Natural Cycles integrates with Apple Watch – WWD

The FDA-approved Natural Cycles contraceptive platform can now be integrated into the Apple Watch.

The birth control brand analyzes a user’s daily body temperature to determine their fertility status. Instead of taking their temperature orally, users can now rely on their Apple Watch. Apple added temperature sensors to its watch last September.

“When I started Natural Cycles in its first year, a lot of people, including myself, said, ‘Oh, if the Apple Watch only had a temperature sensor,’ then we wouldn’t have to measure in its mouth,” said Natural Cycles co-founder and CEO Elina Berglund.

According to Berglund, when Apple announced it would be incorporating the temperature sensor into its watch, inquiries poured in from Natural Cycles users.

“This became our top request from our users, so we started collecting data and conducting clinical trials to validate it and submitted it to the FDA, which approved it a few weeks ago,” she told WWD.

During the clinical evaluation, Natural Cycles, which raised $7 million from Samsung Ventures in February, analyzed 272 women and 505 complete menstrual cycles. As with an oral thermometer and the Oura ring, Natural Cycles found that using the Apple Watch was 93 percent effective at preventing pregnancy with “typical use” and 98 percent effectiveness with “perfect use”.

When a user wears an Apple Watch and uses Natural Cycles, it allows Apple Health to track temperature, which can then be synced to the Natural Cycles app, making the process more convenient.

“What’s really changing is the ease of use,” Berglund said. “It’s just easier to sleep with it than to remember to do something first when you wake up in the morning.”

Before integrating with Apple, Natural Cycles also worked with Oura. Through this integration, temperatures are recorded via the Oura ring. According to Berglund, the number of days that temperature is recorded is numerically higher for those who use the Oura ring than for those who measure their own temperature. Although this is the case, Berglund doesn’t believe the brand’s use of thermometers will ever stop.

“Women are different and want to have the choice of what suits them. That’s why I think we will always have women using the thermometer,” she said.

Based on the success of the Oura partnership and requests for Apple integration, Berglund expects wearables to continue to drive business and potentially help attract new customers who haven’t yet tried the brand because they don’t use it on a daily basis want to measure temperature.

“We expect it to be big, and we expect demand to be very high because we see how often we get the request that users want to use Natural Cycles with their Apple Watch because we “We know that so many women out there already have an Apple Watch, including many of our existing users today,” she said.

The brand, which almost doubled its subscription sales between August 2022 and August 2023 (subscriptions cost $99 per year), plans to collaborate with more wearable brands in the future.

“It seems like more and more wearables are having temperature sensing capabilities, which is great for us,” Berglund said. “We want to provide integration with the biggest players out there.”