Apple promised an expansive health app, so why can't I track menstruation?

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Apple’s HealthKit can help you keep track of your blood alcohol content. If you’re still growing, it’ll track your height. And if you have an inhaler, it'll help you track how often you use it. You can even use it to input your sodium intake, because "with Health, you can monitor all of your metrics that you’re most interested in," said Apple Software executive Craig Federighi back in June. And yet, of all the crazy stuff you can do with the Health app, Apple somehow managed to omit a woman’s menstrual cycle.

In short, if you’re a human who menstruates and owns an iPhone, you’re shit out of luck.

"We've seen a lot of conversation in our user community and on Twitter wondering why period tracking isn't part of it right away," said Lisa Kennelly, Marketing Community Manager for Clue, a popular period and fertility tracking iOS app, in an email to The Verge. Thanks to smartphones, period and fertility tracking apps have become part of many women's lives. "It's a Quantified Self practice that a vast number of women do," Kennelly said. But "maybe it's not as well known about yet on the tech and development side of things. We're trying to change that!"

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Apple’s first diversity report did show that the company is mostly white and male. So it’s likely that menstrual cycles just aren’t a concern for a majority of the company’s employees. But that shouldn't be an excuse. Apple undoubtedly spoke to a number of physicians when it created its app — the company has boasted of its partnership with the Mayo Clinic, for instance — and it still failed to include what is arguably one of the most basic metrics of human existence.

After all, women have kept track of their periods for centuries. Today, people who menstruate still make note of their period as a fertility or contraceptive method. And regardless of a woman’s feelings toward pregnancy, it’s not uncommon for a doctor to ask about flow and regularity. That makes a lot of sense: menstruation is a health issue.

The fact that it's also a women's issue isn't grounds for dismissal.

"Once reproductive health is part of Healthkit, we would love to integrate with it," Kennelly said. That integration would include metrics like average cycle length, average period length, pains, symptoms, and ovulation day. Already, she said, the company has developed an app update that, pending Apple’s approval, will integrate with Healthkit via Clue’s basal body temperature tracking feature. But those other health metrics? They’ll have to wait.

Credit: Clue

When it comes right down to it, most smartphone-carrying women want an app that will notify them before they end up with a blood stain on their jeans. That alone is nothing short of revolutionary. And although apps that can do that already exist (check out Clue and Period Tracker), having all your health metrics in a single app — perhaps one named "Health" — seems pretty standard.

So, is it really too much to ask to that Apple treat women, and their health, with as much care as they've treated humanity’s sodium intake?

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Comments

Wow. Surprised this isn’t there… I mean, also not surprised, but seriously, do better, people.

By eadnams on 09.25.14 12:58pm

I don’t understand the TL;DR tag on these articles. Is there supposed to be a tl;dr at the end of the article or something, or is this The Verge’s thing of useless article tagging?

By ReallySkeptical on 09.25.14 1:01pm

I thought it was supposed to mean the article was short and likely just a summary of something else.

By TechJesus on 09.25.14 1:12pm

I love that it means I get more stories to read on The Verge.

By MyWalnutIsATemple on 09.25.14 1:37pm

I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple thought it’s "inappropriate".

By kirko7 on 09.25.14 1:13pm

I would.. that wouldn’t make sense at all.. especially if BAC is in there.

By TK-093 on 09.25.14 2:20pm

The US is relatively prude and therefore so is Apple (but then in relative extremes). It’s one of major reasons why Apple’s (app) policies are heavily criticized here in Europe.

By Bl.zz on 09.25.14 4:20pm

Most women I know track their periods in their day planner/calendar. Perhaps apple just assumed the calendar would be used for that. But a quick trip to their own app store would reveal the obvious use case/demand for tracking this information.

By quantumaspect on 09.25.14 11:58pm

Yes, unfortunately, Apple is fully guilty of instilling hypocritical false morals about sex and nudity and everything that even remotely concerns that. I think any bans of those topics are outrageous.

You could buy applications in App Store where you have to beat and kill people and it is fine according to Apple, but you can not see breasts. 8|

By DERSS on 09.25.14 4:44pm

The age old violence is fine but sex isn’t.

I’m seriously OK with having porn on daytime TV to replace all the gratuitous fighting.

By dsp4 on 09.25.14 8:25pm

Yeah I’m gonna go with that’s a bit extreme

By _Kubes on 09.25.14 9:08pm

Why it is extreme?

There is nothing immoral or otherwise dangerous in porn. It is totally opposite to violence.

By DERSS on 09.26.14 3:19am

You know surprisingly little about the porn industry it seems. There is far more real violence there than there will ever be behind the fake violence in apps. Setting aside whether we are overly prudish or whether violence in gaming is out of hand, the notion that porn is "totally opposite to violence" is hopelessly misinformed.

You should also look up "immoral" in a dictionary.

By TXCiclista on 09.26.14 9:17am

You know surprisingly little about the porn industry it seems. People are professionally cared and not abused in any way.

And there is nothing "immoral" in the porn. Do not confuse religious dogmas with common humanistic morals where "immoral" things are only those where there is harm.

By DERSS on 09.26.14 6:33pm

People are professionally cared and not abused in any way.

Nope. Most women are used like tissues and then disposed off. There are countless horror stories.

And there is nothing "immoral" in the porn.

In porn, most women are treated as a sexual object which pretty much falls under the definition of "immoral".

By Lumiafied on 09.30.14 8:09am

Why though? That’s such a strange sentiment when you think a bit deeper beyond the taboos that you have been taught. There’s nothing (or at most not much) wrong with (consensual) sex. There’s a lot more wrong with violence.

A society where the balance of sex:violence would be skewed the other way would be way different from what we have now, but it would be way better in the sense of less people getting hurt and probably a lot of people being a lot more healthy (sex is good for you in many ways).

Another random point I’d like to add: for my job I’ve created e-learning courses regarding forensics. We have cases that involve murder and cases that involve rape. The ones with rape always get a much harder reaction. Why? Anything you can say about the rape victim is true about the murder victim, except that the latter is dead. We have been so desensitised to violence that the other parts of rape (sexual and psychological damage) make it rate higher on our oh-god-no scale than freaking murder.

TLDR: as a species, our view of sex vs. violence is thoroughly fucked up.

By GriffinSauce on 09.26.14 3:31am

And this is how the cash cow spinoff that is "SVU" came to be.

By PlayDrv4Me on 09.26.14 3:34am

They probably did.

And when guys on this site and the internet at whole say "there’s no need to have equality at these tech companies, "why should they be forced to just hire women, blacks, Hispanics etc"…well this is kinda why.

Does anyone really think that if Apple’s management and development teams didn’t have more women this wouldn’t be included?Does anyone think that if there were more women involved in apples management and development teams, this would even be an issue?

Kinda makes me wonder if ANY of the guys there have ever had a girlfriend or wife

By simbadogg on 09.25.14 10:50pm

Why on earth do people think that Apple is trying to replace the hundreds of other apps that let women track their menstruation? HealthKit is supposed to be a set of APIs and a framework that allow apps to store/track health data from a multitude of resources, no?

By InAGaddaDaVida on 09.25.14 11:40pm

Apple who constantly supports equality? It should surprise you if they found it inappropriate.

By xstex-old on 09.26.14 8:53am

I’m even not surprised. I mean Steve Jobs didn’t menstruate, so Apple doesn’t need to make a menstruation tracker.

By AslanFatih92 on 09.25.14 2:06pm

Steve Jobs didn’t like "big" phones either…

By legitimatebusinessman on 09.26.14 6:53pm

What a moronic statement. How many times did you complain about a lack of built in menstruation tracking before this article? When did the thought even occur to you? You know it’s zero.

Cue continued false, fake outrage.

By Slurpy on 09.27.14 11:27pm

They will probably release and update with such a feature in the future, probably should have been there from the start.. but yeah, be patient people ;)

By Aleksander Hoff on 09.26.14 8:06pm

That is an oversight. But I’m sure it will be rectified.

By Phawx on 09.25.14 12:59pm

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