The Swedish physicist revolutionising birth control
By Maddy Savage - BBC News
By Maddy Savage - BBC News
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Inventing the first app in the world to be approved as a contraceptive started as a hobby project for Elina Berglund Scherwitzl. The nuclear physicist, who'd been working on the team that discovered the Higgs boson, was tired of using hormonal contraception but wasn't ready to have a baby. So the Swede set about using her data skills to find an alternative.
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The researchers - which included the co-founding couple - found that 7% of women who used the app in a "typical" way (allowing for some human error) got pregnant, compared to 9% taking the pill and less than 1% using IUD coils.
Against this background, Mrs Berglund Scherwitzl accepts that her product relies on women sticking closely to the app's instructions and therefore might not be for everyone, not least because it also fails to protect its users from sexually transmitted diseases.
"Just like the pill we need some effort from the user on a daily basis. But we really hope to be the default alternative if you don't want to use hormonal contraception or IUDs," she argues.