Flo has revealed that its users benefit from huge boosts in their understanding of women's health issues – according to a new study
An interesting nugget from our friends at FutureFemHealth reveals the results of a study into users of Flo – the female health tech unicorn taking digital health by storm.
Flo recently became the first purely digital female health tech unicorn after raising $200 million, valuing the company at over $1 billion.
Flo is an ovulation and period tracker app, which offers users a fertility calendar that can be used for family planning. But a recent randomized controlled trial demonstrated users of Flo benefited from improved health literacy.
And that might be just as important as direct benefits of the app.
According to FutureFemHealth:
“Participants reported significant improvements compared with the control group in several key areas: Improved understanding of reproductive health and enhanced awareness of menstrual cycle patterns and symptoms.”
In other words, users of Flo didn’t just get the benefits of period tracking and prediction, but a better understanding of their bodies and women’s health in general.
It reminded me of a chat with James Hewitt in a PULSE Podcast episode. He spoke about a study that demonstrated there are four different types of wearable users – and only one can make their goals stick. These users had high levels of health literacy.
James Hewitt references a study that defines wearable users into four types:
Ignoring: Those who use a wearable but ignore the data and don’t change.
Self-leading: Moderately motivated to change but didn’t use the feedback from the device.
Followers: Highly motivated and religiously follow the recommendations from the app, which leads to temporary behavior change.
Combiners: Those who use strategies from the wearable but also cross this with their ideas and intuition, which creates sustained change.
James Hewiit
Combiners have higher levels of health literacy, and are the only cohort of wearable tech user that can make positive changes stick. Others may follow advice from their devices, but benefits are only temporary at best.
Perhaps Flo’s greatest asset isn’t the tracking and features, but the way it arms its user-base with information and understanding.
And perhaps leaving users with a better understanding of health should be the real aim of digital health and wearables startups.
