Joii AI sanitary pad measures your period flow, but comes with privacy risks
Tracking your steps taken, calories burned, and hours slept? You can now add period volume to the list of trackables, thanks to a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered sanitary pad, Joii. But is uploading your fertility data to an app safe?
Taking a photo of a used sanitary pad may be the last thing you want to do while experiencing excruciating cramps and mood swings during your period.
Yet, the Dublin-based company Joii says that this simple action can help predict health issues affecting millions of women worldwide.
Its novel system involves scanning a worn pad with the Joii Period Evaluation App, which is available at no cost on both iOS and Android devices.
The app calculates the period volume, which is the amount of blood on the pad, and the size of blood clots, if there are any.
According to Joii's website, the app allows cycle tracking and predictions, symptom and medication logging, among other functions. Most importantly, it promises to help identify heavy flow.
Heavy menstrual bleeding may be caused by a wide variety of conditions, including endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), according to the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, a leading ob-gyn professional organization.
Endometriosis alone affects about one in ten women of reproductive age. It can take between four and 11 years to get the diagnosis, but for many, the cause of suffering is never discovered – six out of every ten endometriosis cases remain undiagnosed.
Lucrative fertility data
Around 50 million women worldwide use cycle tracking apps. Due to their intimate nature, these apps can provide lucrative data to third parties. And some were caught doing so.
Flo Inc., a developer of a popular period tracking app, settled a class action lawsuit earlier this year alleging it shared menstruation and pregnancy information, along with other unique identifiers, to third parties.
Data from women aiming to get pregnant is of huge commercial value, as no life event is linked to such dramatic shifts in consumer behavior, according to a report from the University of Cambridge.
Jeremy Rambarran, MS, an adjunct professor at Touro University, warns that photos of used menstrual products may contain deeply personal biological information.
While users may think they are only sharing a photo of a sanitary pad, the data captured can reveal details about reproductive health, hormonal conditions, pregnancy status, or miscarriage indicators.
“If the app uses cloud-based AI processing, the photos may be stored, analyzed, or used to train models unless the provider clearly states otherwise,” Rambarran tells Cybernews.
Justyna Strzeszynska, founder of Joii, says that all user data, including pad images, is encrypted in transit and at rest. Images are processed only for the purpose of analyzing menstrual flow and are linked to a pseudonymous user ID, never to a name or email.
Data is stored on secure servers that comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Access to any data is strictly limited, logged, and monitored.
She tells Cybernews, “Under GDPR, users can request full deletion of their data, which we honour. We follow GDPR principles of data minimisation and privacy by design throughout the app and infrastructure.”
The company claims it doesn’t use identifiable user data to train its algorithms, and anonymized data used to improve models cannot be linked back to any individual.
In places with restrictive reproductive health laws, highly specific menstrual data could be misinterpreted to suggest pregnancy, miscarriage, or abortion-related activity, Rambarran says.
Twelve states in the United States (US) have banned abortion entirely and enforced criminal penalties, the Center for Reproductive Rights data shows. Many experts warned against using period tracking apps in these states, as data could be used for prosecution
Strzeszynska says the company has never received a request for user data from law enforcement in the UK or Ireland, where the app currently operates.
“If we were ever legally required to comply, we would do so in line with GDPR, providing only the minimum information necessary and informing the user wherever legally possible,” she says.
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