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 international locations.
With a background spanning stints with tech giants and a transition into femtech, Audrey shares her insights into how know-how can bridge the hole in girls’s healthcare, with a selected emphasis on addressing circumstances like endometriosis. Our dialog focuses on the challenges and breakthroughs in creating a well being app that empowers girls globally, reflecting on Audrey’s journey and the way forward for femtech.
Please might 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 method to product growth 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 client tech in Silicon Valley. With a background in Pc Science, Human Pc Interplay, and Design Pondering, I beloved taking a user-centric method to constructing know-how that individuals would use and love utilizing.
About six years in the past, I spotted that client tech corporations had tapped into an unimaginable potential to have interaction folks – getting them to spend extra time scrolling and, subsequently, more cash on their merchandise. I needed to make use of that very same potential to have interaction folks with their very own well being – making a constructive affect.
I used to be particularly considering girls’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 imagine that range and new views drive innovation. With a various crew based mostly in Berlin, Clue was already a good looking instance of innovation. It was Ida’s imaginative and prescient to alter 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 affix the crew.
My first three years at Clue had been spent main the product growth operations – first as VP of Product, after which as CPO. The time I spent on the product aspect is important at present, in my present function as CEO. Clue is a customer-centric firm; each resolution we make is with our customers’ finest 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 will iterate and enhance to satisfy person wants.
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What have been among the most important challenges you’ve got confronted within the femtech house, significantly in creating and scaling well being apps like Clue? How do you navigate these challenges?
Simply as girls 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 world wide, the femtech business is commonly missed as a “area of interest” market or a “way of life” enterprise. Fundraising can really feel like giving a primer on reproductive well being somewhat 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 know-how targeted on feminine well being. Giving this class a reputation that likened it to finance apps as a substitute of female hygiene merchandise helped to validate and improve curiosity available in the market. On high of that, it introduced collectively a startup ecosystem targeted on fixing issues on this house to alternate concepts and drive innovation.
A lot of the ladies’s well being journey at present is seen as elective or as a luxurious. Continual ache or perimenopausal signs might be seen as “only a dangerous 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 in search of care – selecting to stay with ache for instance – as a result of remedy and help feels unavailable or unaffordable.
At Clue, we imagine that individuals deserve higher. Higher help and care all through their whole menstrual and reproductive well being journey. We additionally imagine that this care ought to be inexpensive and accessible. We lament the truth that healthcare techniques don’t but see issues our method, as a result of in the event that they did, it might make our jobs loads simpler.
So, whereas we’d like to make our app completely free, to proceed to sustainably do our work, we’ve 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 knowledge, based mostly on precept. And we’ve continued to construct a profitable enterprise, by specializing in constructing the very best product for our customers, in order that they have a spot to get science-based help and steerage they may not in any other case have.
Clue’s current survey sheds gentle on the dire want for higher diagnostic instruments and healthcare supplier schooling concerning endometriosis. May you talk about any particular initiatives Clue is enterprise to deal with 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 at present is invisible. It’s invisible as a result of we lack the human-centric, structured, and quantifiable knowledge to validate the expertise – an expertise that has traditionally and systemically been ignored, missed, and even shamed.
With out arduous knowledge, people report that they aren’t taken significantly by their healthcare suppliers and the healthcare system, time and time once more. With out arduous knowledge, affected person issues are dismissed, and ladies’s well being is seen as a life-style concern or perhaps a luxurious good. With out arduous knowledge, the size and severity of the disproportionately excessive well being burden skilled in girls’s well being stays arduous 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 ladies, we will 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 solution to stroll into appointments, with their knowledge in hand. As a result of knowledge is perception, and perception is company.
Our customers have reported that taking this knowledge to their healthcare suppliers has enabled them to be taken significantly and has probably shortened the time it has taken them to entry prognosis and care.
That is why we lately launched our My Well being Report function which allows customers to enter their confirmed diagnoses for 21 well being circumstances widespread amongst these with feminine biology – so these with a prognosis will help make clear those that won’t but be recognized.
Anonymized knowledge 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. We’ve 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, prognosis, and well being gaps.
It isn’t simply Clue that has the need to create change. Our customers do too. Lots of the individuals who use Clue imagine in taking part in, and contributing to, analysis; roughly 80% consent to their anonymized, de-identified knowledge getting used for analysis functions.
By doing so, they’re taking part in an enormous function in serving to to enhance the lives of ladies and other people with cycles globally. We’re immensely proud that Clue allows our customers to have such a profound affect.
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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 know-how and knowledge science? Are you able to share any success tales the place knowledge 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 knowledge 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 knowledge, that knowledge gives perception, and perception allows company relating to our well being.
We’ve 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 accumulating knowledge to share with their healthcare supplier.
One survey respondent advised Clue, “Monitoring helps me to validate my expertise to my medical doctors. I can inform them that I’ve knowledge factors displaying I expertise every day ache.”
On a collective stage, knowledge improves what we find out about menstrual and reproductive well being and will help to shut extreme gaps in prognosis and care. Endometriosis, which is estimated to have an effect on 10% of ladies and other people with cycles globally, is likely one of the 21 completely different well being circumstances Clue customers can enter a confirmed prognosis for, throughout the My Well being Report function of the app. Along with their tracked cycle knowledge, these confirmed diagnoses represent one of many largest datasets on this planet matching the lived expertise with diagnoses.
One other instance might be seen within the perimenopause expertise. We surveyed 26,500 respondents, 84% aged 35-45 had not but acquired any info from their healthcare supplier about perimenopause regardless of this age group approaching, or already being in, perimenopause.
In accordance with the Society for Girls’s Well being Analysis, over one-third of ladies in perimenopause are usually not recognized, 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 girls’s well being and wellbeing, and have a cost-impact on healthcare suppliers, however the financial value to society – from perimenopause and menopause – might be immense.
Clue’s Perimenopause mode was constructed to help 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 knowledge from person monitoring will also be vastly useful in closing the data hole. By utilizing de-identified, nameless knowledge offered by customers – we’ve entry to over 15 billion knowledge factors from our 10 million+ world customers – researchers can leverage our person group to conduct ground-breaking analysis into circumstances comparable to perimenopause, closing the data hole and supporting earlier prognosis of well being circumstances.
We’re extremely excited to have already got analysis tasks scoped by researchers from high establishments leveraging this dataset to look at urgent questions round among the most typical, misunderstood, and under-diagnosed well being circumstances. Among the focus areas embody bettering 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 frontrunner in femtech, how does Clue work to beat these biases throughout the healthcare system and in know-how growth?
While you don’t have knowledge displaying that there’s a difficulty, you imagine there’s nothing to resolve. To shut this innovation hole, we have to begin with extra concrete knowledge revealing the gravity of this case. Our outcomes already present the shortage of innovation and R&D, together with the shortage of empathy and understanding of ladies’s well being points.
We continuously hear from Clue members that they’re uninterested in their ache being gaslit and that they only need their well being to be taken significantly. Analysis takes longer, remedy takes longer, and consequently, many ladies nonetheless stay in silent, invisible struggling.
In accordance with the current Clue survey I beforehand talked about, an amazing 74% of respondents reported that they really feel, or have felt, like their signs had 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 fully dismissed. “I had years of medical doctors telling me it was simply dangerous interval pains and placing me on contraception with no schooling about how one can take care of signs and flare ups”.
Or infuriatingly: “I used to be typically advised to, ‘Come again if you wish to get pregnant.’
We see this identical dismissal at an business stage as nicely. Presently, solely 4% of conventional biopharma analysis and growth funding goes into feminine well being circumstances – regardless of girls spending practically twice as a lot on healthcare as males.
Monitoring as a person with Clue means that you can visualize your well being as structured knowledge. It calls for that healthcare suppliers listen based mostly on information not emotions.
And monitoring on a collective stage with Clue, together with person surveys, new options together with My Well being Report, and partnerships with main tutorial establishments are producing anonymized datasets able to producing helpful insights into underserved circumstances, together with endometriosis.
Trying forward, what are the following large steps for Clue and the femtech business at giant? Are there new applied sciences or methodologies on the horizon that you just imagine will rework how we method feminine well being and wellness?
Whereas femtech throughout its early phases targeted on monitoring menstrual cycles, at Clue we intention to go ‘past bleeding.’ We concentrate on 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 help 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 more likely to embody broader points of well being offering customers with a holistic method 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 widespread as an accessible method 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 hundreds of thousands throughout over 190 international locations. How do you tailor your app’s options and academic content material to satisfy the varied wants and cultural sensitivities of your world person base?
A lot of the feminine well being journey remains to be unsupported at present. It’s under-diagnosed, under-treated, and extra typically we’re advised to simply “take care of 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 all the modifications and decisions which are 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 grasp their well being, take motion, make way of life modifications, 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 continuously taking steps to make it possible for everybody with a cycle can use Clue and really feel empowered and supported to grasp 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 completely 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 progress at Clue, and the way do you help your crew in navigating the fast-paced and sometimes emotionally charged house of feminine well being know-how?
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 typically we’ve to make arduous choices, and that not everybody will likely be proud of what we select. However regardless, we are going to deal with each resolution with care, face the hardest conditions with braveness, and join and depend on one another to do what’s finest 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 individual stay the life, have the profession, or navigate the change that they envision.
I imagine this is applicable on to management at Clue. We begin from a spot of belief; we belief one another as crew members, and we earn one another’s belief by means of transparency, equity, and love. We’ve collective objectives that we aspire to realize, and we imagine within the creativity and resourcefulness of the crew 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 progress of our crew members by means of the identical lens. Our in-house teaching companies present personalised help for each skilled and private challenges, emphasising the transformative energy of open dialogue.
We allocate Skilled and Private Progress Budgets to empower workers of their skilled growth 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 progress and fulfilment.
Past the app, Clue has the potential to affect coverage and societal attitudes in direction of menstrual and reproductive well being. In what methods is Clue working in direction of advocating for coverage modifications or higher societal consciousness round feminine well being points like endometriosis?
Clue, together with the Clue group, 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, buddies, or colleagues about issues like perimenopause.
Whereas society has made progress in schooling and consciousness of feminine well being points, there’s nonetheless an extended solution to go. There may be undeniably a prognosis hole, a analysis hole, and an empathy hole relating to discussions round feminine well being points.
Our endometriosis survey shone a lightweight on this as some customers advised us that their signs had been dismissed as a nasty interval or put all the way down to being psychosomatic, and shockingly some customers had been advised to solely fear about it once they had been trying to conceive. By highlighting these issues and utilizing our app to coach and lift consciousness, we hope that we will play our function in shifting wider societal attitudes in direction of feminine well being.
Lastly, as somebody deeply embedded within the development of feminine well being know-how, how has your work with Clue influenced your views on healthcare, know-how’s function in private well being, and the way forward for girls’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 might do concerning the issues I used to be experiencing. I didn’t know the place to show, and at instances, I’d be keen to strive something even when I didn’t know what my choices had been.
What I’ve realised by means of listening to and studying from the Clue person group 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 finest dismissed.
I’ve seen in my very own journey, and I’ve heard from our person group that empathetic know-how can empower. Monitoring can result in private perception and in the end well being company. It will probably result in making a brand new way of life alternative or advocating for higher care from healthcare suppliers.
Finally, data-enabled and science-driven know-how can have interaction folks of their well being. And it’s, in reality, mandatory to take action in an effort to enhance healthcare shifting 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 all over the place, by harnessing the ability of full cycle intelligence.
Cherished by over 10 million month-to-month lively customers throughout 190+ international locations, and supporting 20+ languages, the Clue app guides members by means of every cycle and life stage. From normal cycle well being schooling to fertility, being pregnant, perimenopause, and all modifications and decisions 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 system.
Because the pioneer of femtech, Clue usually companions with researchers from high establishments world wide to light up the blindspots in feminine well being. Included within the EU, Clue person well being knowledge is protected by the world’s strictest knowledge legal guidelines (EU GDPR) and Clue’s absolute dedication to face up for the well being knowledge 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 world customers, masking customers’ whole 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 targeted 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 selected concentrate on 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, continuously talking at main know-how and well being occasions, and is usually quoted in main media publications.
