Women Health App – A Definitive Guide to Build One

Women today are taking the lead everywhere. Whether it’s her family or workplace, she motors to excel at both, while managing to keep a balance between the two. From caring for the elderly & children in her family to feeding them the right food, paying bills, meeting her deliverable timelines at the workplace, and giving out presentations, she does it ALL. And you will agree, this is tough!

Obviously, burdened by such umpteen responsibilities, she often tends to miss out on her own well-being. Hence, there’s a need to leverage technology and give them the kind of care and attention they deserve. Even though women represent almost 50% of the world’s population, their health has always taken a backseat. 

But not anymore…

The value and the immense potential that this healthcare segment holds are slowly unfolding. Femtech is currently experiencing rapid growth, attracting huge investments, and is on track to reach USD 60.01 Billion valuation by 2027 globally.

Wondering, what Femtech is & why is it gaining popularity?

Femtech, an acronym for Female Technology, is all the goods, services & software that are focused on improving women’s health using advanced technology.  An increase in the number of health problems relating to women has paved the way for technologically innovative healthcare solutions, like a menstrual tracker app or a pregnancy tracker app. 

With more than a billion worth market, Femtech is more popular than ever before. This popularity clearly shows the financial strength and the growing trust of women in women’s health apps, which in turn forecasts the brighter future of businesses developing tech solutions for women. 

Before moving into further details, let’s take a look at some market facts first – 

• The global femtech market was valued at USD 18.75 Billion in 2019 and is anticipated to reach USD 60.01 Billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 15.6%.
• North America is expected to continue dominating the market with an expected CAGR of 15.8%.
• The Asia Pacific femtech market is projected to register the highest CAGR of 16.1%. Primary drivers are the vast pool of patients in populous countries like India and China, who are vulnerable to multiple infectious and chronic diseases. 
• The Pregnancy and nursing Care application segment is expected to continue being the largest contributor to the Femtech market revenue. It held a significant share of 40.2% share in 2019.

Clearly, the demand for female-driven solutions is on the rise. Some factors that are expected to fuel femtech business development include: 

• Increasing cases of chronic diseases & gynecological infections among women.
• Growing popularity and adoption of mhealth monitoring & tracking solutions.
• Increasing awareness among women for early identification & treatment of diseases thereby focusing on feminine hygiene & enhancing her wellbeing, safety & overall quality of life.
• Growing women’s emphasis on reproductive health and sexual empowerment in developing economies.

All the above factors are attracting more and more investments in Femtech, from both government & public/private corporations, which is anticipated to create lucrative growth opportunities in the years to come. 

• Benefits of Women Health App
• Types of Women’s Health Monitoring Applications
• 7 Steps to Build a Female Health Tracking Application
• Create your own branded Women Health Tracker with us!

Benefits of Women’s Health App

Practically, there is no end to the convenience a female health tracker can provide. They make women independent without allowing any negligence in their healthcare routine. 

1. Enables women to better control their health and maintain records

Female health tracking apps provide better insights about women’s menstrual cycles, ovulation prediction, overall body health, track moods, remind them to take birth control pills, and a lot more. This gives more power to women to better understand their health, make informed decisions, avoid chances of unwanted pregnancies, and even provide aid to get pregnant. Not only this. It also helps their doctors to study the information captured and take appropriate actions. 

2. Keeps a check on probable diseases & infections

Because Femtech captures real-time data, it enables women to diagnose and treat their health issues timely. Moreover, there are women’s health monitoring applications in the market which are focusing on the specific major illnesses that women are susceptible too. For example, breast cancer. As per the market study, 1 out of 8 women (13%) in the US have the chance of developing invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. Hence, apps like Breast Cancer Healthline, help patients receive advice, access current news and research, and connect with people who truly get it, thus reminding them that they are not alone.

3. Improves access to healthcare from the comfort of home

Especially after the pandemic, there’s a lot of emphasis on virtual monitoring and treatment by hospitals, doctors & patients. Hence, tech-savvy mobile women’s health monitoring applications are sought after which make healthcare solutions accessible virtually to women in the comfort of their homes, even at remote locations. 

4. They are personal and keep your data confidential

Unless you post it on social media, data regarding your health is completely inaccessible to others. Whether you have scored fewer cardiac analysis points on a fitness app or your digital fertility tracker is showing that it is your time to ovulate, none else but only you can keep a watch and take the benefits of it.

Women particularly appreciate this liberty of using the app while maintaining all secrecy. This is why women’s health tracker is becoming so popular and versatile, probably breaking all records each day.

Types of Women’s Health Monitoring Applications

1. Period & Fertility Tracking Apps

This female health app monitors women’s periods cycle and tracks fertility. It stores & analyses information like past period dates, sleep patterns, heart rate, basal body temperature, and cervical fluids. Using these data inputs from users, they give out information like the present-day of the cycle, estimated next menstruation date, upcoming PMS, favorable fertility period, ovulation date, etc. Such information helps both – women who want to get pregnant and women who want to avoid accidental pregnancies. Periods & fertility tracking apps are in most demand in women’s health app development segment. Example – Clue, Flo.

2. Pregnancy Tracker Apps

These pregnancy monitoring solutions help women prepare for parenthood and guide them through their pregnancy day by day and week by week. Pregnancy apps can be super helpful in tracking baby’s growth and the changes in a woman’s body during pregnancy. Not only do these apps remind moms & moms-to-be about upcoming doctor appointments & taking vitamins, but also give daily expert tips, helpful videos, the latest parenting news, and personal stories from real parents. It doesn’t stop here. Once the baby arrives, moms also get regular updates on her baby’s development, as well as expert advice on everything from postpartum healing to sleep schedules to milestones.  There’s so much that you can expect when you’re expecting and everything can be taken care of with the help of an app. Example – Glow Nurture, Sprout.

3. Doctor On-Demand Apps

These apps for women’s health synonymizes with digital clinic and allow women to see a medical professional right at her fingertips. These apps are designed especially for women and allow them to video chat or message with over 1000 women & family health specialists on anything, anytime, including breastfeeding support, mental health, weight loss, anxiety, sex coaching, meal planning, and so on. You think it and you get it.  Example – Maven Clinic.

4. Online Prescription & Delivery Apps

These women’s health monitoring applications offer the most convenient and affordable way for women to take care of their everyday healthcare needs online. For example – Nurx. Nurx was built on the foundation that women often have issues getting prescriptions filled for birth control and would often run out of it. With Nurx, women now get prescriptions from licensed medical teams on birth control,  migraine treatment, PrEP for HIV prevention, treatment for oral and genital herpes, emergency contraception, and home STI and HPV tests from the comfort of their homes. What’s more? These peeps also deliver the medication to user’s doorsteps, saving them the effort of visiting a pharmacy. 

5. Disease Specific Apps

These apps for women’s health work as online guides & provide educational content to better understand the diseases prevalent among women. For example – Beyond The Shock App for Breast Cancer. Beyond the Shock was created by the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc. (NBCF) to help suffering women & their families learn better about the disease, ask questions and get answers, and hear real stories from survivors. 

While the above are apps that are explicitly tailored to address women’s needs, there are many unisex mhealth apps available in the market which help females track their nutrition, sleep patterns, manage medications, measure heart rate, blood rate, manage stress, count calorie, meditate, etc. The motto of all women’s health and wellness apps is to ensure that women are always at the pink of their health and get the attention they deserve.

7 Steps to Build a Female Health Tracking Application

By far, we have seen that the benefits, demand, and the growing market of women’s health tracking apps are huge. Several female health apps already exist in the market, but not each one of them is popular among users. Today, I have outlined 7 basic but concrete steps that will help you make your women’s health tracking app successful. 

Step 1: Understand your Target Audience and Study your Competitors

It is imperative to know what’s available in the market and create innovative solutions that satisfy your target user’s needs. Start from scratch by defining who your end users are, what they expect from an app & how they want to use it. Some ways to do this:

• Do a market study, with the help of say conducting surveys online or offline, or interviewing your stakeholders directly. This might help you get highly actionable & meaningful insights for your app.
• Study your competitors & the services they offer. Look for customer reviews & comments on such apps and see if the competitor is missing out on something that customers desire for. This provides you a lucrative opportunity to offer something new and desired and hence is a great way to build brand popularity.
• If your app is already released, ask for user feedback and work on addressing their issues or regularly adding new features

Because this is a comparatively niche segment, there’s a lot of scope for new, creative, specialized solutions that will be appreciated by women worldwide. 

Step 2: Attractive UI & Simple UX

Needless to say, you have to run these horses to impress your users. Try to come up with designs that are simple to navigate and choices of colors that are inclusive, unbiased, and soothing. Remember, if your app is too complex, it will hinder user experience and ultimately result in failure of the app.

Step 3: Don’t Ignore Basic Functionalities

Leading mHealth apps are focusing on providing a seamless experience and ultimate convenience to their users. While it’s always better to have unique & advanced features in your app, basic ones should not be ignored. See a few below:

Onboarding

Impress your users by helping them get a feel of the app right from the start. Onboard them by either using a traditional email password approach or opting for social media integration. Next, you can use the following to guide them to use the app:

• Coach screens – these normally appear on starting an app
• Instructional overlays – these pointers or comments come in front of UI elements 

User Profile

Create a simple user profile in women’s health tracker apps by collecting basic information like name, age, height, weight, known allergies, last period dates, and other health data. Be mindful to not burden them with unnecessary questions.

Period Tracker

This being an essential feature of your women’s health tracker, you should provide a great interface for users to track their periods and get crucial insights. Allow users to input their first & last days of menstruation for the app to inform users what’s happening to them right now as per their cycle. Some basic things that should be displayed on the screen include the present-day cycle, estimated next menstruation date, upcoming PMS, favorable fertility period, and so on. 

Symptom Tracking and Analysis

This feature monitors & records accurate readings of health data (like cervical fluid, intercourse, period date & length, intensity of flow, PMS symptoms, etc.) and analyses it to predict what users can expect from their bodies. Using the latest technologies like, AI or MI, you can provide personalized insights & health tips to each user.

Reminders/Notifications

For the female health app to function accurately, it is crucial to remind users to enter vital data. This could include – Reminders for daily log entries, Reminders to take medication, or notifications about the upcoming phase of the cycle. 

Sharing Information

Clue Connect, allows users to share their personal information with their partners & strengthen their relationship. Users may also share such details with their doctors to expedite diagnosis & treatment.

Online Consultations

Whatever the level of accuracy and AI-generated health tips in the app, generally patients are completely assured only after discussing symptoms & receiving consultation from a real doctor. So, collaborate with specialists who are ready to come on board & provide online consultation. For example – Biem. 

Passwords Protection

Personal information shared on the app should be protected with the highest level of encryption. This will ensure that your user feels secure and comfortable while inputting confidential information about herself in the app.

Integration with Other Technologies

Often the fitness apps for women’s health link to certain sister applications and they together deliver the overall care. One such way of doing this is by integrating your app with wearable technology. This will automatically CAPTURE users’ health data like sleep time, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. giving them more ease and giving you more data for analysis. Popular wearable devices include FitBits and Apple Watch. 

Community or Social Network

You can build a big community within the app where people can share their stories, compare symptoms, get quick tips, resolve their queries, etc. This can be done via posts, private messages, or group messages. Example – Pink Pad app.

Step 4: Compliance with Data Protection Regulations

A study says that concerns over data privacy & security are one of the major hindrances in the adoption of mhealth platforms. Data breaches happening worldwide have made patients more protective of their personal health information. Hence, as an owner of female health apps, it is extremely important for you to keep patient’s data secure and to convey to users that you care about them. Some ways to do this are:

• Study regulatory compliances applicable to you and ensure your app adheres to all the regional requirements like HIPAA, GDPR, etc. 
• Enable multi-factor authentication for extra security
• Encrypt all data, whether, at rest or in transit
• Establish secure network connections (For example – https)
• Run vulnerability tests regularly to check for bugs & loopholes and immediately act upon findings.

To find out more, read our article – How to Build a HIPAA Complaint App

Step 5: Have an Expert onboard

To maintain analytical accuracy of collected data, it is vital to work with an experienced team of specialists & experts. These health professionals will interpret collected data, conduct research into women’s health symptoms, and answer all their concerns. For instance, Clue & Glow work with the best medical professional which has helped them reach the top of this segment.  

Step 6: You may Monetize your App

Well, a genuine ask for an investor would be to make profits out of his app. To make your mobile health app more rewarding and to increase your customer base, you may use any of the monetization strategies that are ruling the Femtech market. This includes charging users for premium features of the app, in-app advertisements, in-app purchases, gamifications, etc.  

You can read more about this in our article on 9 Full-Proof Strategies to Increase Mobile Medical Mobile App Revenue & Customer Base.

Step 7: Test Thoroughly

The first product launched should be attractive and flawless. Hence, avoid rushing to get the app up and running until it has been thoroughly tested. Fix identified bugs immediately. Frequent crashing, long loading times, and technical glitches are some things that pull your app back in the race.

Further, you need to have experts on their toes who will constantly upgrade/add features on the basis of user feedback, market innovations, etc. Regular updates are two-way beneficial. First, they let your users know that you are giving them the latest available, and second, they let you add new features that will improve users’ experience. Don’t forget to test these upgrades before releasing them.

Create your own branded Women Health Tracker with us!

The femtech market is flooding with opportunities and if you are convinced that women’s health app development is the best way to launch your luck this business season, you should do it with an expert. 

We, at Tech Exactly, deliver the best technological solutions for building healthcare service platforms. With extensive experience in strategizing compliances for app & software development, you can expect nothing but the best. yet, cost-effective platform for your operations. Our team of knowledgeable app developers, designers, and security experts use the latest & smart technology stacks and will happily toil to make you a successful female health tracking application.