[tropo]

That $.5 notepad can handle all 3 of your talking points, and it comes with privacy. (read the recent HackerNews article about DNA info being secretly shared if you can't see the problem)

Getting fancy, you can buy nice charts with colorful status stickers. Minus the stickers, you can print the charts on any printer. All of this is private.

[todayiamme]

No, it can't. And you're missing the point of why we're doing this. Such kind of tracking is powerful not because it helps you keep track of what happened, but what could happen. There are patterns that humans can't easily discern that correlate with everything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis --- detecting the problem early on, gives people a better, longer life in the long run, and prevents potentially fatal complications in the case of pregnancy.

What you're saying is exactly like a logistics company saying - why should we enter our logs into this computer? What's the point? A pen and paper seem to work just fine... We all know how that story turned out. This story is playing out with women's lives instead of efficiency points/dollars in the global economy (though at some level it does map to do that as well), and real people are suffering as a result. They deserve better.

[tropo]

I think you are being dismissive of a solution that you can't datamine. The privacy violation is real, unless you made an app without any kind of network permissions.

Hint for those watching: HIPPA doesn't apply to self-gathered self-entered data, and there are many (insurance companies, drug companies, diaper services...) who would love to know this data.

[icebraining]

There are patterns that humans can't easily discern that correlate with everything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis

That's the thing: us from the outside don't know this (particularly men, but I'm guessing many women as well). But we do know that over-engineering is an endemic problem in our industry, including in the healthcare area. So the question seems fair, because we don't want to see people's health being exploited by selling them useless stuff. Because those abound. It's always the makers/sellers' job to show that their thing is useful.

A pen and paper seem to work just fine... We all know how that story turned out.

No, not all of us know. People - even those in the logistics space - still ask that question today. As someone who helped develop such solutions, educating people was part and parcel of our business.

[nostrademons]

There's a math error even assuming your premise is true. There are 3.75 billion women on this world. Even limiting it to women with smartphones, there are over a billion of them. If each of them is currently spending $0.50 on a notepad (again, we're assuming your premise is true even though it's not), that's a $500M market. Not bad.

[Impossible]

It's recurring revenue also. Eventually all of them will run out of space in the notepad and have to buy a new one. It might take years if you assume a page a month but maybe with clever marketing you can get some percentage of users to upgrade to luxury $5 notepads. That's 10x revenue per user!

[bsder]

> That $.5 notepad can handle all 3 of your talking points, and it comes with privacy.

Except that notepad can't tell you in semi-real time what is going on.

A proper tracker can tell when "Hey, this period is likely to be short." or "Yo, go get checked, something is very weird."

[acheron]

And then sell that data to your insurance company.