Interval monitoring apps might compromise customers’ privateness and reproductive autonomy, researchers have warned.
A paper from Rotterdam Faculty of Administration, Erasmus College, printed within the journal Contraception flags moral considerations within the algorithms used to trace menstrual cycles and fertility home windows.
Researchers discovered that customers are topic to information breaches and will be uncovered to restricted or biased details about their reproductive well being.
Authors Maria Carmen Punzi and Tamara Thuis mentioned: “It’s important that we take note of the moral improvement and implementation of innovation when it applies to contraception.
“The affect of algorithms on customers’ expertise of their menstrual cycle and fertility is usually invisible however can nonetheless change behaviour associated to it.”
The analysis recognized gaps in information safety, with some apps sharing delicate info on customers’ sexual exercise, menstrual signs, and reproductive well being with third events, typically with out their knowledgeable consent.
They discovered that customers steadily lack understanding of how their information is getting used, saved, and shared.
The analysis additionally recognized that many algorithms used are educated on restricted datasets that won’t signify the total range of menstrual experiences throughout completely different demographics, ages, and well being situations.
This will result in inaccurate predictions that disproportionately have an effect on sure person teams, doubtlessly impacting contraceptive and associated well being choices.
Researchers on the College of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Know-how and Democracy have additionally raised points with interval monitoring apps in a report printed on 11 June 2025.
‘The Excessive Stakes of Monitoring Menstruation’, authored by Dr Stephanie Felsberger, says that menstrual monitoring apps “flip private well being info into information factors to be collected, analysed, and offered”.
Felsberger provides: “This information within the incorrect palms might allow harms that transcend reproductive well being, like intimate companion violence, dangers to job prospects, office monitoring, or medical health insurance discrimination.”
To mitigate potential hurt, the report requires the NHS and different public our bodies, to develop their very own cycle monitoring apps to “engender belief in FemTech, mitigate privateness violations, and provides individuals extra company over how their menstrual information is used”.
The report requires stricter regulation of menstrual monitoring information, enforcement of present rules, and improved governance and safety of FemTech apps.
Nevertheless Sue Khan, vp of safety and information safety officer at FemTech agency Flo Well being, mentioned that the College of Cambridge paper might make ladies “really feel unsafe in regards to the privateness of interval monitoring purposes”.
In an article on LinkedIn, Khan wrote: “We’ve got by no means – and can by no means monetize or promote person information.
“We don’t see private information as a commodity, and categorically reject the notion that ladies’s well being information ought to be handled as a goldmine for promoting.”
Flo grew to become the primary shopper ladies’s well being app to attain unicorn standing in July 2024.
A spokesperson for FemTech app Luna instructed Digital Well being Information: “We constructed Luna to assist teenagers by adolescence, and defending their privateness is a basic a part of that mission.
“We don’t promote information and we don’t share information with advertisers.”
