Maven Clinic Launches Cycle Tracker and Male Fertility Tools

Maven Clinic, a virtual provider for women and families, unveiled a menstrual cycle tracker and male fertility tools on Tuesday to help people get pregnant quicker.

New York City-based Maven Clinic offers support for fertility, maternity, parenting, menopause and other areas. It works with more than 2,000 health plans and employers across 175 countries, including Amazon, Microsoft and AT&T.

The cycle tracker will become available for Maven members in the Fertility and Family Building program in the fall. The tracker will be in the Maven app and members will be able to sync their data from devices like the Apple Watch. It learns each member’s cycle and provides personalized predictions. It can also identify possible irregularities in a woman’s menstrual cycle and provide guidance, including when to conceive or receive care.

In addition, members using the cycle tracker have access to OB-GYNs, fertility awareness educators and fertility care coaches to help them understand their fertility.

This kind of support is necessary considering about 40% of women don’t fully understand how ovulation impacts fertility and a quarter battle irregular cycles. There are many existing cycle trackers, but they aren’t always paired with clinical support, according to Dr. Neel Shah, chief medical officer of Maven Clinic.

“A lot of the existing ways of tracking fertility cycles, whether it’s with a wearable or with an app on your phone, they kind of dead end on you,” he said. “They use these generic formulas and then say that you have an irregular cycle or something. It’s like, then what? What we really try to do is plug it into the rest of our care model, and particularly having a care team and having clinicians that can be readily accessed in the same place, so you’re getting the complete picture.”

Shah declined to name other cycle trackers, but some include Flo Health and the Clue app.

Maven also anounced that it is now offering at-home semen analysis kits to help men understand their fertility as well. Members can connect with fertility specialists and men’s health experts to go over the results of their analysis kits and receive advice on how to improve their fertility.

“Fertility is often thought of as, are you fertile or are you infertile? But that’s not really how it works,” Shah said. “Either you’re more fertile or less fertile, and men can totally change their sperm quality just by [steps like] not eating donuts, avoiding processed carbs. … Men are curious about their sperm. They also actually want to help [and] they don’t want to leave their female partners in the lurch.”

Data shows that male factors account for about half of all infertility cases, yet fertility is often considered a women’s issue. According to research from Maven Clinic, more than half of men wish they’d tested their semen earlier and 39% said they avoided it because it feels awkward or inconvenient. Several other companies are also providing male fertility support, including Posterity Health and Legacy.

To track the success of the new cycle tracking and male fertility tools, the company is following engagement with the tools, as well as natural conception rates, according to Shah.

These kinds of tools can also be highly valuable for employers, he added.

“At the end of the day, it’s really hard to build a family and be a working parent at the same time,” Shah said. “And so anything that you can do to make that easier for people makes a really big difference if you’re an employer. We also see it in terms of not just the hard clinical outcomes, but also business outcomes. People see less absenteeism [and] more productivity.”