6:30 to 11:30 in the evening at HAL4 aan de Maas in Rotterdam. This year’s theme is The New Builders, a theme that seamlessly aligns with the content on this podcast.
Throughout the evening, you’ll hear powerful TEDx talks from women who are redesigning the systems that shape our lives—from leadership and parenting to women’s health, mental healthcare, and access to investment capital. Together, they’ll explore what it really takes to build a better future.
As a proud media sponsor, I am happy to offer you a chance to be there in person, to listen to groundbreaking talks and meet and network with like-minded people. As a listener to the podcast, you’ll get a 25% discount when you use the code WDT25 at checkout. And even though this is a TEDx Women event, men are very welcome to join.
- 🗓️ 9 October 2026, from 18:30 - 23:30
- 📍 HAL4 aan de Maas in Rotterdam
- 🎟️ You can buy your ticket here.
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