2 October 2026: Haus der Ärzteschaft in Düsseldorf
When medicine doesn't take differences into account, it becomes less accurate
Why gender-sensitive healthcare is a question of data, research and care
What if our medical knowledge does not apply equally to all people? If symptoms appear differently, medications work differently or disease risks vary – and we do not systematically record these differences?
Then the problem does not lie with the patients. It lies in our data, our studies, our guidelines and our understanding of what the medical standard is.
This is exactly the perspective at the heart of the event “Gender-Sensitive Healthcare – Treated Differently, Better Cared For!” held by the North Rhine Medical Association on 2 October 2026 in Düsseldorf. The event is introduced and moderated by Prof. Dr. Sabine Oertelt-Prigione, Professor of Gender-Sensitive Medicine at the Medical School OWL of Bielefeld University and Radboud University Nijmegen.
For whom does our evidence apply?
Gender-sensitive medicine is far more than “medicine for women”. It examines what influence biological and social gender have on health, disease development, diagnosis, therapy and care.
This changes a central question:
Not only: What is the medical standard? But: For whom does our evidence apply – and for whom might it not?
Sabine Oertelt-Prigione sums up this shift in perspective succinctly: “We can learn a lot from differences.” Making differences visible does not mean treating people differently across the board. It means scientifically identifying medically relevant differences and taking them into account where they are decisive for good care.
Gender-sensitive medicine begins with data
For GenDiMedNet, this is a central starting point. Gender-sensitive medicine begins not in the consulting room but already with the research question and data collection.
When sex is not recorded meaningfully, relevant influencing factors are missing or data from different projects is not comparable, knowledge gaps arise. These run through the entire innovation chain:
Research → Data → Evidence → Technology → Care.
Or put more simply:
What we do not record, we cannot compare. What we cannot compare, we can hardly understand. And what we do not understand, we cannot reliably translate into better care.
That is why data quality, standardisation and interoperability are not purely technical topics. They are a prerequisite for gender-sensitive research and care.
From research into care
But better data alone is not enough. Scientific findings must make their way into guidelines, care pathways and clinical decisions.
This is where Sabine Oertelt-Prigione's work comes in too: guidelines are an important lever for actually anchoring gender-sensitive and inclusive evidence in care.
This connection is decisive for GenDiMedNet: gender sensitivity must be considered along the entire innovation process – from data collection through standards and technologies to later application.
The aim is not to develop a completely different medicine for every person. It is to recognise which differences are medically relevant – and to make sure our data and technologies reflect these differences.
The future of medicine is context-sensitive
Personalised medicine is often associated with genomic data, biomarkers or artificial intelligence. But true individualisation begins much earlier: with the question of which factors influence health and how we capture them scientifically.
Gender is an important dimension here – alongside many other contextual factors.
The event in Düsseldorf therefore sends an important signal: gender-sensitive healthcare is not a specialist topic on the fringes of medicine. It belongs in research, teaching, guideline development, technology development and care.
And this is exactly where GenDiMedNet comes in: