(Mercy Gilbert)
For nine years and four months, the average woman in the United Kingdom waits for a diagnosis of endometriosis. That figure — cited by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and debated in the House of Commons just months ago — represents millions of appointments, thousands of dismissed symptoms, and a system that has repeatedly told women their pain is normal.
It is not normal. And Sarah Chitongo — Queen’s Nurse, Mary Seacole Award winner, and NHS Midwifery Manager — spent twenty-five years inside that system before building the technology to change it.
Vina Health is a digital clinical intelligence platform for women living with endometriosis, fibroids, and adenomyosis. Women log their symptoms daily in under sixty seconds. The platform tracks patterns across their cycle, identifies triggers, and before any medical appointment generates a structured clinical summary — the longitudinal evidence that transforms a consultation from a woman describing pain from memory into a clinician reviewing ninety days of documented data.
The difference is not cosmetic. It is diagnostic.
Vina is aligned to NICE clinical guidance NG73, registered with the NHS Innovation Service, reviewed by the MHRA, and has achieved NHS DSPT Standards Met certification — the data security standard required for NHS procurement. It operates in ten languages, including Arabic with full right-to-left layout, Yoruba, Igbo, Swahili, and Amharic, serving communities that existing women’s health technology has consistently overlooked.
Sarah Chitongo is not a technology entrepreneur who consulted clinicians. She is a clinician who built the technology and the distinction matters.
One of only six recipients of the Mary Seacole Award, the most prestigious honour available to a Black or minority ethnic nurse or midwife in the United Kingdom, she is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Midwives, Senior Advisor at Middlesex University, and Advisor to the American Pregnancy Association. She was the first in the UK and Europe to pioneer augmented reality in midwifery education a breakthrough covered by Reuters, VOA News, and the Japan Times.
Her textbook Reframing Risk, Redesigning Care is taught across British midwifery and postgraduate programmes. Her new book, Period Pains: Endometriosis, Adenomyosis, Fibroids and the Fight for Better Women’s Healthcare, published this year — arriving at precisely the moment the UK Government’s renewed Women’s Health Strategy confirmed that over 565,000 women are still waiting for gynaecological care.
Vina already has 2,000 women on its waitlist before a single paid advertisement has run. The UK Department of Health and Social Care has selected it for Women’s Health Strategy partnership discussions. A clinical pilot in NHS Women’s Health Hubs is in negotiation.
The nine-year wait has persisted because no one gave women the tools to make their suffering undeniable. Vina does exactly that.
Vina Health launches mid-2026. vinawomenhealth.com
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