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| Natural Cycles app. |
Natural Cycles- is world’s first fertility control app that got a clearance in the European Union including U.K placing it alongside pills, IUDs, and condoms. Natural Cycles is a certified and CE marked medical device of class IIb, intended to be used for contraception.
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| Elina Berglund Scherwitzl |
The app was created by Dr. Elina Berglund, 32, a physicist who was part of the team that found the Higgs boson at Cern in Switzerland, and her husband Dr. Raoul Scherwitzl, a postdoctoral researcher.
“Natural Cycles can adapt to each individual woman’s body and, with a high degree of precision and accuracy, determine when she is ovulating,” says Dr. Elina Berglund
Natural cycles is just like old times period tracker with some added features. Using a sensitive thermometer and some mathematics the app claims itself “as good as the pill" at preventing pregnancy.
The app requires the women to input her daily basal body temperature recordings and the date of menstruation. LH test result is an optional entry point.
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| The safe and unsafe days |
The app’s calendar then labels fertile days as red (when you should abstain or use a condom) and the rest green, when you’re “safe”.
The app is primarily based on the fact that a woman’s body temperature rises slightly (about 0.4℃)after ovulation and remains slightly elevated throughout the rest of the cycle. The app uses an algorithm that takes into account body temperature, cycle irregularities, sperm survival, length of menstrual cycle and cycle irregularities. The algorithm learns from previously recorded cycles from the same woman and can provide predictions of her fertility status and upcoming ovulation, LH and menstruation days.
Initially, the app shows a nearly equal number of the green and red days but, as women continue using the app and fed more data, the number of red days are reduced to 8 each month. The app is 99.95% sure before it assigns a day red or green. If in doubt it will go red.
It can be used by anyone, even women with PCOD or irregular cycles, only these women will have more red days on the calendar than green.
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| efficacy of the app |
A recent clinical study published in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care recruited 4000 women between ages 18-45 to use this app.[1] The study results showed that for every 100 women who used the app, 7 women got pregnant each year (7% failure rate). CDC statistics quote the failure rate for the pill is around 9%, for injectable contraceptive it’s 6%; for an IUD, it's 0.2% - 0.8%.
Kristina Gemzell Danielsson, from Swedish medical institute Karolinska Institutet. “The efficacy is far below that of intrauterine contraception or implants, but similar to that of the pill when used in real life. The pill which will celebrate its 56 birthdays in March 2017 was a breakthrough that liberated women and changed the way we look at sex.
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| Could the app replace pill that has ruled for 56 years. |
Natural cycles can help women to plan a pregnancy as well. It is especially useful for women with irregular cycles and PCOD. In fact, it has already helped 5000 Swedish women to conceive under the # HappyPregnant project. Elina Berglund has already launched a similar project in U.K.
The app is currently used by nearly 100,000 users in 161 countries, paying £6.99 per month.
Natural Cycles was first launched in 2014, in Stockholm and across Sweden.
The company aims to expand the team in the UK and internationally and to continue with more clinical studies and data analysis.
The app can be purchased here.
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