For Endometriosis Consciousness Month, NewsMedical interviewed Audrey Tsang, CEO of Clue, a world-leading menstrual monitoring app internet hosting over 10 million customers from greater than 190 nations.
With a background spanning stints with tech giants and a transition into femtech, Audrey shares her insights into how expertise can bridge the hole in ladies’s healthcare, with a specific emphasis on addressing circumstances like endometriosis. Our dialog focuses on the challenges and breakthroughs in growing a well being app that empowers ladies globally, reflecting on Audrey’s journey and the way forward for femtech.
Please may you share a bit about your private journey that led you from roles at Pinterest and HotelTonight to main Clue? How do your previous experiences form your strategy to product improvement and management inside a feminine health-focused app?
Earlier than becoming a member of Clue, I spent over a decade main merchandise and groups throughout shopper tech in Silicon Valley. With a background in Pc Science, Human Pc Interplay, and Design Considering, I cherished taking a user-centric strategy to constructing expertise that folks would use and love utilizing.
About six years in the past, I noticed that shopper tech firms had tapped into an unimaginable capacity to interact folks – getting them to spend extra time scrolling and, subsequently, more cash on their merchandise. I wished to make use of that very same capacity to interact folks with their very own well being – making a constructive influence.
I used to be particularly thinking about ladies’s well being, because it was, and nonetheless is, grossly underserved, held again by taboo and stigma, and dismissed by healthcare techniques and society. For somebody navigating the feminine well being journey, this has resulted in an unlimited well being hole and years of invisible and pointless struggling.
Once I met Ida Tin, co-founder of Clue, I noticed an organization with a giant imaginative and prescient to interrupt this unacceptable, and unequal, established order. I consider that range and new views drive innovation. With a various workforce primarily based in Berlin, Clue was already a gorgeous instance of innovation. It was Ida’s imaginative and prescient to vary how the world seen and supported feminine well being, and seeing that imaginative and prescient play out on the Clue headquarters in Berlin impressed me to hitch the workforce.
My first three years at Clue have been spent main the product improvement operations – first as VP of Product, after which as CPO. The time I spent on the product facet is important in the present day, in my present function as CEO. Clue is a customer-centric firm; each choice we make is with our customers’ greatest pursuits at coronary heart. As a result of I perceive the product and the way it’s constructed, I’ve an understanding of how we are able to iterate and enhance to satisfy person wants.
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What have been a few of the most vital challenges you’ve got confronted within the femtech house, notably in growing and scaling well being apps like Clue? How do you navigate these challenges?
Simply as ladies and other people with cycles expertise taboo or have their well being dismissed, the femtech business, and the startups in it, additionally face steady taboo and dismissal.
Regardless of addressing a market of 1.9 billion folks with cycles around the globe, the femtech business is commonly ignored as a “area of interest” market or a “way of life” enterprise. Fundraising can really feel like giving a primer on reproductive well being fairly than pitching a enterprise.
Overcoming this bias was one of many causes that Ida, our co-founder, coined the time period “Femtech” in 2016. Much like Fintech or Proptech, Femtech describes expertise centered on feminine well being. Giving this class a reputation that likened it to finance apps as an alternative of female hygiene merchandise helped to validate and enhance curiosity available in the market. On high of that, it introduced collectively a startup ecosystem centered on fixing issues on this house to change concepts and drive innovation.
A lot of the ladies’s well being journey in the present day is seen as non-compulsory or as a luxurious. Power ache or perimenopausal signs could be seen as “only a unhealthy interval”, which in the end interprets to not reimbursable within the eyes of conventional healthcare.
There’s a hole between what folks residing with these experiences view as a necessity and what their healthcare system views as a necessity. This distinction can depart folks not searching for care – selecting to stay with ache for instance – as a result of remedy and assist feels unavailable or unaffordable.
At Clue, we consider that folks deserve higher. Higher assist and care all through their total menstrual and reproductive well being journey. We additionally consider that this care ought to be inexpensive and accessible. We lament the truth that healthcare techniques don’t but see issues our manner, as a result of in the event that they did, it will make our jobs lots simpler.
So, whereas we might like to make our app totally free, to proceed to sustainably do our work, we’ve got chosen to make extra specialised and superior parts of our app a part of a premium, paid subscription. We selected to do that over different enterprise fashions, like promoting information, primarily based on precept. And we’ve got continued to construct a profitable enterprise, by specializing in constructing the perfect product for our customers, so that they have a spot to get science-based assist and steerage they may not in any other case have.
Clue’s current survey sheds mild on the dire want for higher diagnostic instruments and healthcare supplier schooling concerning endometriosis. Might you talk about any particular initiatives Clue is enterprise to handle these wants? How does Clue’s partnership with researchers intention to fill the gaps in medical analysis on feminine well being?
Well being inequity exists and persists as a result of a lot of the ladies’s well being expertise in the present day is invisible. It’s invisible as a result of we lack the human-centric, structured, and quantifiable information to validate the expertise – an expertise that has traditionally and systemically been ignored, ignored, and even shamed.
With out laborious information, people report that they aren’t taken critically by their healthcare suppliers and the healthcare system, time and time once more. With out laborious information, affected person issues are dismissed, and ladies’s well being is seen as a life-style concern or perhaps a luxurious good. With out laborious information, the size and severity of the disproportionately excessive well being burden skilled in ladies’s well being stays laborious to measure, making a vicious cycle of under-investment and lack of innovation.
However, if we make it seen, by surfacing and quantifying the experiences of girls, we are able to unlock the perception wanted to take motion to enhance the well being inequities. That’s what we intention to do for our customers at Clue. We give our customers a simple and environment friendly technique to stroll into appointments, with their information in hand. As a result of information is perception, and perception is company.
Our customers have reported that taking this information to their healthcare suppliers has enabled them to be taken critically and has probably shortened the time it has taken them to entry analysis and care.
That is why we not too long ago launched our My Well being File function which permits customers to enter their confirmed diagnoses for 21 well being circumstances frequent amongst these with feminine biology – so these with a analysis can assist make clear those that won’t but be identified.
Anonymized information holds actual energy, and we’re regularly exploring methods to make use of this dataset to assist transfer science ahead on these circumstances which have traditionally been under-researched. Now we have partnered with main establishments – together with the College of California at Berkeley, and the College of Exeter – to place our huge datasets to good use and drive actual progress in overcoming the gender analysis, analysis, and well being gaps.
It’s not simply Clue that has the need to create change. Our customers do too. Lots of the individuals who use Clue consider in taking part in, and contributing to, analysis; roughly 80% consent to their anonymized, de-identified information getting used for analysis functions.
By doing so, they’re enjoying an enormous function in serving to to enhance the lives of girls and other people with cycles globally. We’re immensely proud that Clue permits our customers to have such a profound influence.
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Empowering customers by means of cycle and symptom monitoring is a core function of Clue. How do you see this empowerment evolving with developments in expertise and information science? Are you able to share any success tales the place information monitoring considerably impacted a person’s well being journey?
On a person stage, we all know that self-tracking and having the ability to current that information to a healthcare supplier helps make what can in any other case really feel like an invisible and lonely expertise, seen and actionable. As a result of monitoring gives information, that information gives perception, and perception permits company with regards to our well being.
Now we have already seen the function our app has performed in supporting these with endometriosis. Just lately, as a part of Endometriosis Consciousness Month (in March) we requested our customers with endometriosis to share their experiences. 75% of respondents discovered monitoring their signs with Clue to be useful for managing their situation and 50% indicated they discovered Clue useful for gathering information to share with their healthcare supplier.
One survey respondent informed Clue, “Monitoring helps me to validate my expertise to my docs. I can inform them that I’ve information factors exhibiting I expertise each day ache.”
On a collective stage, information improves what we find out about menstrual and reproductive well being and can assist to shut extreme gaps in analysis and care. Endometriosis, which is estimated to have an effect on 10% of girls and other people with cycles globally, is without doubt one of the 21 totally different well being circumstances Clue customers can enter a confirmed analysis for, inside the My Well being File function of the app. Along with their tracked cycle information, these confirmed diagnoses represent one of many largest datasets on this planet matching the lived expertise with diagnoses.
One other instance could be seen within the perimenopause expertise. We surveyed 26,500 respondents, 84% aged 35-45 had not but obtained any info from their healthcare supplier about perimenopause regardless of this age group approaching, or already being in, perimenopause.
In keeping with the Society for Ladies’s Well being Analysis, over one-third of girls in perimenopause should not identified, whereas 20% wait over 12 months earlier than their transition into menopause is formally confirmed by a healthcare supplier. These delays not solely individually have an effect on ladies’s well being and wellbeing, and have a cost-impact on healthcare suppliers, however the financial price to society – from perimenopause and menopause – could be immense.
Clue’s Perimenopause mode was constructed to assist customers going by means of this transition interval to menopause. It options 14 new perimenopause-specific monitoring choices together with scorching flashes, evening sweats, mind fog, HRT, vaginal dryness, and rather more – that means customers can monitor signs in real-time and clearly see how their our bodies are altering.
The insights and information from person monitoring will also be vastly helpful in closing the information hole. Through the use of de-identified, nameless information offered by customers – we’ve got entry to over 15 billion information factors from our 10 million+ international customers – researchers can leverage our person neighborhood to conduct ground-breaking analysis into circumstances akin to perimenopause, closing the information hole and supporting earlier analysis of well being circumstances.
We’re extremely excited to have already got analysis initiatives scoped by researchers from high establishments leveraging this dataset to look at urgent questions round a few of the most typical, misunderstood, and under-diagnosed well being circumstances. A few of the focus areas embody enhancing early diagnostics for circumstances like endometriosis and PMDD, in addition to higher understanding the indicators and signs of perimenopause.
Your press launch mentions centuries of bias and blindspots in medical analysis contributing to circumstances like endometriosis being underserved. As a pacesetter in femtech, how does Clue work to beat these biases inside the healthcare system and in expertise improvement?
If you don’t have information exhibiting that there’s a problem, you consider there may be nothing to resolve. To shut this innovation hole, we have to begin with extra concrete information revealing the gravity of this example. Our outcomes already present the dearth of innovation and R&D, together with the dearth of empathy and understanding of girls’s well being points.
We continually hear from Clue members that they’re bored with their ache being gaslit and that they simply need their well being to be taken critically. Analysis takes longer, remedy takes longer, and consequently, many ladies nonetheless stay in silent, invisible struggling.
In keeping with the current Clue survey I beforehand talked about, an awesome 74% of respondents reported that they really feel, or have felt, like their signs have been dismissed by healthcare suppliers. And that is simply the tip of the iceberg.
The qualitative tales shared are heartbreaking. Years of extreme ache and fear can be utterly dismissed. “I had years of docs telling me it was simply unhealthy interval pains and placing me on contraception with no schooling about methods to cope with signs and flare ups”.
Or infuriatingly: “I used to be usually informed to, ‘Come again once you need to get pregnant.’
We see this identical dismissal at an business stage as effectively. At the moment, solely 4% of conventional biopharma analysis and improvement funding goes into feminine well being circumstances – regardless of ladies spending almost twice as a lot on healthcare as males.
Monitoring as a person with Clue means that you can visualize your well being as structured information. It calls for that healthcare suppliers concentrate primarily based on details not emotions.
And monitoring on a collective stage with Clue, together with person surveys, new options together with My Well being File, and partnerships with main educational establishments are producing anonymized datasets able to producing beneficial insights into underserved circumstances, together with endometriosis.
Trying forward, what are the following large steps for Clue and the femtech business at massive? Are there new applied sciences or methodologies on the horizon that you just consider will remodel how we strategy feminine well being and wellness?
Whereas femtech throughout its early levels centered on monitoring menstrual cycles, at Clue we intention to go ‘past bleeding.’ We give attention to supporting our customers all through their lifetime, from their first cycle to their final, delivering science-based well being monitoring, insights, and content material to assist folks in making extremely personalised choices about their well being.
Past reproductive well being, there is a rising recognition of the interconnectedness between menstrual cycles and general wellbeing. Future iterations of Clue are prone to embody broader elements of well being offering customers with a holistic strategy to well being and wellbeing administration.
As I touched on earlier, femtech apps like ours have already begun to facilitate higher interactions with healthcare suppliers. We all know that throughout the healthcare house, distant monitoring, remedies, and consultations have gotten more and more frequent as an accessible manner for folks to entry healthcare. Clue and different femtech gamers ought to be a part of this wider healthcare ecosystem that empowers people to take proactive steps in managing their well being.
Clue is utilized by thousands and thousands throughout over 190 nations. How do you tailor your app’s options and academic content material to satisfy the various wants and cultural sensitivities of your international person base?
A lot of the feminine well being journey remains to be unsupported in the present day. It’s under-diagnosed, under-treated, and extra usually we’re informed to only “cope with it.” Our mission at Clue is to be the primary place anybody with a cycle turns to, in an effort to take management of their well being. We’re an evidence-based, empathetic companion for the entire adjustments and selections which might be a part of the feminine well being expertise.
Our app begins with interval monitoring, as well being begins with tuning into the physique. We pair this with reliable well being info and personalised insights to empower our customers to know their well being, take motion, make way of life adjustments, or discuss to a healthcare supplier if wanted.
I’m proud that Clue is, and can stay, an inclusive app. From our language to our content material, we’re continually taking steps to make it possible for everybody with a cycle can use Clue and really feel empowered and supported to know their well being and wellbeing. We meet folks the place they’re, supporting them in assembly their well being objectives, no matter they could be.
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Main groups throughout totally different roles and corporations, you’ve emphasised the significance of teaching in management. Are you able to share the way you’ve fostered a tradition of studying and development at Clue, and the way do you assist your workforce in navigating the fast-paced and sometimes emotionally charged house of feminine well being expertise?
At Clue, our values are care, braveness, and connection. They describe how we deal with our customers and the way we deal with one another. These three “large C’s” acknowledge that generally we’ve got to make laborious choices, and that not everybody can be pleased with what we select. However regardless, we’ll deal with each choice with care, face the hardest conditions with braveness, and join and depend on one another to do what’s greatest for our customers.
I’m oversimplifying, however teaching is ranging from a spot of believing in somebody’s creativity and resourcefulness, and asking questions or reflecting again observations to assist that particular person stay the life, have the profession, or navigate the change that they envision.
I consider this is applicable on to management at Clue. We begin from a spot of belief; we belief one another as workforce members, and we earn one another’s belief by means of transparency, equity, and love. Now we have collective objectives that we aspire to realize, and we consider within the creativity and resourcefulness of the workforce to get there.
Simply as we have a look at the well being of our customers holistically, we have a look at the wellbeing and development of our workforce members by means of the identical lens. Our in-house teaching providers present personalised assist for each skilled and private challenges, emphasising the transformative energy of open dialogue.
We allocate Skilled and Private Progress Budgets to empower staff of their skilled improvement and self-care journeys. Whether or not investing in role-related expertise or nurturing private wellbeing by means of a wide range of actions, these sources underscore our dedication to particular person development and fulfilment.
Past the app, Clue has the potential to affect coverage and societal attitudes in the direction of menstrual and reproductive well being. In what methods is Clue working in the direction of advocating for coverage adjustments or higher societal consciousness round feminine well being points like endometriosis?
Clue, together with the Clue neighborhood, has a historical past of being vocal and clear on our commitments. Whether or not it was our ‘Simply Say Interval’ marketing campaign from 2017 to destigmatize speaking about menstruation or supporting our customers to advocate for themselves when visiting their healthcare suppliers and even simply speaking to their household, pals, or colleagues about issues like perimenopause.
Whereas society has made progress in schooling and consciousness of feminine well being points, there may be nonetheless an extended technique to go. There may be undeniably a analysis hole, a analysis hole, and an empathy hole with regards to discussions round feminine well being points.
Our endometriosis survey shone a lightweight on this as some customers informed us that their signs have been dismissed as a nasty interval or put all the way down to being psychosomatic, and shockingly some customers have been informed to solely fear about it once they have been seeking to conceive. By highlighting these issues and utilizing our app to coach and lift consciousness, we hope that we are able to play our function in shifting wider societal attitudes in the direction of feminine well being.
Lastly, as somebody deeply embedded within the development of feminine well being expertise, how has your work with Clue influenced your views on healthcare, expertise’s function in private well being, and the way forward for ladies’s well being advocacy?
Earlier than becoming a member of Clue, I knew one expertise of the feminine well being journey – mine. I didn’t know whether or not it was regular. I didn’t know whether or not I wanted to be involved. I didn’t know what I may do in regards to the issues I used to be experiencing. I didn’t know the place to show, and at occasions, I might be keen to strive something even when I didn’t know what my choices have been.
What I’ve realised by means of listening to and studying from the Clue person neighborhood about their wants, their well being objectives, and their ache is that I used to be not alone in feeling… alone. And I used to be additionally not alone in feeling that my well being was invisible, or at greatest dismissed.
I’ve seen in my very own journey, and I’ve heard from our person neighborhood that empathetic expertise can empower. Monitoring can result in private perception and in the end well being company. It might result in making a brand new way of life alternative or advocating for higher care from healthcare suppliers.
Finally, data-enabled and science-driven expertise can interact folks of their well being. And it’s, in actual fact, crucial to take action in an effort to enhance healthcare transferring ahead.
The place can readers discover extra info?
Clue is the menstrual and reproductive well being app that permits profound, science-driven physique literacy for ladies and other people with cycles in every single place, by harnessing the ability of full cycle intelligence.
Liked by over 10 million month-to-month energetic customers throughout 190+ nations, and supporting 20+ languages, the Clue app guides members by means of every cycle and life stage. From common cycle well being schooling to fertility, being pregnant, perimenopause, and all adjustments and selections in between – large or small.
The Clue app is free to obtain and options its distinctive data-driven cycle monitoring. With a premium subscription to Clue Plus, members achieve entry to superior insights and modes together with Clue Conceive, Clue Being pregnant, and Clue Perimenopause. The Clue app is CE-marked as a Class 1 medical gadget.
Because the pioneer of femtech, Clue repeatedly companions with researchers from high establishments around the globe to light up the blindspots in feminine well being. Included within the EU, Clue person well being information is protected by the world’s strictest information legal guidelines (EU GDPR) and Clue’s absolute dedication to face up for the well being information privateness of its customers.
For extra, go to https://helloclue.com/
About Audrey Tsang
Audrey Tsang is the CEO of Clue, the pioneering menstrual and reproductive well being platform with 10 million international customers, protecting customers’ total reproductive well being journey from puberty to menopause.
Audrey joined Clue as the corporate’s Chief Product Officer in 2018. She was named co-CEO with Carrie Walter in March 2021, and have become CEO in August 2023. Since becoming a member of the Berlin-based firm, she has centered on serving the corporate’s customers with data-driven, science-based info, empowering them to take cost of their menstrual and reproductive well being, with a specific give attention to Clue’s product technique and innovation.
Previous to becoming a member of Clue, Audrey led product groups at Pinterest, HotelTonight, and Yelp. She is a skilled management coach and an angel investor.
Audrey holds bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in pc science from Stanford College, in addition to an MBA from Northwestern College’s Kellogg College of Administration.
She is an skilled public speaker, regularly talking at main expertise and well being occasions, and is repeatedly quoted in main media publications.
