Dr. Elina Berglund Scherwitzl is the co-founder and CEO of Natural Cycles, the women’s health company that developed the world’s first birth control app. The app is powered by an algorithm that uses body temperature to determine each user’s daily fertility status. As a Class II medical device, the NC° app is cleared by the FDA in the United States and certified to be used as a contraceptive in Europe, Australia, and Singapore. It has also received regulatory clearances to integrate with third party wearables. Prior to founding Natural Cycles, Elina was part of the team that discovered the Higgs boson at the CERN laboratory, which led to the Nobel Prize in physics in 2013. Following this success, Elina was looking for an effective, natural birth control and decided to apply her skills from particle physics to create a unique algorithm that could accurately pinpoint when a woman was fertile using body temperature. From there, Natural Cycles was born. Today, Natural Cycles has over 3million registered users. In this episode Elina tells us about the amazing start to her career, working in the CERN laboratory and why she wanted to develop a contraception app. Natural Cycles went through many issues to become the only contraceptive app to be certified, being both CE marked and FDA cleared, which was not an easy process. Elina explains how the app works as a form of contraception or is flipped to be a fertility app. It is important for new techniques to have academic and scientific collaborations. Natural Cycles have published many scientific studies, including two with me. And Natural Cycles have now joined with the Oura Ring and Apple Watch to make it easier for women to determine when they are ovulating and when is their fertile time. We discuss how apps generate big data and how this can be used for scientific studies.For more information and to access the transcript: https://joyceharper.com/podcasts/Date of episode recording: 2023-09-15Duration: 00.55.44Language of episode: EnglishPresenter:Joyce HarperGuests: Dr Elina Berglund ScherwitzlProducer: Joyce Harper

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