We want to design Ovulaid for people to actually use, and we have therefore put great effort into finding out how people could use it in a way that is easy, fun, and allows for precise cycle tracking. We came up with the Ovulaid app. The Ovulaid app is an innovative cycle tracker that combined with the Ovulaid chewing gum empowers women to track their menstrual cycles and monitor their hormonal health, while also generating valuable anonymous data that, with given consent, can be shared with researchers to promote research in hormonal health.

You use your Ovulaid app in 3 easy steps.
1.) Chew the Ovulaid chewing gum
2.) Take a picture of the chewing gum with the Ovulaid app.
3.) Use the calendar and other functions to track the user’s cycle.

The hormone levels will then automatically be calculated according to the color of the gum and the result will be logged in the app’s integrated calendar. With consistent use and calibration the app can determine the user’s most fertile days. The Ovulaid app will also allow the user to track a range of other relevant factors that might influence fertility and the menstrual cycle. The user can for instance plot important data into the app, such as their sexual activity or when they had their last menstruation, to increase the performance of the app.

Furthermore, we have included articles in the app, that can help women struggling with infertility, better understand their bodies, and how they can increase their chances of getting pregnant.

Software development and description

The team was able to join the Vilnius iGEM team’s hackathon ‘Lab app’ where expertise, inspiration and tonnes of snacks were provided. The bulk of the application in its current form was developed during this weekend. Click here to read more about the meetup.

The application was developed with Google’s latest framework, “Flutter”. Flutter is a mobile application development framework used for developing Android and iOS applications, and uses Dart for architecture.
We chose to use Flutter because it’s a hybrid, cross-platform development tool, and as such would increase our efficiency by creating both an iOS as well as an Android application from the same code, with only a few exceptions¹.
Flutter is fairly new in the scene, so we ran into a few issues with missing feature support, and had to overcome them in other ways.

Flutter uses “Widgets” as base structures for development. Each widget manages and holds smaller widgets, creating a tree structure, where each individual widget handles a few tasks. This makes for easier debugging and better organization during development.

The application has 5 core components; Calendar, Information sites, Color analyzer, Cycle overview and App settings.

The application has a few dependencies on public Flutter packages. These are used to import widgets developed by other programmers, and allows for faster progress. An example is the calendar in the Calendar tab. It is made to have the necessary base functions, but most parts can be changed and controlled by the developer using it. We added our own features to it, as to better compliment the application as a whole.

We decided not to create a backend yet, as the application is purely demonstration and proof of concept for now. However the application was designed to accommodate a backend and is easily scalable based on the contents of said database. We also created Additional settings, to allow users to send additional data usable by us or researching women’s hormonal health, further down the road.

Securing data

To ensure anonymity of personal information, and to comply with GDPR the Ovulaid app we reached out to an industry professional through 20 years, tech entrepreneur Michael Schmücker. He informed us that one way to secure the anonymity of the data generated, and to protect the user's privacy, could be to make the login of the app only by email, thus requiring no personal information that could otherwise identify the user. The next step to properly identify the level of encryption and security our app would require, we would need a Privacy Impact Assessment from The Danish Data Protection Agency. For a full report of our meeting read here.

Features and potential

The Ovulaid app is first and foremost designed as an easy tool for women to track their cycles and pinpoint their fertile windows. But to really get the most out of the Ovulaid app we also want to make sure that we contribute to the general scientific progress of women’s hormonal health. We therefore want to add a simple survey as a central part of the app user interface. Whenever you open the app, you will be asked a few questions regarding your general health.

Software development and description

These questions can be turned off at any time, if the user finds them irrelevant or uncomfortable, but the user is nudged to answer these questions for a better user experience.

The information you can gather from these questions can both help the user to get a better overview of their general health, but can especially be of value for researchers that investigate different environmental factors that can impact your hormonal health and your chances of conceiving.

For further development of the app it should be integrated with existing health tracking apps and devices, such as smartwatches, Samsung Health, exercise apps etc. in order to give even more details about the habits and different factors that might affect hormonal health and fertility.

By also focussing on gathering data this way Ovulaid will not just benefit the one woman using it, but also promote research on women’s health in general, giving Ovulaid a much larger scope and purpose.