Are fertility apps as useful and accurate as they're supposed to be?
| Jul 18, 2019, 15:27 IST
While having your period can be a pain and task both, technology seems to have found a way to ease the discomfort felt during those days by introducing us to fertility apps. These apps can be used to track one's period or menstrual cycle and can help one stay prepared beforehand. However, are these apps really as useful and accurate as they're portrayed to be? A new study was conducted on nearly 200,000 participants to figure out the answer to this question.
“Our study provides a common ground for users and their doctors to incorporate digital records in their visits evaluate their own menstrual patterns and compare them with the statistics we report,” said Laura Symul of Stanford University. “New technologies, and in particular self-tracking, are changing the way we perceive our bodies and health. Our study shows that users voluntarily track their menstrual cycle and fertility-related body signs very frequently and what they track is aligned with what is expected in the vast majority of cases,” she continued.
“While these measurements and observations are noisy and not perfectly regular, they provide valuable information for inferring the underlying hormonal changes and timing of ovulation in a way that is scalable both in time and in the number of participants,” she said. The aim of this study was to find out two things - one, to figure out how many women use these fertility apps, and two, how accurate are these apps in recording data and estimating ovulation period.
As per these inputs, it was found that an average fertility app user was around 30 years old, lives in a western country (in Europe or Northern America) and has a healthy BMI. While the data from their follicular phase wasn't as correct as it should have been, the data from their luteal phase was almost accurate. This shows that there may still be some work required on these apps. Stay tuned for more updates.
“Our study provides a common ground for users and their doctors to incorporate digital records in their visits evaluate their own menstrual patterns and compare them with the statistics we report,” said Laura Symul of Stanford University. “New technologies, and in particular self-tracking, are changing the way we perceive our bodies and health. Our study shows that users voluntarily track their menstrual cycle and fertility-related body signs very frequently and what they track is aligned with what is expected in the vast majority of cases,” she continued.
“While these measurements and observations are noisy and not perfectly regular, they provide valuable information for inferring the underlying hormonal changes and timing of ovulation in a way that is scalable both in time and in the number of participants,” she said. The aim of this study was to find out two things - one, to figure out how many women use these fertility apps, and two, how accurate are these apps in recording data and estimating ovulation period.
As per these inputs, it was found that an average fertility app user was around 30 years old, lives in a western country (in Europe or Northern America) and has a healthy BMI. While the data from their follicular phase wasn't as correct as it should have been, the data from their luteal phase was almost accurate. This shows that there may still be some work required on these apps. Stay tuned for more updates.