How to Create a Women's Health Tracking App: Some Practical Advice

Understanding women's health tracking app development is crucial, as women’s health has been full of myths and taboos for hundreds of years, and unfortunately, many still believe in them.

That is all considering that each woman’s health itself is of course individual and requires a personal approach. These are some of the many reasons why FemTech apps are now a separate industry and help women all over the world.

Regulatory compliance, particularly adherence to data protection regulations, is another essential aspect to consider as you develop a women's health tracking application, ensuring user data protection and security. However, the number & types of regulations you need to comply with highly depend on the country of your registration and where your users generally come from.

Most apps need to comply with GDPR, HIPAA, and PIPEDA:

• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a key data privacy EU law that covers businesses registered in the European Union as those that work with EU citizens’ data.
• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) — a US federal law that determines national health-related data protection standards.
• PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) is a data privacy law in Canada that contains a security framework for organizations.

Data security is an important criterion when creating any type of application. You can read more about this in our article on how to create an app for corporate wellness.

We won’t go into much detail since there’s an informative guide on our blog, dedicated to:

• Whether or not you need to comply with any of these regulations.
• What will happen if you violate them.
• All details regarding being compliant.

Workflow Automation

Women’s health tracking apps, especially those offering AI-generated health tips, are beneficial in terms of automating certain aspects of the workflow.

For offline businesses, it's beneficial to build women's health applications that can also track changes in body shape, thereby automating certain aspects of the workflow. For example, registering patients or booking appointments.

If you start an online business with mHealth applications, you won’t have to organize these parts, making the process more efficient.

To be more specific, you can automate these parts of the workflow:

• Interviewing patients before their appointments.
• Processing payments.
• Clarifying prescriptions and administering medication. If a patient forgets how, what, and/or when to do something, they can simply double-check in the app.

Mono- & Multifunctionality

There are a bunch of apps targeted at different health aspects from menstrual cycle tracking to breast cancer control, etc., that can be organized in 2 ways:

• Specializing in only one area of women’s health.
• Offering features for various purposes combined.

Some existing femtech solutions that offer features for multiple aspects of women’s health don’t allow using them simultaneously — users have to switch modes which isn’t that convenient and user-friendly.

Our recommendation is the following: If you want to add features for several women’s health aspects, make them accessible within one mode but on different screens so the app isn’t too “bulky.”

For this purpose, you should think out the app’s structure well in advance. For instance, you may want to integrate a Bluetooth Low Energy device, such as a fitness tracker, into the app to gather valuable information about women's health.

Additionally, it’s reasonable to tell your developers about all of your plans in advance, too. If they know what structure you want in the beginning, they’ll be able to help you define a cost-saving and time-efficient way to meet your needs.

Educational Content

The women’s health industry's challenges, especially for adolescent women, underscore the need for how to create a women's health tracker app that provides accurate and helpful information. To prevent damage due to unawareness and increase the general level of knowledge, much like when building a meditation app, it might be a great idea to provide a lot of educational content and place links to reliable sources of relevant information in your app.

Such content may include:

• Articles.
• Visual content — explanatory videos, pictures, anatomical reviews, etc.
• Audios.
• Check-lists.
• Nutrition plans. For example, you can add products that one should and shouldn’t eat during menstruation or ovulation.

Similar information is available on many apps, however, the importance of this information isn’t explained. To make sure that the content actually contributes to more awareness, we recommend:

• Placing the information on the main screen.
• Sending push notifications and reminders (while users are on the app as well).
• Creating achievements or offering rewards (in-app points, badges, merch, etc.) for using and engaging with educational content, etc.

For example, Flo sometimes sends its audience messages and reminders such as “Now is the best time of your cycle. It’s your time to shine” while they’re using the app. With such messages, they instantly offer their audience to learn more about the topic and why certain things are the way they are.

After clicking on the “Learn more” button, they take the users to a sort of a chat with a medical specialist who then shares all the information with explanations, myth-busting, and advice on the topic.

⚙️ Top Features of a Women’s Health Tracking App

In this section, as part of understanding how to develop a healthcare app, we’ll review the main features that can be added to a women's health tracking app.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to include all the features in one app — for your particular use case, you might just need a couple.

# 1: Sign Up & Profiles 🔐

The sign-up process should be easy & fast so that the process isn’t “repellant.” At the very beginning, you can either ask for no information at all or for something common like email and/or phone number and name.

Even though that should be enough for people to start using your app, you’ll most likely have to ask for more details later when filling in a medical profile.

It might be a great idea to offer Social Sign Up, so letting people sign up with Apple ID or a Google account to save users’ time and use it as an additional marketing tool.

Although it’s not likely that a lot of people will feel comfortable sharing their experience on your app since the topics might be too personal, those who will can greatly contribute to spreading awareness.

# 2: Medical Profile 📝

This feature can vary depending on the type of your app. However, there’s certain information that you might ask everyone to fill in on their medical profile like age, weight/height, whether or not they’re on birth control, etc., no matter their particular use case.

It might also be a good idea to ask for users’ gender/pronouns. Even though people might actually use your app because of physical needs, they might not identify as a woman. So, to create a personal user experience and a friendly, trustworthy and safe space, you can take that into account as well.

Some information is essential, however, you should make the fill-in optional. Even if users won’t be able to get all proper services, the choice should be left up to them because some of them may feel too sensitive or self-conscious and need time to be able to share such info on your app.

# 3: Well-Being & Symptom Check-Ups 📲

To enhance the diagnostics process, your app should include daily well-being and symptom check-ups, enabling regular women's health monitoring.

At first, you can ask about users’ current mood, how much sleep they got today, libido, discharge, morning sickness, symptoms like headaches, etc.

To better address each user, you can offer to add customized questions to daily check-ups. Thus, you’ll be able to provide a personalized experience, as well as cover the needs of all users. It might be a good idea to store the check-ups to be able to track changes, dynamics, general tendencies, etc.

For the same purpose, you can add a separate bar for notes and comments to cover some health symptoms that aren’t in the questions or need some specifications. You can also add a symptom history – this useful feature assists users during medical appointments or for self-monitoring their well-being.

# 4: Menstrual Cycle Tracking ⭕

Many women’s health tracking apps, similar to diet planner app development, are dedicated to tracking menstrual cycles, which can also be instrumental in preventing accidental pregnancies. The functionality can include:

• Menstrual cycle tracking & prediction.
• PMS symptom tracking.
• Ovulation calendar calculation.
• Graphs (length of cycle, length & intensity of the period itself, etc.).

Additionally, you can add a period calendar feature for women to visualize cycle phases, conveniently track the duration of each cycle, and try to predict each phase as well as determine when things go off.

# 5: Pregnancy Control 👶

The Pregnancy Profile feature in pregnancy tracking mobile app development is essential, supporting both those looking to get pregnant and those aiming to avoid accidental pregnancies. It can include info like gestational age, resumable birth date, etc.

Since the experience of pregnancy is as beautiful as it is painful for many women, it’s important to allow them to picture and remember its pleasant moments. Think about adding a journal for positive moments (baby’s first kick, for example).

You can also add another journal for medical purposes only. There, pregnant women can write down body changes, their emotional state, any concerns that might come up, and other health changes.

Moreover, you can add:

• Lists with meal plans, including a healthy diet plan for pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers.
• Lists with medications that aren’t allowed during pregnancy & the risks/side-effects of taking them.
• Physical exercise for pregnant women & others.

Also, if you want to create a personal training app, we are ready to offer you the best solutions and innovations.

# 6: Birth Control Tracking 💊

To cover the needs of those who use hormonal birth control methods, you can add a tracking feature as the process of finding suitable hormonal contraception is typically a lengthy and delicate one in the realm of how to create a women's health tracker app.

To cater to those looking to avoid pregnancy, the app can include a tracking feature for hormonal birth control methods, with reminders to take birth control pills and checkers for potential side effects.

Furthermore, you can allow customizable checkers to cover those who use less widely used birth control methods like IUDs, contraceptive implants, patches, etc.

# 7: Breast Health Control 📊

Breast health, especially for breast cancer survivors and for those who have developed breast cancer, is a crucial aspect of women’s health. You can add features for its control.

Its functionality can consist of:

• Breast exams and uploads of ultrasound results.
• A change tracker: breast lumps, pains, etc.
• Self-examination guides.
• Cancer prevention and control, etc.

Additionally, you can incorporate AI into app to help diagnose health issues by analyzing data and identifying abnormalities, determining whether or not something is off, and recommending making doctor appointments, etc.

# 8: Forums 💬

To form a community around your app, you can create forums on various social media and online platforms. That can help you build a trusting and friendly relationship with your audience.

However, these forums should be regulated and curated by medical specialists so users don’t give harmful advice.

Additionally, you can add a Bad Word Filter feature so there is no bullying, swear words, provocative phrases, etc. To enable such, you can use such APIs as Microsoft Azure Content Moderato, Perspective, etc.

It might also be a good idea to organize educational lectures, speeches, or discussions to increase awareness right on these forums.

# 9: Urgent Help 📞

To help women in emergency cases, such as sudden or premature labor, and for arranging doctor's appointments in situations like severe vaginal bleeding and other urgent health issues, an 'Urgent help' button can be included in the app, add a separate screen for all the contact information, and offer users to upload the contacts to their phone contacts list.

# 10: Push Notifications 🔔

Push notifications can be really useful in a variety of ways if organized correctly.

You can add push notifications to:

• Remind users to do daily check-ups.
• Remind about taking medicines.
• Send ill reminders.
• Send personalized offers.
• Retarget audience.
• Inform users about upcoming events like lectures & others.

# 11: 3rd-Party Integrations 🤖

If you’d like to enable physical indicators measuring (heart rate, activities like daily steps or running, weight) and transfer the data into your app, you can offer users BLE integrations of health devices (fitness bands like Apple Watch, FitBit etc.) to the app.

Such a connection can be done by using an API like HealthKit from Apple. Surely, there are certain devices designed for women’s health specifically.

For instance, there’s Mira Fertility Tracker, which displays women's hormonal readings and provides ovulation predictions. A similar concept presents the Prima-Temp biosensor.

At Stormotion, we have experience in enabling data transactions from cadence & heart rate sensors into the Platoon Fit app. It’s a fitness project that pays special attention to health monitoring gadgets.

If you’d like to learn more about it, feel free to read the case study on our website:

Additionally, there’s a bunch of other Tech Stack that you can potentially use for your women's health app:

• Calendar APIs: Google Calendar, Nylas, Zoho, etc.
• Push notification APIs: OneSignal or Pusher.
• Chat APIs: Sendbird, Stream, Vonage, etc.
• Video session APIs: Agora, Twilio, etc.

❓How to Build a Women’s Health Mobile Applications: Main Steps

In this segment, we will guide you through the intricacies of crafting a women health app, illuminating each crucial step in the process of how to create a female health tracking app.

# 1: Analyze Competitors

Look at female health exponents apps have already found. Learn that worked for them, as well as their successes and mistakes. At present, some major players are: Apple Inc. Clue (Clue) Fruit Body Co. Withings, Google Inc. Glow (Glow Inc.) Ovia Health("Vagaroist") Story Princess.

# 2: Identify Key Features

From the results of your market research, decide what functions your app should have. What needs to be done now is crystallizing the required features; choose those which best conform with your goals.

# 3: Monetization Strategies

Considering the opportunity to monetize women's health tracking apps, it all hinges on:

• In-app purchases: Offer a premium version with features such as custom profiles, direct communication with healthcare professionals and a totally free experience without any ads.
• In-app advertising: Add ads to your app. But keep in mind their frequency, where they're placed and how long they run in order to avoid user frustration.
• Pay app: If your app provides an unmatchable service, consider offering it as a paying app - especially on iOS, where revenues of such kind are higher.

# 4: Assemble Your Team

To ensure the success of your initiative, hire skilled professionals for building a women's health application. Your team should include:

• Business Analyst
• Project Manager
• Android/iOS App Developers
• Backend and Frontend Developers
• UI/UX Designer
• Copywriter
• Tester

# 5: Develop an MVP

Now that your team is in place, focus on developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as part of the process on how to develop an app for women's health. This step allows you to study market interest without spending too much time and money on every detail and will eventually teach you what femtech product features are most important. Keep in mind that visual design is essential for getting user involvement.

In calculating the development cost of fitness app, namely a women’s health app, we considered an average hourly rate of $50 for the team's work.

Consequently, women's health app development cost is estimated to range from $40,000 to $60,000.

💡 Takeaways: Female Health Tracking App

Women’s health apps cover a lot of health aspects and are of good use for women on a daily basis. However, medical attention and regular check-ups at the doctor's office are essential.

Therefore, the app you develop can be presented rather as a helpful part of one’s healthcare routine that allows tracking and predicting periods to be more prepared, capturing body changes to describe them to a doctor in detail, and so on.

Our team would like to also thank you for being willing to contribute to the femtech and well-being app development industry since it has been taboo for too many centuries, and we need to try to make the life of women easier & safer!

If you need any help with the women's health tracking app development, have questions left or want to contact us for any other reason, feel free to reach out. We’d be happy to help you!