I am a product manager with a passion for women’s health.
I first became interested in health tracking in 2017, when I discovered the biohacking and quantified self movements through my love of fitness. While I liked the data-driven and hands-on approach to health, I was frustrated to find how often men were treated as the default sex in research and product development. Women’s (and AFAB folks’) hormonal cycles were treated as a deviation from the norm, as though they were a bug, not a feature. As a result, features accommodating us were typically an afterthought; saved for a second, third, or fifth iteration of the product (Apple Health, for example, only added menstrual cycle tracking in iOS 13—five years after the app was first introduced).
I found more of a home for myself in the FABM (fertility awareness-based methods) space in 2018, where I learned to read my body’s patterns and signals in a new way. Eventually my love for health tracking and technology combined with my passion for women’s health. I created my own charts and spreadsheets to learn from my body’s changing health data. Over time, I tried new apps and products aimed at integrating and interpreting this information for me.
And there are a lot of them! We’ve come a long way since 2018. Every month I feel like I hear about a new tech wearable targeted specifically at tracking women’s cycles (think of TempDrop, Ava, and Kegg). Meanwhile, many of the big players in health tech—like Apple, Oura, and Whoop—are finally introducing features specifically for AFAB people’s bodies. Apps like Wild.ai are integrating cycle data into training insights for endurance athletes, while companies like ModernFertility and Hertility make reproductive health testing accessible in new ways. Femtech is not just a buzzword, but a growing industry.
This is a huge improvement from where we were a few years ago, but there’s still so much room for growth. While we have features and products catered to our health, often the interfaces are clunky or inaccessible, the technology doesn’t quite work, or the privacy policies are severely lacking, putting women—and our most sensitive data—last.
My hope for Femtech Reviewer is both to inform and be an advocate. I want to help women make decisions about the technology they trust with their health and data. I also truly believe in the potential of the femtech space and want to advocate for better, safer, and more responsible apps and products.
If you have questions or suggestions for future articles, feel free to reach out at femtechreviewer@proton.me. I am also very open to helping companies and apps with user testing for women’s health-related features and products. Reach out to me via email if your product development would benefit from my input.
A note on privacy
In order to review these apps and products thoroughly and fairly, I will be sharing screenshots of app interfaces that include my personal data. For this reason, I’ve decided not to include my name or identifying details on this site.