The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Friday the official approval of Natural Cycles, an app that promises to prevent pregnancy.
This is the first time that the FDA has allowed an application to apply itself as a “contraceptive”. The authority also creates criteria and rules that pave the way for a new variety of applications that can be used as forms of “digital” contraception.
There are other applications on the market that offer services such as menstrual cycle calendars and automatic pill-taking notifications, but Natural Cycles is the first to be approved by this US agency and is also classified as a medical device in Europe by the testing and certification company Tüv Süd.
However, there are medical industry experts who believe that what happened with the FDA approval of this application has been done years ago. Lauren Streicher, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Northwestern University believes that an application like Natural Cycles offers nothing else or relevant and that effective and reliable contraception methods that already exist.
In addition to this fact, the FDA’s decision on this application is surprising that research is currently underway on natural cycles in the UK and Sweden after 37 women claimed that they had unwanted pregnancies using the app.
To get the most out of the app, women simply enter their menstrual cycle information and measure their temperature when they wake up in the morning just before they get out of bed. In addition, the woman is required to measure their temperature before they urinate, drink coffee, among other things. In this sense, Natural Cycles detects slight temperature fluctuations around the time of ovulation and warns the user whether he should use protection to avoid the risk of pregnancy.
Although the Natural Cycles website states that its birth control method is 93 percent effective in daily use and 99 percent when used without sex on high-risk days, it is also true that customers have been warned to give the app at least 3 months to know their menstrual cycle and provide accurate information.
Currently, the way is clear for greater acceptance of this application, which already has more than 700,000 users in 161 countries around the world.