Quarter of women miss work due to menstual symptoms, survey finds
A perimenopause app that maps existing smartwatch data to the menopausal transition has launched across 39 markets in the UK and Europe.
anna app uses information already recorded by wearables, including sleep, heart rate and body temperature, and returns one suggested lifestyle action each morning alongside the research behind it.
The company says each rule in its library links a defined pattern in a woman’s own data to a specific action. The recommendations were developed with an advising clinician and draw on more than 300 published studies.
The company says recommendations are not generated automatically and each can be traced to research reviewed by a doctor.
The app was built by two women in Riga, has been funded without outside investment and was tested with women in the UK over three months before launch.
Perimenopause is the period of hormonal change before periods stop and usually begins after 40.
The company says one of the challenges is the unpredictability of the transition, with sleep, energy, mood and concentration potentially changing from week to week.
Because the experience varies between women, the developers say it can be difficult to find care tailored to individual needs. After 45, there is also no reliable blood test to confirm perimenopause.
The transition can coincide with a busy period in women’s working lives.
CIPD research published in 2023 found that 27 per cent of working women aged 40 to 60 with menopause symptoms said they had affected their career progression, equivalent to around 1.2m women in the UK.
Some 79 per cent said they felt less able to concentrate.
The long-running Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, which has followed thousands of women through the menopausal transition, found that cognitive difficulties reported during perimenopause appear to be time-limited, with improvement returning in early postmenopause.
The developers say anna differs from standard wearable data by interpreting measurements specifically in the context of perimenopause.
A smartwatch may show changes in sleep, heart rate or temperature, but anna is designed to look at combinations of those signals and link them to lifestyle guidance for that day.
The app is also designed to work without daily symptom logging.
Users can complete an optional daily check-in if they want to add more context, but the app can operate without a symptom diary or daily manual entries.
It uses information from a compatible device the user already owns, such as a watch, ring or band.
Elina Pika-Lepere, co-founder and chief executive of anna app, said: “Perimenopause arrives exactly when a woman has the least spare capacity. She is often at the peak of her career, raising children, caring for ageing parents. What she has lost is not information, it is predictability.
“We built anna to offer a helping hand and evidence-based guidance through a stage that is difficult but temporary.”
The company gave the example of a morning when a user’s watch shows she has slept well below her own 28-day average.
Rather than simply telling her she is tired, anna may suggest choosing one priority and working on it in 25-minute blocks with a short break between them.
The app also displays the sleep and concentration research used for the recommendation.
anna was founded by Pika-Lepere, who spent 15 years building products in advertising, retail and e-commerce, and product lead Zanda Freimane, whose background is in product management in fintech and e-commerce.
The wider team includes a mathematician and university researcher advising on data architecture, a senior developer and a user experience adviser from a Baltic unicorn company.
anna app is not a medical device and does not provide medical advice.
Its guidance is limited to lifestyle support, and the company describes the app as a tool to complement a doctor rather than replace professional medical care.
anna app is available on iOS across 39 markets in the UK and Europe and is listed on the App Store as anna: Perimenopause & Sleep.
The app is in English and works with Apple Watch, Garmin, Fitbit, Oura and Whoop through Apple Health.
The company says user data is hosted in the EU and is never sold.
The service costs £13.99 a month or £99.99 a year in the UK and €14.99 a month or €99.99 a year in the euro area after a seven-day free trial.
