Review: Health Tracker for Women
May 26, 2009
OVERVIEW
It used to be that the most effective devices a woman had for recording various health issues was a calendar and a pen. However as technology has improved, women now have various gadgets and applications to not only track her cycles but also predict when her next cycle will be. Health Tracker for Women takes this tracking concept and attempts to expand on that, including more health related predictions based on a woman’s menstrual cycle.FEATURES
Menstrual & Fertility Forecasting Upon initialization, the Health Tracker for Women asks the user to input information about her periods, similiar to what you would expect at the doctor’s office: When was your last period? How long do your cycles last? How regular are they? There are also some other questions including birthday, height/weight and blood type. Skin, Sex Drive, Weight Loss Forecasting Based on your menstrual cycle, the Health Tracker will also predict various health conditions as well as give tips on how to cope. This includes “Skin Beauty) or skin condition (dry, oily, etc.); “Diet Effect” or the predicted effectiveness diet and exercise will have; and “Sexual Allure” or libido.BREAKDOWN
The Good
The Health Tracker offers several things that similar apps do not offer, such as forecasting skin condition, sex drive and how effective weight loss methods will be during certain points of a woman’s cycle. Based on the entered menstrual cycle information, it shows graphs for things like basal body temperature.
The Bad
Health Tracker offers menstrual and fertility forecasting not tracking as the app name would imply. There is no inputting or updating information past the original information in the settings. The settings function does allow you to specify if you are irregular but does not allow you to input any information to compensate for that irregularity.
The limited tracking aspect of this app, along with the inability to account for other variables in a woman’s cycle make the cycle prediction questionable. While being able to predict when and how long a cycle will start, not being able to track and update that information makes the forecasting useless to a woman whose cycle is even the slightest bit irregular.
The fact that all the other forecasting features are dependent on a singular point seems to be flawed. For instance, it is nice to have a skin care predictor but every woman’s skin is different. The same part of one woman’s cycle that leaves her prone to breakouts may be another woman’s “good” skin day. It just doesn’t work.
