Is this really a reliable birth control method though?
My wife and I use NFP. This is actually the slickest app I've ever seen.
It's pretty reliable if you want to use it for birth control, provided the woman has at least somewhat regular cycles. Even with irregular cycles, there's useful information that can be gleaned from cervical mucus and basal body temperature.
It's probably not for people who absolutely cannot tolerate one or two "surprise" children, but it will at least prevent you from becoming the Duggars if that's not your thing.
The CDC has an information sheet about the effectiveness of different methods of contraception[1] which cite on the order of 18 pregnancies a year for these methods. Interestingly, newer fertility-awareness methods appear to be more effective than this estimate[2].
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/UnintendedPregnancy/PD...
[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0015028204...
But I'm wondering: What's the business model you have?
I'm asking, because I'm in the same space. Mostly in Germany, but I also have an app for the English-speaking population: http://mynfp.net/
It costs 5.99$ and it's certainly nothing I can live from alone. However, the app is just an "appendix" to my SaaS business which is the same thing, but bigger and better, which generates revenue to be sunstainable in the long term.
You can thank the religious people for continuing to develop the science over the decades when the world went absolutely bananas for the pill.
And it was religious people who continued fundamental research?
Very interesting! And not what I've seen in other cases. I'm happy to have my stereotypes challenged.
There are a few more people in this space, especially in the app market. Recently, "Glow" was released, which is more aimed towards women who want to conceive, but they might go into the birth control segment. Although I think they will fail with their current product in this market.
There's Clue (helloclue.com); Ovuline; TrueCycle (seems to be dead?); and all the gibberish period calendar apps.
Despite the ridiculous nature of some of the products in the sexual health niche (ie "Ejaculoid"), there are indeed several vitamins and supplements that promote increased sperm volume and sperm mobility for men. I haven't personally looked into the women's side, however.
It wouldn't be a huge form of monetization, but it's extremely well-targeted and ethical (since we send users to good deals). It could help with a piece of the pie instead of standard advertising.
I see mentions of "But it's 1.8% failure rate!" - thing about Cumulative Probability is, that is a pretty high number of failure after about 10 years.
After 10 years you have a Cumulative Probability: P(X = 1) of about 15% of getting pregnant.
If you don't want to be a dad/mom - use a condom. Or go double dutch.
"Of 100 couples who use the symptothermal method correctly for one year, 0.4 (fewer than one) will have a pregnancy." (Source: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control...)
So after about 100 years of using this method, you've got a .4% chance of becoming pregnant. Seems like decent odds to me.
No, after one year you've got a 0.4% chance of being pregnant. Assuming this stays steady over 100 years, you'd have a 33% chance of being pregnant (1 - (0.996 ^ 100))
Their maths for a 1.8% failure rate over 10 years is right, it's about 15%.
1. The same logic must be applied to condoms. They have a failure rate of 0.6 - 12% per year, depending on the study.
2. You mix perfect-use with imperfect-use. Even sterilization doesn't have a 0% failure rate, because sometimes things don't work out properly. The perfect-use index of sterilization should be 100% safety, but in reality, it's 99.9% I think.
Or the NuvaRing. Low hormone, can't forget it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_met...
EDIT: posted the wrong link before...sorry =)
A: A mother.
As a tool to help you get pregnant, awesome, kudos, very well done.
Promoting it for birth control? Not very clever.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control...
Planned Parenthood lists an effectiveness of 99.6% (see the "What is the Sympto-thermal Method" section: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control...
It's still a bad idea for most people.
All from the same Planned Parenthood site:
Twenty-four out of every 100 couples who use fertility awareness-based methods each year will have a pregnancy if they don't always use the method correctly or consistently.
whereas:
Vasectomy is the most effective birth control for men. It is nearly 100 percent effective.
and
Less than 1 out of 100 women will get pregnant each year if they use an IUD.
---
I want to control my systems. I have many choices: Puppet, Chef, cfengine, writing my own system... you're offering me a system that requires maintenance every single day, I can't pay someone else to do it for me, and if I screw up, it's 76% likely that I won't have unintended consequences. But there are a bunch of other systems on the market where I configure them once and they work for years without attention, and even systems where I just have to be picky when I'm conducting operations, not every single day.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control...
99.6% is the method-effectiveness (i.e. the efficacy if used properly) or 0.4 unintended pregnancies per 100 "women years" (13 cycles)
Other interesting results from the study: - the method-effectiveness rate found for this method is comparable to oral contraceptive - 9.2% stopped using the method due to dissatisfaction - Couples that had intercourse during the fertile period had an increased pregnancy rate of 7.5% - This study was done in European countries and the pregnancy rate was lower than similar studies performed in developing countries
It's a fertility tracking app. There are dozens of those.
When I see "{physical thing} as a service", I expect some sort of monthly fulfillment service, like Dollar Shave Club.
Also, you may want to get added to this list: http://contraception.about.com/od/naturalmethods/tp/fertilit...
"Get pregnant easily" is not something you should be advertising. There are tons of reasons why someone can have trouble getting pregnant that are completely external to your app. Just a heads up.
