What you probably already know: More than 80 million women use menstrual tracking apps on a monthly basis for a variety of reasons including fertility, planning menstrual product purchases, and predicting cramps and pain issues. However, modern medicine still lacks a comprehensive picture on just how much these changes affects women’s bodies. In an attempt to both help the medical field learn more about these changes and help women as their bodies fluctuate, Google Health and Flo Health have agreed to a new multi-year partnership in order to gather more data on how periods affect women in real-time.
What does that entail? The partnership will allow users to connect their menstrual health data from Flo Health with Google Health in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of how their bodies change day-to-day. Flo Health will continue to track menstrual cycles, perimenopausal symptoms, etc. while Google will connect that data with sleep quality, heart rate, and more through wearable technology like Fitbits in order to gather a more fluid understanding of changing biometrics.
What it means: The partnership also includes a plan to connect with dedicated research initiatives that look specifically at how perimenopause, polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), pregnancy, and postpartum recovery affect women’s bodies. After the turnover of Roe v. Wade in 2022, many have also rightfully feared about how similar data tracking might be weaponized against women making important decisions about their health. The partnership announcement includes specific language about providing “uncompromising privacy and expertise.” It pledges that no data will move between apps without the user’s explicit permission and that permissions are highly customizable within the app. The companies also promise that data will never be sold, used for advertising, or be made available to other developers.
What happens now? The first iterations of the partnership aren’t expected until 2027, but Flo Health and Google have already hinted at building new products designed for women using data Flo Health has already gathered from its platform. Mock-ups of new user interfaces or these new pieces of technology have not yet been released.
