Tampons. Do You Need An App For That?
by KYW tech editor Ian Bush
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- There are apps that help a woman keep track of her menstrual cycle -- but this latest one goes a step further. It's connected to a smart tampon.
Some might say a tampon is smart enough already, thank you very much.
"A lot of managing someone's menstrual cycle really comes down to common sense and experience," says Dana Wollman, managing editor at Engadget. She was invited to take a look at the innovation called My.Flow, and wrote about it for the tech site.
"It looks like the sort of tampon you'd buy from the drugstore, except that it has this very long, insulated string that connects to a physical sensor that I clip onto my waistband or put inside my clothing where people can't see it," Wollman explains.
It monitors how saturated the tampon becomes, updating the app over Bluetooth.
"It gives a woman an idea of when she should remove it," Wollman says. "The two goals being to avoid embarrassing leaks, and also to avoid toxic shock syndrome."
The reviewer's verdict?
"It's sort of comical to me, as a woman, that you would need an app to regulate some of this stuff," she says.
But Wollman calls it a well-intentioned idea, born at a woman-run startup and seeking to help women while de-stigmatizing menstruation.
