In sync: Fertility app Luna Luna has laid the foundation for femtech in Japan for 20 years
Even before the word “femtech” was coined, Japanese company Luna Luna had cemented its position as Japan’s number one service for helping women track their menstrual cycles. Some 20 years after it launched the service, Luna Luna’s daily download numbers still remain stable.
Run by MTI Ltd., which develops businesses for mobile device content distribution, Luna Luna was first started in 2000 as a women’s health information service that included support for predicting and tracking menstrual cycles and fertility. Originally offering information on mobile phones, the service now spans several apps that use advanced technology to track periods, with new users continuing to sign up.
By analyzing data accumulated over two decades, Luna Luna is improving on its original algorithms. Take ovulation days. Crunching the data of users with differing menstrual cycles(*1), Luna Luna groups together those with the same average cycles; for each group, it draws conclusions by cross-referencing records on ovulation days(*2).
Designing a service for different life stages and issues
Luna Luna is growing rapidly as it approaches 15 million downloads. Several Luna Luna apps have been released as a series, each focusing on health issues for different life experiences, from Luna Luna Baby and Luna Luna Temperature Notebook to Luna Luna Sports.
Luna Luna offers a free version that focuses solely on predicting users’ period days. The paid version comes with a “Get Friendly Days” feature for the most ideal times to conceive, a Q&A with a physician, and a feature for sharing information with a partner, such as bodily changes that occur through the menstrual cycle, ovulation days and other predicted dates. Half of the paid version’s users are women and couples looking to get pregnant.
Around 70% of Luna Luna users are in their 20s or 30s while about half actively use the service daily. Users also have a high tendency to enthusiastically co-operate in surveys and research. Several thousand applicants immediately signed up after Luna Luna asked for women 16 to 20 weeks pregnant to take part in a research study by the University of Tokyo to prevent depression in pregnant women and nursing mothers.
Along with providing services customized to women’s different life stages and issues as well as raising brand loyalty, Luna Luna is encouraging users to get involved. This, in turn, can lead to the realization of next-generation health care for women and a society where women can find it easier to navigate. The igniting of this virtuous cycle is another one of Luna Luna’s strengths.
Supporting individuals and partnering with medical services
Luna Luna also cooperates with medical institutions. One such initiative is Luna Luna Medico, which was introduced in 2017. Period dates and basal body temperatures are pieces of information often asked when visiting a gynecologist. But since Luna Luna already has this data, users can simply pass it on to their physicians when visiting a clinic just by giving them a six-digit number. This is possible in the roughly 800 facilities across Japan where Luna Luna Medico is being used.
Luna Luna’s Pill Mode, added in 2019, also supports women who take birth control pills, which remain unpopular in Japan. This service stemmed from the app’s dilemma that users who are on the pill have lighter or stopped periods and thus are unlikely to have a reason to use the app. The Pill Mode aims to coordinate the user’s schedule for pill-taking and hospital visits; it also notifies the user of her pill-taking schedule and also sends medically approved articles on medicine and diseases. By doing so, Luna Luna is able to lessen users’ worries about taking the pill and help them continue to use it confidently.
In February 2020, it also began a welfare program for their female employee, encouraging them to make online gynecologist visits and take birth control pills. Made for obstetricians and gynecologists and provided by Luna Luna’s sister company Carada Medica Inc., the Luna Luna Online Treatment cultivates an environment where users can talk freely with a gynecologist about symptoms such as period pain and premenstrual symptoms. At the same time, it aims to remove the burden of having to visit a hospital, resolve the problems many women face due to such symptoms, and create a more comfortable working environment. After a six-month validation period, the program will begin full operations and be provided to other companies.
The significance of Luna Luna lies in contributing to their users’ happiness, starting from the points of health and conceiving. To do that, it also aims to further strengthen partnerships with medical services so that future health risks can be detected and dealt with at an early stage. Another goal is to make use of its enormous store of menstrual cycle data to continue joint research with other institutions and, in turn, contribute to creating a better society for women to live in.
The expertise gained from analyzing the data it has accumulated over 20 years is unprecedented even on a global scale. Basic information on menstruation and pregnancy found in textbooks and other medical references in Japan still mostly refers to research conducted in the US in the 1950s. Considering this, it’s clear that Luna Luna’s analytical work and services have forged a path right into the future.
Notes:
*1 This involved around 20,000 cases of menstrual cycles with enough past data to make predictions. These were from 55,000 women (a subset from 3 million) of whom were able to specify their ovulation days.
*2 Days specified as ovulation days from tests conducted in hospitals and ovulation day test drugs on the market.
Text: Denyse Yeo
Original text (Japanese): Lina Ono
