For decades, women’s health information has been fragmented and inconsistent. Many people have struggled to understand the signals their bodies send—whether that’s subtle changes in mood, fertility patterns, or the early signs of conditions like PCOS. The Flo App is helping to change that reality by providing medically reviewed educational content and tools that give people the understanding and confidence to take charge of their own well-being.
Bridging the Health Information Gap
Flo began as a menstrual tracker, but its scope now spans fertility, pregnancy, perimenopause, and general wellness. Within the app, users can log symptoms, read evidence-based articles, and access various educational features.
The app’s educational content is created and reviewed by Flo’s medical team and medical board, which includes over 100 medical professionals, ensuring its accuracy and relevance. All content review is conducted strictly by medical doctors from the in-house Medical Accuracy team and medical board members. Separately, Flo’s science team conducts original, peer-reviewed research studies that validate new product features and explore women’s health topics like reproductive health, symptom trends, and digital health literacy. When Flo conducts these studies, findings are published in scientific journals and made accessible to the broader research community. The content within the app draws on both Flo’s own research and the wider body of peer-reviewed literature, providing users with reliable, science-backed guidance.
Flo has published research showing improvements in health knowledge among app users. For example, a 2023 study published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth found that 88.98% of participants reported improvements in menstrual cycle knowledge from using the Flo app (Characterization of Self-reported Improvements in Knowledge and Health Among Users of Flo Period Tracking App: Cross-sectional Survey). This demonstrates the potential for digital tools to address health education gaps.
Turning Knowledge into Action
The Flo App provides tools and information that help users better understand their health patterns. Users can track various symptoms and health indicators, potentially identifying patterns that warrant discussion with healthcare providers.
The app’s educational content encompasses a range of reproductive health topics. Users are encouraged to use the app’s insights as a starting point for conversations with their healthcare providers.
Built on Scientific Integrity and Privacy
Flo maintains high standards across multiple domains:
Medical Accuracy: Every health article is backed by scientific evidence from peer-reviewed studies. The team of medical advisors (both in-house and external) ensures content accuracy. While some content may reference Flo’s own research, most health information draws from the broader scientific literature.
Privacy Protection: The privacy team ensures that all data handling meets international privacy standards. Individual user data cannot be traced back to a person, maintaining user confidentiality.
Scientific Integrity: When Flo conducts research, studies adhere to scientific good practice, including obtaining participant consent, securing ethical approval as necessary, and undergoing peer review. Independent experts review all research before it is published.
These separate but complementary functions ensure that Flo operates as both a trusted consumer app and a contributor to scientific literature when conducting formal research studies.
Broader Public Health Impact
With its global user base, Flo has the potential to contribute to public health understanding through properly conducted research studies. In regions with limited access to women’s health specialists, the app serves as a convenient, evidence-based resource. Flo’s research in low- and middle-income countries has demonstrated improvements in menstrual health knowledge, suggesting digital tools can help address healthcare gaps.
Looking Ahead
Unique among health apps, Flo maintains dedicated teams for both medical accuracy and scientific research. The science team, comprising five core members plus science board members, leads formal studies on women’s health issues, with support from medical team members as needed.
A 2024 study published in JMIR Formative Research found that Flo’s symptom checker achieved 78% accuracy for PCOS, 73% for endometriosis, and 75% for uterine fibroids. This division of expertise ensures that while medical professionals focus on content accuracy and clinical guidance, the science team can concentrate on conducting rigorous research that advances understanding of women’s health. (Exploring Self-Reported Symptoms for Developing and Evaluating Digital Symptom Checkers for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, Endometriosis, and Uterine Fibroids: Exploratory Survey Study)
Supporting teams within Flo Health bring this science to life: the product team builds new features, the localization team ensures content reaches users in multiple languages, and the medical team oversees ongoing clinical review of all materials.
Future research will be shaped by scientific merit and potential impact—but whatever the topic, all studies and new features will continue to meet Flo’s rigorous standards for accuracy and ethical integrity.
At a time when misinformation in women’s health is widespread, Flo has quietly built one of the largest dedicated scientific research teams inside a consumer health company. By combining peer-reviewed science with a trusted digital platform, Flo empowers individuals to better understand their bodies—while contributing meaningful insights to the global scientific community. What began as a simple period tracker has become a scientific engine advancing both personal health literacy and broader medical understanding.
