Audrey Tsang is the CEO of the app Clue. You might be wondering what Clue is, but over 10 million people in more than 190 countries use it religiously to track their periods. Clue is a trailblazer in menstrual health and femtech.
My Wildest Prediction is a podcast series from Euronews Business where we dare to imagine the future with business and tech visionaries. In this episode, Tom Goodwin talks with Audrey Tsang, CEO of Clue, about the future of health tech and femtech.
Clue, the app challenging the gender health gap
TV commercials for reusable pads opting for blue dye instead of red liquid. Mysterious expressions like It’s my time of the month, Ho le mie cose, (I have my things, in Italian), or Je suis dans ma semaine rouge, (I am in my red week, in French).
These are just some of the examples highlighting the ongoing taboo surrounding menstruation, a natural and healthy part of the life of 1.8 billion people, still highly stigmatised in our society.
And this issue transcends mere communication. According to data from the McKinsey Company, less than 2% of healthcare research and innovation is invested in female-specific conditions beyond cancer.
To bridge this gender health gap, in 2012, Ida Tin, Hans Raffauf, Moritz von Buttlar and Mike LaVigne founded Clue, an app designed to help women track their menstrual cycles, gain deeper insights into their bodies, and effectively address related concerns.
Today, Clue is available in 20 languages, has over 10 million users in more than 190 countries and is run by Audrey Tsang, CEO of the company.
Joining Euronews Business’s podcast, Tsang explained that Clue is an empowering tool for women and summed up the future scope of her company in her wildest prediction: “We will soon be our own best doctors”.
Technology, an empowering tool for women’s health
“Clue it’s a companion,” CEO Audrey Tsang explained. “It’s an app for all the changes and the choices from your first period to your last,” she continued.
Initially launched as a period-tracking app providing its users with a calendar of their menstrual cycle, Clue now offers a much wider and more detailed range of features. Users can upload their pains, moods, and sex drives to the app and use this data to better understand their bodies and act accordingly.
“I can identify patterns in my experiences,” Tsang said. “For instance, I can see that I am more sensitive to migraines around ovulation, or that I have more trouble sleeping right before my period. I can learn about my body and feel empowered to make a lifestyle change, like relax more, go to bed earlier,” she continued.
In addition to increasing people’s knowledge of their bodies, data gathered by Clue can also assist individuals in obtaining long-awaited diagnoses, such as those regarding understudied diseases like endometriosis.
Talking about a survey conducted by the company with its users, Audrey Tsang explained: “30% of the women that reported having a painful period, said that tracking the symptoms and showing them to their doctors helped them get a diagnosis”.
Given the knowledge that technological tools like Clue can provide people with, Audrey Tsang believes that individuals will become their own best doctors: “We’re going to see a fundamental change in the engagement level of the patient. When we talk about being a doctor, it’s going to change the way the patient engages with their health”.
