Women’s health data could empower women and individuals experiencing menstrual or female reproductive health-related processes to better understand themselves and manage their health across their life course. However, lifelong health tracking remains a challenge and existing menstrual health technologies often fail to meet diverse needs or enhance menstrual health literacy.

Objectives

1. Personalized Menstrual Health Tracking: Develop a customizable app that integrates self-reported and wearable data to provide personalized insights, addressing the unique needs of menstruating individuals, particularly those with irregular cycles.
2. Enhance Menstrual Health Literacy: Improve users’ understanding of their menstrual health through tailored visualizations, feedback, and education, fostering greater health literacy and awareness.
3. Open-Source Platform for Research: Establish CyMe as an open-source resource for research studies in healthcare, clinical trials, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), focusing on female-specific data and gender-sensitive health solutions. Ensure users have complete control over their health data, with robust privacy measures that protect sensitive information throughout the tracking process.

Approach

We adopted a human-centered design approach to design, develop, and evaluate CyMe [si:][mi:], a customizable menstrual health app offering tailored interfaces and personalized insights, integrating self-reported and passively tracked data via wearables. Preliminary results suggest that CyMe’s customization features improve user engagement, accessibility, and menstrual health awareness.

Scientific and Social Contributions

1. Scientific Advancements: We envision CyMe becoming a valuable, open-source resource for research incorporating sex- and gender-specific data in health- or non-health-related research studies.
2. Social Impact: CyMe aims to improve menstrual health literacy, particularly for users with irregular cycles, by providing personalized insights and empowering users to take control of their health. Ultimately, this work responds to the call for intersectional feminist Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research to address digital health’s gender inequities using a practical and inclusive implementation.

We actively engage potential users throughout the development process. Check back here regularly for the latest invitations to participate in upcoming user studies, surveys, and pre-tests.

This demo video shows the implementation of sports tracking and knowledge features into the already existing menstrual cycles tracking research app “CyMe”. The aim is to support everyday athletes in connecting their menstrual cycles and sports tracking, get individual insights, and personalize the app to their specific needs.

Completed as part of a Master’s project in 2025 and submitted to AlpCHI 2026 as a project demo, the feature “CyMe: Connecting Menstrual Cycles and Sports Tracking for Everyday Athletes” was developed at University of Zurich (UZH) and Centre for Digital Health Interventions (CDHI), UZH, HSG and ETH Zurich, Switzerland by Madeleine Soukup, Carol Barbara Ernst, Maria-Flavia Taras, Kristijonas Buciunas

Principe, M., Stebler, E., Sou, D., Huang, E.M., Kowatsch, T., Nißen, M., CyMe [si:][mi:] – A Digital Women’s Health Research Initiative and Platform, Abstract presented at the Menstruation Research Conference 2026 (4M), 7-8 July 2026, Brighton, UK (forthcoming).

Principe, M., Krohmann, S., Kowatsch, T., Nißen, M., From Workaround to Centerpiece: Translating Lived Experience into Perimenopause-Focused Menstrual Health Technologies, Workshop on Advancing Digital Women’s Health – Scale-IT-up 2026, In Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2026) – Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS, pp. 614-628, ISBN: 978-989-758-802-0; ISSN: 2184-4305, 10.5220/0014452300004070 . [PDF]

Senpinar, G., Moser-Chee, L., Nißen, M., Enhancing Menstrual Health Research through User-Centred Digital Data Structures: Findings from a Researcher Needs Study, Workshop on Advancing Digital Women’s Health – Scale-IT-up 2026, In Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2026) – Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS, pp. 645-655, ISBN: 978-989-758-802-0; ISSN: 2184-4305. [PDF]

Moser-Chee, L., Senpinar, G., Nißen, M., Enhancing women’s health research through user-centered digital data structures: Preliminary findings from the CyMe [si:][mi:] app researcher needs pilot study, Swiss Gender Medicine Symposium 2025, October 20-21, Bern, Switzerland. Poster presentation. [PDF]

Krohmann, S., Principe, M., Kowatsch, T., Nißen, M., Empowering women across the life course: Extending the open-source menstrual health tracking app CyMe [si:][mi:] for perimenopause, 1st Swiss Gender Medicine Symposium. October 20-21, 2025. Bern, Switzerland. Poster presentation. (forthcoming). [PDF]

Principe, M., Stebler, D., Sou, D., Kowatsch, T., Nißen, M., CyMe [si:][mi:]: Personalized and Seamless Menstrual Health Tracking, Mensch und Computer 2024 – Workshopband. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.. MCI: Demos: Interactive Systems or Demonstrators. Karlsruhe, Germany. 1.-4. September 2024, 10.18420/muc2024-mci-demo-369

Sou, D., Stebler, D., Principe, M., Kowatsch, T., Nißen, M., Please CyMe: Towards Enhancing Menstrual Health Awareness through Customization and Personalized Visualization in a Menstrual Health App, In Proc. of Mensch und Computer 2024 (MuC ’24). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 674–683, 10.1145/3670653.3677475

Nißen, M., Sou, D., Kowatsch, T., Digital Female Health: Advancing Women-Centric Human-Computer Interaction Research, Mensch und Computer 2024 – Workshopband. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.. MCI-WS14: Bedürfnisse sind unterschiedlich und verändern sich, Methoden auch? Umdenken bei Forschungsmethoden. Karlsruhe, Germany 1.-4. September 2024, 10.18420/muc2024-mci-ws14-199 

Soukup, M., Taras, F., Ernst, C.B., Buciunas, K., Huang, E., Nißen, M. CyMe: Connecting Menstrual Cycles and Sports Tracking for Everyday Athletes. Demonstration at AlpCHI’26. Ascona, Switzerland. 1.-5. March 2026, https://doi.org/10.48787/kops/352-2-o9l5ow1jh0uu0 [PDF]

Marinja Principe, Davinny Sou, Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, Prof. Dr. Marcia Nißen

2024: Marinja Principe, Elia Stebler

2024: Sina Cäcilia Klerings, Dana Rapp, Lena-Noelle Fischer

2025: Maria-Flavia Taras, Madeleine Soukup, Carol Barbara Ernst, Kristijonas Bučiunas

2026: Do Hyun Park, Patrick Valach, Piotr Maciej Wojtaszewski

2025: Stefanie Krohmann

2026: Elia Stebler

2026: Madeleine Soukup

2025: Fulya Gerin

2024: Larissa Shuyin Moser-Chee, Gian Senpinar, Chenxi Jia, Nora Irina Eisenring

2025: Larissa Shuyin Moser-Chee, Gian Senpinar, Chenxi Jia

January 2024 – today