Fertility awareness-based mobile application for contraception

OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to retrospectively evaluate the effectiveness of a fertility awareness-based method supported by a mobile-based application to prevent unwanted pregnancies as a method of natural birth control. METHODS In a retrospective analysis, the application's efficiency as a contraceptive method was examined on data from 4054 women who used the application as contraception for a total of 2085 woman-years. RESULTS The number of identified unplanned pregnancies was 143 during 2053 woman-years, giving a Pearl Index of 7.0 for typical use. Ten of the pregnancies were due to the application falsely attributing a safe day within the fertile window, producing a perfect-use Pearl Index of 0.5. Calculating the cumulative pregnancy probability by life-table analysis resulted in a pregnancy rate of 7.5% per year (95% confidence interval 5.9%, 9.1% per year). CONCLUSIONS The application appears to improve the effectiveness of fertility awareness-based methods and can be used to prevent pregnancies if couples consistently protect themselves on fertile days.