Dr. Jack Pearson and Sofie Askervall: Digital contraception and data science-based clinical research

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We speak to Dr. Jack Pearson and Sofie Askervall from Natural Cycles about digital contraception and clinical trials based on data science. We explore how an app can become approved by the FDA as a contraception and the benefits of being more involved with your own reproductive health. 

Besides being used by women as a hormone-free contraceptive, Natural Cycles can use the platform to collect additional data for research purposes. Self-proclaimed “nerds with PhDs” collaborate with academic institutions to answer questions such as “does the Covid vaccine influence the menstrual cycle?”  

Having access to users already engaging with your app on a daily basis lowers the barrier for assembling additional data for clinical research - whether related to women’s health or not. This increases the speed at which clinical research can be conducted.

Besides clinical research, curious stats can also be extracted from the app - such as what day users logged as the most stressful, and how the most frequent days to have sex varies across countries. 

We also speak about how interacting with your contraceptive method on a daily basis changes the relationship with reproductive health. Both in the sense of gaining more understanding for it, involving a partner or significant others or reaching out to the support team from Natural Cycles with questions. 

Users may find Natural Cycles easier to use in the future with the announcement of the new collaboration with Oura, taking the manual task of measuring temperature each morning out of the equation.  Besides being more convenient, this collaboration provides additional data that can be incorporated into future studies. 

Guests: 

Sofie Askervall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sofie-askervall-ba311845/ 

Jack Pearson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-pearson-6a8ab190/ 

Natural Cycles: https://www.naturalcycles.com/ 

References: 

Published Research by Natural Cycles: https://www.naturalcycles.com/research-library 

Association between menstrual cycle length and covid-19 vaccination: global, retrospective cohort study of prospectively collected data: https://bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/1/1/e000297 

FDA 510(K) pathway: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/premarket-submissions-selecting-and-preparing-correct-submission/premarket-notification-510k 

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