Transforming fertility care with the help of automatic mood tracking.

1 in 2 women and 1 in 7 men say that dealing with infertility is the most upsetting experience of their lives. Yet few are getting the emotional support they need.

According to recent research, 50% of women and 15% of men say that dealing with infertility is the most upsetting experience of their lives. With an estimated one in seven couples worldwide facing challenges conceiving, this is something which is affecting millions every day.

The painfully low success rates of fertility treatments undoubtedly have a large part to play in this. IVF has a success rate of just 32% for women under 35. And these chances only decrease with age, with a success rate for women over 40 ranging from 4–11%.

The uncertainty that comes with such odds can have a significant mental health toll on those undergoing treatment. Globally, 9 in 10 couples have reported feelings of stress, anxiety and depression while going through IVF cycles, and when a round of treatment is unsuccessful, many have their hopes shattered by deep feelings of grief and loss.

It’s not just the stress of the unknown that is responsible for such emotional turmoil. Fertility medication can have a number of physical and mental health side effects. Clomid, an ovulatory stimulating drug often used during fertility causes 2 in 5 women to have feelings of depression. While the physical side effects, including bloating, headaches, breast tenderness and hot flushes, can further compound any emotional challenges.

Fertility treatment can also have huge knock-on effects on other areas of people’s lives, potentially causing further damage to their well-being. In a recent study, 1 in 3 individuals who went through treatment revealed they considered leaving their jobs due to the burden it placed on their mental health. Couples are also three times more likely to divorce or break up after failed IVF treatments. And for some, going through IVF treatment can have mental health implications up to 20 years later.

Despite the intense emotional journey that comes with managing infertility, the mental health support available to most is appallingly inadequate. As high as 80–90% of men and women who undergo fertility treatment don’t receive any mental health support. At Kouo, we want to help change this.

Kouo is an integration that enables apps to respond in real-time to users’ emotions, so they can create personalised content, better suited to the needs and moods of their users. We believe this could have huge benefits and value-add for existing fertility apps.

By automatically tracking users’ emotions, Kouo’s technology can help fertility apps further improve their users’ experience by creating solutions that respond to their unique emotional needs. For a woman undergoing hormonal treatment, this could mean helping her to monitor how her mood is responding to the medication so she can better plan for and understand fluctuations in her mood. Or for a couple exploring their next steps after a failed IVF, it could provide a shared experience to analyse their emotional health and how this may be impacting their relationship. It could also give prospective parents the option to share insights on their emotional progression with their healthcare providers, in order to seek more tailored, effective support should they wish.

Ultimately, automatic mood tracking could help fertility apps better provide a more holistic support service to their users and leave them better equipped to manage the emotional aspect of their fertility journey. And what’s better, users are not burdened with the responsibility of manually inputting their data, which can be time-consuming and subjective. The automated feature of Kouo’s mood-tracking function can provide this invaluable insight to fertility apps without disrupting their user’s experience.

We’ve already seen the tremendous impact emotion tracking and mood-adaptive features can have on users’ experience and engagement. Kouo recently ran a study that measured the impact of emotion-adaptive content on users’ interaction with the meditation app, Headspace. 75% of the study participants reported that they reached a greater state of calm when using the app with emotion-adaptive features. While 59% of participants stated they were more likely to use the meditation app again in the future if it was augmented with Kouo’s features as they could better visualise the benefits of their practice.

We now want to unlock the potential of these features further.

No couple’s or individual’s experience of managing infertility is the same. Every prospective parent’s emotional journey is unique and thus requires a unique response. Together, we can help provide the personalised, tailored support they deserve and give individuals the tools they need to better manage this significant moment in their lives.

To learn more about Kouo’s work, visit kouo.io or get in touch with us here.

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