Breaking Down Barriers: How Software is Empowering Women’s Health

Women in Tech Society
4 min readOct 9, 2023

The FemTech market has shown tremendous potential for growth, with experts projecting it to reach a staggering $50 billion globally by 2025.

Photo Credit: iStock/Angelina Bambina

In recent years, women’s healthcare has been undergoing a significant transformation, thanks to the rise of software products that use technology to empower women’s health, known as FemTech.

This cutting-edge technology has created things like artificial intelligence and remote patient monitoring that provide exceptional opportunities to track, monitor, and analyze women’s health. As a result, the women’s healthcare market has shown tremendous potential for growth, with experts projecting it to reach a staggering $50 billion globally by 2025.

By using programming languages and software tools to collect and analyze data, FemTech apps offer personalized insights and recommendations to help women make informed decisions about their health.

The rise of this technology is a thrilling advancement in women’s healthcare. It’s inspiring to witness technology being used to tackle enduring challenges in women’s health and aid women in taking control of their health and well-being. Let’s take a look at three incredible apps that dominate the femtech space:

CLUE

Photo Credit: Clue

The period tracking app Clue was created by a Berlin-based company called BioWink GmbH and founded in 2012 by Ida Tin and Hans Raffauf. Ida Tin is known for coining the term “FemTech” and pioneering technology to improve women’s health. She materialized the idea for Clue after realizing there needed to be more accurate information and tools to help women track their menstrual cycles. Today, Clue has become one of the most popular period tracking apps worldwide, with over 13 million users in 190 countries.

The app employs programming languages such as Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build its software. Python is used for building web applications and handling data processing tasks, as well as machine learning algorithms that power the app’s personalized insights and predictions.

The app allows users to track various health metrics related to their menstrual cycles, such as period length, flow, pain intensity, mood, sleep, and exercise. Clue’s use of software and coding has helped women worldwide to understand their menstrual cycles better, predict their next period, and monitor related symptoms, ultimately enabling them to make informed decisions about their health.

WILD.AI

Photo Credit: Ste Primo

Wild.ai was founded by sisters Hélène and Laurence Bours, who are both athletes with a passion for using technology to enhance performance. Hélène, a former professional skier, and Laurence, a former professional tennis player, saw the potential for machine learning and AI to provide personalized training recommendations and recovery strategies based on an individual’s unique physiology. The sisters also recognized the importance of women’s health and the unique challenges women face regarding fitness and nutrition, and as a result, they designed Wild.ai to be a tool specifically for active women to optimize their performance and achieve their fitness goals while also supporting their overall health and well-being.

The app analyzes women’s vitals and performance to tailor training, recovery, and nutritional recommendations to their physiology. The app works simultaneously with wearables and manual input, providing it with the necessary data to calculate a readiness score and produce targeted recommendations and predictions of negative symptoms. Wild.ai is designed to learn and adapt suggestions through a feedback loop, much like a human coach. With 38,500 users worldwide, Wild.ai is already helping women make smarter decisions about their health and fitness.

DOT

Photo Credit: AppAdvice

The Dot app was created by Cycle Technologies, a women’s health company founded by Leslie Heyer in 2002. Heyer’s vision was to create a natural family planning tool to empower women to make informed decisions about their reproductive health. She wanted to develop a method that was easy to use and could be accessed by women worldwide, including those in areas with limited access to healthcare services. After years of research and development, Heyer and her team launched the Dot app in 2014.

The Dot app is a natural family planning tool that uses advanced algorithms and intuitive interfaces to help women track their menstrual cycle and prevent pregnancy by identifying their fertile window and time of ovulation. The app uses an algorithm based on the basal body temperature method, which involves tracking the user’s body temperature daily and analyzing the data to predict ovulation. It is built using Python and PostgreSQL for its back-end and React Native for its front-end. Additionally, the app uses a unique colour-coded interface to help users visualize their fertility status. Green dots indicate low fertility, yellow dots indicate medium fertility, and red dots indicate high fertility.

Ultimately, these apps and technologies could revolutionize how women monitor and manage their health. By leveraging advanced algorithms and intuitive user interfaces, these apps provide women with personalized insights and recommendations to help them make informed decisions about their reproductive health and overall well-being. As technology advances, we expect to see even more innovative solutions supporting women’s health!

Author: Maha Khawaja

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