A women’s health organization, called Fertility Education and Medical Management or FEMM, works to teach women to understand their bodies and maintain overall health via education and available health centers. Along with these resources, the organization has expanded its reach by releasing a new, free application called FEMM: it aims to allows women to actively achieve their health and reproductive goals.
FEMM was established in 2010. CEO, Anna Halpine, said she recognized a gap and need for better women’s health programs around the world. Halpine was involved in international work at the time, and then began to see a gap and need in developed nations, as well.
In an interview, Halpine explained FEMM’s purpose: “FEMM is a program that now seeks to make the most cutting edge research available to women through education and clinical support and is committed to providing this health care to women all over the world.”
FEMM provides many services including education classes geared toward women who want to learn more about their bodies, others interested in teaching a FEMM education course and medical professionals interested in incorporating it into their practice. FEMM also offers medical management to women via their clinics both in the U.S. and around the world: general wellness checks, pap smears and accurate treatment and diagnosis of various issues using FEMM medical protocols are accessible at any FEMM clinic location. Lastly, the FEMM app provides women with a platform to allow them to track health goals and manage fertility.
The new app, currently available on any iOS device, allows women to track their period, fertility and overall health. When using the app for the first time, it prompts a woman to answer what her main goal is: achieve pregnancy, track her health, or avoid pregnancy. Then the app allows a woman to fill out a daily chart: she can catalog if she is on her period, her current mood, physical health, etc. This feature is important for the overall effectiveness of the app. The user must remain consistent with filling out the daily chart to allow the app to produce accurate information.
“We first built a beta app which allowed us to receive huge amounts of feedback and insight from thousands of users,” Halpine said. “Which has led to our current app, which really embodies the basic elements of information we wanted to provide to all women.”
The app includes new features, such as personal daily insights, given after the user fills out her daily chart. It can give insight on a woman’s cycle, hormones, goals, tips and observation. Once several days have been filled out, the personal daily insights become more in-depth because the app has more information to utilize.
Within the new features, women also have access to viewing their information in a different form: daily graphs or analysis screens. The app can configure a woman’s information into either a daily graph or analysis screen, giving her an opportunity to look deeper into her own daily charts. This allows for greater understanding of personal hormonal changes, imbalances and health.
“We’ve been excited at the response of this new release,” Halpine said. “We’re now seeing over 400 downloads per day, with heavy use of the app on a daily basis. These are important indicators that we’re providing value to women, which we see not only in the downloads, but in the recurrent use patterns we’re seeing in the app.”
According to Halpine, the app’s growing success has given the FEMM team an opportunity to reach thousands of women, for free, by simply offering information. Then, by using the app, FEMM is able to link women to a network of health educators and medical doctors via FEMM clinics who can support them as needed.
“Women should understand the link between their hormones and their health,” Halpine said. “Acne, weight gain, depression, migraines, PMS, pain, and infertility are all signs of hormonal imbalance.”
