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The ethics of menstrual tracking applications

Nature Human Behaviour volume 8, page 2076 (2024)Cite this article

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For the past ten years, digital technology companies dedicated to women’s health (sometimes termed ‘FemTech’) have been booming. A key sector is that of smartphone apps that follow menstrual cycles and predict users’ fertility periods for the purposes of contraception or conception. Several hundred million women around the world use them in their daily lives.

Recent research has examined the methodologies used by apps for menstrual tracking1,2. The majority of them use the period calendar to predict the fertile interval and ovulation date. This finding is alarming because this method, which is based on the date of ovulation occurring 14 days after the beginning of menstruation, is widely recognized as unreliable3. This suggests that app predictions may be misleading. Even women with very regular menstrual cycles have variable ovulation days. Variations in cycle length of seven days or more affect half of the female population, which casts doubt on the predictive capabilities of these apps4,5.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Merchant for English translation.

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  1. Ethics Committee of INSERM France (National Institute of Health and Medical Research), Paris, France

    Catherine Vidal

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  1. Catherine Vidal
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Correspondence to Catherine Vidal.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Cite this article

Vidal, C. The ethics of menstrual tracking applications. Nat Hum Behav 8, 2076 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02031-2

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