Smart Tampon Tells Women When It's Time To Change
BERKELEY (CBS SF) -- There are apps to monitor your heart rate, count how many steps you take, even track your sleep. Now there is an app that monitors a woman's menstrual cycle and can tell her when its time to remove her tampon.
A new startup called my.Flow has created the world's first tampon monitor that promises to eliminate the monthly issues of stained clothing and mad dashes to the ladies' restroom. According to Endgadget, co-founder and CEO Amanda Brief came up with the idea as part of a graduate engineering class at University of California, Berkeley.
"Some women know their flow well, which is awesome," Brief said in an interview with Refinery 29. "Our product is for those that do not, or would like to learn and track more."
My.Flow works via a key fob-sized Bluetooth-enabled monitor that attaches to the string of the tampon. Once inserted, the monitor transmits data to a smartphone app and sends a text to the wearer when the tampon is full. Notification times can be set up to send a message at any time -- well before saturation reaches 100%.
The app also tracks the frequency, length and level of a woman's menstrual flow and creates statistics using daily and monthly data.
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The my.Flow team hopes to launch in 2017. The sensor will cost about $49 and packs of tampons will be sold online at about $13.
