Would YOU trust a £200 scanner to check your breasts at home?
NOT content with tackling the world’s problems by producing driverless cars and robot vacuum cleaners, it seems that Silicon Valley has a new target: the female body.
Over the past three years, its boffins have been focusing on women’s health concerns, from fertility and contraceptives to breast cancer and pregnancy care.
Coined ‘femtech’, this new field represents one of the fastestgrowing sectors in the industry, and is expected to be worth almost £40 billion within the next decade.
And it’s not hard to see why: many of the innovations are startlingly good ideas.
After all, what woman wouldn’t want a DIY scanning device that could flag up breast tumours in minutes from the comfort of her living room? Or perhaps an app to replace the contraceptive Pill by predicting a ‘safe’ window in the month within which to have sex?
So far, so impressive. However, as Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs, warns: ‘It’s good to see patients taking an interest in their own health, but any tech device you use has to be safe and evidence-based.’
Only a handful of products have been given the official stamp of approval and even fewer are vetted by UK health watchdogs, leaving the sector largely unregulated.
So which femtech inventions can women trust with their health? And which are – for the time being – best avoided? We spoke to the experts to find out…
AN APP THAT STOPS YOU GETTING PREGNANT...
NATURAL Cycles (naturalcycles.
com, £39.99 per year) is a smartphone app and thermometer that the makers claim works as ‘digital contraception’. Users pop the thermometer in their mouth every morning and input the temperature reading into the app.
The Natural Cycles algorithm uses this to work out their fertility cycle. On days where the user is reckoned to be most fertile, a red ‘Stop’ signal warns against unprotected sex. A green sign gives the go-ahead when she is least fertile.
The app, launched in 2016, has more than 125,000 UK users, and is aimed at women who worry about the long-term effects of the Pill. Earlier this year it emerged that a fifth of women seeking abortions at a Swedish clinic had become pregnant while using Natural Cycles. THE VERDICT ‘I would only recommend this for people who wouldn’t mind getting pregnant,’ says Dr Anita Mitra, a gynaecologist and researcher at Imperial College London. ‘The app claims to predict fertility from changes in temperature across the 28-day cycle. But random fluctuations occur for a variety of reasons, which will affect this prediction, such as taking paracetamol, changes in eating, exercise and sleep.’
A spokesman for Natural Cycles said: ‘The effectiveness of Natural Cycles is supported by scientific evidence. The rate of reported unintended pregnancies among users between January and June 2018 was found by the Swedish Medical Products Authority to be in line with the published typical use effectiveness rate of 93 per cent, which is based on the study of more than 22,000 women.’
... AND ONE THAT BOOSTS YOUR FERTILITY CHANCES
OVUSENSE (ovusense.com, £79, then £20-a-month subscription) is a silicone sensor that tracks fertility via temperature changes in the vagina, and beams the data wirelessly to an app. It gives 24 hours notice of the four-day window when pregnancy is most likely – when an egg is released from the ovaries.
The app is a ‘fully certified medical device’ everywhere it is sold – including the UK. The company website refers to a 2012 study that it funded, which showed OvuSense to be 99 per cent accurate. THE VERDICT Dr Christine Ekechi, consultant gynaecologist at Imperial College London says: ‘There is no evidence that I am aware of to show vaginal temperature is a more accurate predictor of fertility than traditional measurements – we don’t use vaginal temperature in NHS practice. I embrace new health technology but it must be used in conjunction with medical professionals.’
In a statement, Rob Milnes, CEO of OvuSense, said: ‘OvuSense is an independently regulated device proven in clinical trials and over 30,000 cycles of use.’
DIY SCANNER THAT SPOTS EARLY BREAST CANCER
A NEW method of scanning for breast cancer, known as breast thermography, is offered at private British clinics. Women can also buy home-use devices from £200 that do the same thing: the devices are said to detect the first signs of breast cancer by measuring temperature changes on the skin.
Some, including the hand-held Braster (Braster.eu, from £351, pictured above), said to detect signs
of breast cancer in 15 minutes, immediately send information to an app that is later analysed by the company’s medical team.
As cancer cells grow and multiply, blood flow to the area increases and this raises skin temperature.
Research has suggested thermography has a higher success rate than mammograms for detecting breast cancers – 95 per cent versus 87 per cent. THE VERDICT Thermography is effective, but only for larger tumours that emit heat and not the majority of breast cancers. ‘A small cancer will not necessarily be hot but it will be visible via a mammogram,’ says Dr Steven Allen, Consultant Radiologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. ‘The same is true for precancerous cells that become a lump within a year. For these women, mammograms are life-saving.’
HAND-HELD BABY HEART RATE MONITOR
THE Sonoline B Handheld Foetal Doppler (medisave.co.uk, from
£33.95) is a DIY foetal heartbeat detector comprising a probe, a battery-powered monitor and headphones. It allows expectant parents to listen to their baby’s heartbeat from the 12th week of pregnancy.
Manufacturers say the device is not a replacement for pre-natal clinicians, but parents can use the at-home devices as reassurance of their child’s development.
A spokesman for Sonoline said: ‘Increasing amount of research indicates that up to six per cent of babies with compromised immunity develop complete atrioventricular block, leading to early deaths. Current pregnancy blood tests do not screen for this so monitoring irregular heartbeats is all that is left.’ THE VERDICT The device may show an accurate picture of foetal heartbeat, but this doesn’t tell you if the baby is healthy, says Clive Spence Jones, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at The London Clinic.
THE STICK-ON MATERNITY NURSE
MOMSENSE (mymomsense.com,
£60) is a stick-on-sensor and microphone attached to a baby’s neck during nursing. It amplifies and records the sound of the baby swallowing, and compiles a daily report on the quantity of milk baby has consumed, easing mothers’ concerns about their newborn’s weight gain. THE VERDICT Midwife and breastfeeding expert Clare Byam-Cook says. ‘Mothers differ in production and flow, as do babies in the way they suck. The best, most reliable indication a baby has had a good feed is if he or she goes three to four hours between feeds.’